But while the Japs had been busy with their Zeros, we had not been idle at Vought. I, for one, had not forgotten the lesson of Panama, even though our Navy now seemed to have turned its back on the fighter-bomber idea. Fighter pilots are inherently resentful of any suggestion that they should know how to dive bomb as well as dogfight. But the fact remains that, once they have driven an enemy from the skies, neither they nor their ships are useful unless they can turn a hand at attacking objectives on the ground. With this idea in mind, we set out at Vought to build a new Corsair. She must be able to out-perform enemy fighters and still be readily convertible to a dive bomber; she must have the structural ruggedness and strength to withstand the high stresses of this work. This meant, in turn, that she must be larger than the pure fighter and to this end she must have a more powerful engine. That is just another way of expressing Bruce Leighton’s ancient adage about the power plant being the heart of the airplane. We had such an engine in the new Pratt and Whitney 2800. Originally intended to develop from 1,800 to 2,000 horsepower, this engine was later actually used at from 2,500 to 3,000 in World War II. Around the new power plant we designed a new fighter bomber, and offered it to BUAERO in anticipation of the war that seemed inevitable. But BUAERO was cool to our proposal. Large airplanes could not be carried on the flattops in the same numbers as could the smaller, more compact fighters; number was an important factor in the complement of a carrier. They were willing to let us go ahead on the project, but they could not hold out much hope for ultimate production. Now I took a long breath and embarked on the gamble of a lifetime. We would commit Chance Vought to a new single-seat fighter, one with such blazing speed and such fire power and such maneuverability that it could blast any enemy from the skies, even though handicapped with all the rigging that goes on a carrier fighter. We would build into it such rugged strength that it could carry heavy bombs in a dive, and still withstand the clumsiness of any horny-handed pilot who might try to pull its tail off.