engineering

Rex Beisel

Rex Beisel is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Rex Beisel rather than just read about it. In short: Rex Buren Beisel (October 24, 1893 – January 26, 1972) was an American aeronautical engineer and pioneer in the science and industry of aviation. He was the lead designer of several successful military and civilian aircraft, but is best known for designing the World War II-era Vought F4U Corsair fighter plane.

Key takeaways

Rex Beisel belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Rex Beisel to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Rex Beisel from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Rex Buren Beisel (October 24, 1893 – January 26, 1972) was an American aeronautical engineer and pioneer in the science and industry of aviation. He was the lead designer of several successful military and civilian aircraft, but is best known for designing the World War II-era Vought F4U Corsair fighter plane.

Life and career Beisel was born on October 24, 1893, in San Jose, California, and was raised in Cumberland, Washington, a small mining community in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. His father worked as a coal miner. The family lived for a time in a tent, then a small wooden house for which Rex, in an early display of his flair for design, built a picket fence. As a teenager, Beisel worked variously as a carpenter, store clerk, and surveyor's helper. He attended Queen Anne High School in Seattle, and worked summers at the coal mine in Cumberland as a breaker boy, mule driver, coal washer, and driver of the gas-powered locomotive which carried coal out of the mine. In 1912 he enrolled in the University of Washington, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree, while continuing to work at the coal mine and in various other jobs. On graduating he took a civil service examination in mechanical engineering and passed with such high marks that he was immediately offered a job in the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair; this soon led to a job at the newly formed Bureau of Aeronautics. Starting out as a draftsman in 1917 at $4 a day, Beisel became fascinated with aviation. With no previous aeronautic experience and little available in the way of textbooks or data, he began designing hulls, wing floats, and pontoons for seaplanes, and proved so adept at it that he soon received promotions and assignment to major projects. In November 1919 he became one of a small number of certified aeronautical engineers in the United States. In 1921, while working at the Bureau of Aeronautics, Beisel designed the TS-1, the first U.S. Navy fighter actually built to naval specifications. In 1923 the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company lured Beisel into the private sector, making the 29-year-old their Chief Engineer. Two years later, planes of his design won both first and second place in the prestigious Pulitzer Trophy air races. While at Curtiss he also designed the N2C-1 Fledgling, which became the main training aircraft of the Naval Reserve, and the F8C Helldiver, one of the world's earliest purpose-built dive bombers. After a short stint at Spartan Aircraft, Beisel became Assistant Chief Engineer at Chance Vought in 1931. He was the lead designer for the innovative SBU-1 and SB2U Vindicator scout/bombers, and in 1934 received the Manley Memorial Medal (SAE) and the Wright Brothers Medal for Cowling and Cooling of Radial Air-Cooled Aircraft Engines, a technical paper he co-authored.

Promoted to Chief Engineer at Vought, Beisel headed up the design team that produced the F4U Corsair, the first fighter aircraft to exceed a speed of 400 mph in level flight with a full military load. Beisel’s ingenious design combined the most powerful engine available with the largest diameter propeller ever built. The Corsair became one of the most famous fighters of the Second World War and played an important role in establishing Allied dominance of the air in the Pacific. Beisel also served as lead designer for the Vought F7U Cutlass, the company's first carrier jet fighter in operational service (the earlier F6U Pirate seeing use only in testing and training roles). Though having several advanced features, it, like many early jets, was underpowered and unreliable. Its tall front landing strut and problems with the ejection seat made it particularly dangerous for pilots, and by 1956, after a series of accidents, it had been withdrawn from service by the Navy. In 1943 Beisel had become General Manager of Vought Aircraft, a position he held until 1949. In this position he oversaw, in 1948–49, the company's move from Stratford, Connecticut to Dallas, Texas. With 27,000,000 pounds of equipment and 1,300 employees and their families to be moved, it was among the largest industrial relocations on record. He was named Vice President of United Aircraft Corporation (Vought's parent company) in 1949, and retired a few years later. Beisel died at his home in Sarasota, Florida on January 26, 1972, at age 78. He was survived by his wife Eunice and their four children: Rex Buren, Ann Marie MacNaughton, Susan Lee, and David Doran.

Sources Vought Bio F4U Corsair[link removed]

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Rex Beisel

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Rex Beisel claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Rex Beisel before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Rex Beisel ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Rex Beisel

In research: Rex Beisel appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Rex Beisel in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Rex Beisel is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1893 births, 1972 deaths, 20th-century American engineers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Rex Beisel outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Rex Beisel in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Rex Beisel means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Rex Beisel out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Rex Beisel in simple terms?

Why does Rex Beisel matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Rex Beisel?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Rex Beisel.