what was that plane?

Sturmovik461
Nice video! Just to clear something up-the USSR rarely if ever used the P-39/63 in a ground attack role-that was covered quite well already by the IL2. They were used primarily as front-line fighters taking on the best that the Luftwaffe had to offer. In fact the P-39 has the distinction of having the most kills with a single pilot of any US built aircraft-the Soviet ace Rechkalov scored 44 victories in his P-39. Interesting bit of history about an interesting airplane!

xtreme1982641
I've also heard stories of Soviet aces like Alexander Pokryshkin who scored 47 of his 59 victories flying the P-39 and the other was Grigoriy Rechkalov who scored 44 victories in Airacobras. They were well loved by Soviet pilots who flew them. I think the only American P-39 ace was Bill Fiedler with 5 victories. I think both the P-39 and P-63 are great looking warbirds as well. They're awesome machines.

rpurdey
There's reason to believe Larry Bell asked to remove the turbo himself. His company had spent a fortune on the (X and Y)FM-1 Airacuda and were in a world of financial hurt. You're right about removing the turbo, while hurting speed and climb at altitude it significantly improved speed and maneuverability at lower altitudes AND gave them a plane they could start selling almost immediately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUuhLD6pQFA


Can you fly this plane?
Surely u cant be serious
I am serious,and dont call me Shirley

In fact just last year they found one frozen in a Siberian tundra lake complete with well preserved (but dead all the same) Russian pilot with his lunch (also dead). He was shuttling the plane from Alaska to the Asian theatre. There is an article in the magazine "Warbirds".
Like somebody is acually going to read this message!!

I believe the Peashooter was a Grumann Bi-plane

I'd rather go hunting with Dick Cheney, than driving with Ted Kennedy

The "Peashooter" referred to by Robbie was a Boeing P-26.

See wikipedia entry for details and a picture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-26_Peashooter

No, actually the doors rarely "came open" in a dogfight or any other time. Most current "general aviation" aircraft (Pipers, Cessnas, Mooneys, Beech, etc.) all have doors for entry, and they rarely come open unless improperly latched. Of course they're not "dogfighting" either!

And even when a door comes open, it's not a critical problem in flight. The airstream holds the door mostly shut anyway. By slowing down a bit, most pilots can shut an open door if its within their reach. It isn't within arm's reach on some aircraft, but a normal landing can be performed whether the door is latched or not.

The problem with a "door" on a fighter aircraft (as opposed to a sliding canopy) was that it was more difficult for a pilot in full flight gear and parachute to bail out of a crippled aircraft.

It is much easier to pop off a canopy and roll over and "fall out" of an aircraft, than to unbuckle, open a door, and crawl through a door opening.

Yes, the Peashooter was the USAAC's early 1930's, fixed undercarriage, Boeing P-26, though the term "peashooter" was applied by many Americans to all single-engine fighters (the term may have derived, at least in part, as a corruption of the AAC's designation of fighters as pursuit planes, which gave USAAC/USAAF fighters of their day their P- prefix).

Though many of 'Air Force's' combat footage is bathub (aircraft models "flown" along wires), there are some interesting, quick actual aerial shots of the Republic P-43 Lancer, the predecessor of the P-47 Thunderbolt. The P-43 never saw more than experimental service with the AAC/AAF, but some were supplied to Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek's Nationalist Chinese Air Force. In this film you can pick out the P-43 by its resemblances to differencs from the P-47; the P-43 has twin machine guns faired into its upper cowling, and it doesn't have the cowling chin intake later incorporated into the P-47.

The Bell P-39 Airacobra was not a great fighter, in part owing to its excessive inherent stability which resulted from its Allison V-12 engine being mounted BEHIND the pilot, placing too much stable weight at right about the P-39's center-of-gravity. The engine drove a drive shaft that ran bewteen the pilot's legs, and farther forward a 37mm cannon was arranged to fire through the propeller drive shaft. Many Axis fighters also outmatched the P-39 because its Allison engine gave its optimal output at low altitudes - when the Airacobra went higher its performance thus fell rapidly off, and this is why the P-39 did its best work at low altitude, often in the fighter-bomber/ground attack/anti-armor roles.

I believe the Airacobras shown in 'Air Force' are actually export versions of the P-39 ordered by the British Purchasing Commission for the RAF; the USAAC designated this British export version the P-400. The P-400 differed from US P-39's in minor details and in one major detail: its cannon, owing to British armament specification, was a 20mm Hispano cannon instead of the 37mm Oldsmobile cannon mounted in the US P-39. The nose cannon of the Airacobras in 'Air Force' look to be the British-specified Hispano 20mm cannon of the P-400.

Right after the Jap attacks on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Malaya, Guam, and Wake Island, the USAAC found itself rather short of planes in some categories, so a good many of the British-specified P-400's were commandeered by the USAAC/USAAF and some of these were sent to operate from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal and, if I recall correctly, some P-400's also operated from Port Moresby on the southeast coast of what was then New Guinea (now it's Papau New Guinea).

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If I remember correctly, Air Force legend Chuck Yeager named the P-39 as his favorite plane to fly. I guess he flew it when he was a young sergeant-pilot, and always had a fondness for the airplane.

On the subject of the P-400, a joke in the Pacific went like this; "Question; What's a P-400? Answer; A P-40 with a Zero on it's tail!"