P-63 Kingcobra

Source: Wiki

The Bell P-63 Kingcobra was a fighter aircraft developed in 1943 from the P-39 Airacobra in an attempt to correct that aircraft's deficiencies. Although the aircraft was not accepted for combat use by the USAAF, it was successfully adopted by the Soviet Air Force. The USAAF concluded the Kingcobra was inferior to the P-38 Mustang then in development, so it declined to order larger quantities. American allies, particularly the Soviet Union, had a great need for fighter aircraft and was already using the P-38. Therefore, the P-63 was delivered under Lend-Lease. The Soviet Government sent a highly experienced test pilot, Andrey G. Kochetkov, and an aviation engineer, Fiodor Suprun, to the Bell factories to participate in the development of the first production variant, the P-63A. Initially ignored by Bell engineers, Kochetkov's expert testing of the machine's spin characteristics, which led to airframe buckling, eventually led to a significant Soviet role in its development.

The P-63 was somewhat larger the P-39. The Allison V-1710 12-cyclinder, liquid-cooled, 1800 hp engine was fitted with a second supercharger supplementing the normal single-stage supercharger. At higher altitudes when additional boost was required, a hydraulic clutch would engage the second supercharger, adding 10,000 ft to the service ceiling. A larger four-bladed propeller was also standardized. A persistent complaint against the Airacobra was that its nose armament was not easily accessible for ground maintenance, and in order to cure this problem, the P-63 airframe was fitted with larger cowling panels.

Armament: 1 37 mm M4 cannon firing through the propeller hub, 2 .50 cal. machine guns in cowl firing through the prop and 2 .50 cal. machine guns in the wings. The P-63 could carry up to 1500 lbs of bombs externally mounted on the wings and fuselage.

Air Transport Command ferry pilots, including U.S. women pilots of the WASP program, picked up the planes at the Bell factory at Wheatfield, New York, and flew them to Great Falls, Montana and then onward via the Alaska-Siberia Route (ALSIB), through Canada to Alaska where Russian ferry pilots, many of them women, would take delivery of the aircraft at Nome and fly them to the Soviet Union over the Bering Strait.