ble to make and maintain a continuously reliable installation of the explosive wing-tip-shedding device in service airplanes." The result was an airframe change in early 1949 to delete the Primacord installation and eliminate the weak link with a structural beef-up of the wing.
* A somewhat different story of the genesis of the Bearcat than the one provided by Corky in his monograph can be read here: http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2011/02/conception-of-f8f-bearcat.html
** Contrary to what you might think, the loss of lift from the wing tip was usually accompanied by a net increase in lift from the rest of the wing rather than a decrease. The nose-down pitching moment of the wing was reduced by the loss of the wing area but the nose-up pitching moment of the horizontal tail remained the same, resulting in an increase in the angle of attack of the wing at the amount of aft stick when the tips came off. If the increase didn't exceed the angle of attack for stall, lift would therefore increase.