AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 119 / 331

Plate 119 of 331 · Second World War · Fighter

Bell P-39Q Airacobra

P-39Q 44-3887 ‘31’, 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).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, 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 · download .glb (1.1 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (P-39D, N & Q · Airacobra I); engine, crew and dimensions are for the P-39Q 44-3887 ‘31’ modelled here.

History

The Airacobra

Bell’s designers Robert Woods and Harland Poyer built their fighter around a gun. To carry a 37 mm cannon firing through the propeller hub, they put the Allison engine in the middle of the fuselage, behind the pilot, driving the propeller through a long shaft that ran under the cockpit floor. That left room for a nose wheel, making the Airacobra one of the first fighters with a tricycle undercarriage, and the pilot climbed in through a car-style door on either side. The XP-39 first flew on 6 April 1938 with a turbo-supercharger and was fast at height, but after drag tests the Army Air Corps had the turbo removed, and production aircraft, with a single-stage supercharger, were never good above about 15,000 ft.

Britain ordered 675 as the Caribou, renamed Airacobra I. No. 601 Squadron flew its first sorties with them in October 1941 and gave them up within weeks: the RAF found them slow to climb, poor at height and hard to keep serviceable. Most of the British order went to the Soviet Union or, as the P-400, to the US Army Air Forces, who flew Airacobras from Port Moresby, Guadalcanal and the Aleutians in 1942 and found them outclimbed by the Zero but useful for attacking ground targets. They later served in North Africa and Italy, with the Free French and with the Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force.

Bell built 9,588 Airacobras, and the P-39Q, with a .50 in machine gun in a pod under each wing instead of the earlier marks’ rifle-calibre wing guns, was the most numerous. About half of all production went to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease, flown in from Alaska or shipped through Iran, and Soviet pilots, fighting low over the Eastern Front where the Allison’s weakness mattered little, valued the cannon, the armour and the radio. Survivors are in the United States and Russia, several of them recovered from Russian lakes and forests; none is in a UK museum.

This airframe

P-39Q 44-3887 as ‘31’

44-3887The airframe modelled

44-3887 is a P-39Q-20-BE built in 1944. After the war it ended up derelict in California, and in 1966 it was obtained for the Air Force Museum, restored and put on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, Ohio. It is painted as P-39 41-7073 ‘31’, flown by Lieutenant Leslie Spoonts of the 57th Fighter Squadron in the Aleutians in 1942, and stands in a winter diorama. No P-39 is in a UK museum, so the model shows this example, which photographs record best. It shows it as they do: faded olive drab over neutral gray, 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, on the port side only, three Rising Sun kill flags under the windscreen, Spoonts’s name on the door and a data block on the nose. The museum calls the original a P-39D, but the stencil on the nose says P-39J. Its shape comes from a P-39D three-view checked against photographs of 44-3887, without the D’s wing guns; it has no underwing gun pods, as the museum aircraft has none. The tops of the wings are hidden by display snow in every photograph, so the wing stars follow standard 1942 practice, and the starboard fin number is assumed to match the port side.

Where to see one

Not on charge

Survivors are in the United States and Russia, several of them raised from Russian lakes. None is in a UK museum.

All 331 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.