Bell P-39 Airacobra

A procedural model built in Blender from the type’s published dimensions, painted as Bell P-39Q-20-BE Airacobra 44-3887, displayed at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, Ohio, painted as P-39 41-7073 ‘31’, flown by Lieutenant Leslie Spoonts of the 57th Fighter Squadron in the Aleutians in 1942: a single-seat fighter with its Allison V-1710 engine mounted behind the pilot and driving the propeller through a long shaft, a 37 mm cannon firing through the propeller hub, a car-style door on each side of the cockpit, a carburettor scoop behind the canopy, a low-set wing with rounded tips and a tricycle undercarriage, shown standing nose-up on its nose wheel and main wheels: faded Olive Drab upper surfaces and sides over Neutral Gray undersides, an olive-drab spinner and cannon muzzle, a black three-blade propeller with yellow tips, a white star on a blue disc on each side of the rear fuselage, a white ‘31’ on the nose and a yellow ‘17073’ across the fin and rudder, and, on the port side only, three Rising Sun kill flags under the windscreen, ‘LT.L.SPOONTS’ on the door and the black data block on the lower nose, as photographed at Dayton (no P-39 is in a UK museum; shape from a P-39D three-view, scaled to the published dimensions and checked against photographs of 44-3887, without the D’s wing guns; the museum calls the original a P-39D, its nose stencil says P-39J; the wing stars, hidden under display snow in every photograph, follow standard 1942 practice, the starboard fin number is assumed to match the port side, and the cockpit interior is simplified). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · all 331 models · download .glb (1.1 MB) · Plate 119 in The Hangar