Boeing P-26 Pea Shooter and Strange planes and Oddities

Gallery of the Bizarre: Odd looking aircraft: P-26 Pea Shooter

The Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, California is sending their Boeing P-26A Peashooter to England this July to take part in the Flying Legends air show over the weekend of July 12th/13th at Duxford, in Cambridgeshire. This ulra-rare fighter plane is one of only two originals in existence, and the only one flying.

Interestingly, the Peashooter was the world’s first all-metal fighter, and the first monoplane in the US Army Air Corps. Boeing built 151 of them between 1932 to 1936. The type first saw combat with the Chinese Air Force on August 15th 1937, when eight Peashooter’s engaged twenty Japanese “Claude” bombers. They shot down two bombers without loss. A handful of them were still flying with the Army Air Corps in the Philippines when the US entered WWII in December, 1941. Ed Maloney acquired this example, 33-123, from the Guatemalan Air Force in 1957. The Guatemalan’s had used the type from 1943 until its retirement in 1957. The only other original survivor, P-26A 33-135, is on display with the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum at their Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. They also acquired it from Guatemala in 1957. There are a half dozen faithful replicas in various stages of completion dotted around the USA at present, and although one of these has flown in recent years, none are currently active.

It is probably the first time that a P-26 has ever visited Europe, and it is bound to cause a stir at Flying Legends. The Fighter Collection, organizers of the hugely popular air show, based at Duxford have close ties to many of the established vintage aircraft collectors/collections in the USA. They often work to bring one of their more unusual overseas exhibits to be a part of the Flying Legends air show to keep it fresh each year. Flying Legends will be the only chance to see the Peashooter flying during her UK visit. According to the air show details, the Peashooter will fly a carefully scripted solo routine each day of the show, and sit on the Flight Line during the remainder to allow close viewing of the unusual monoplane.

The Northrop N-9M was an approximate one-third scale, 60-ft wide, all-wing aircraft used for the development of the 172-ft wide Northrop XB-35 and YB-35 flying wing long-range, heavy bomber program. First flown in 1942, the N-9M (M for Model) was the third in a lineage of all-wing Northrop aircraft designs that began in 1929 when Jack Northrop succeeded in early experiments with his single pusher propeller, twin-tailed, twin-boom, all stressed metal skin Northrop Flying Wing X-216H monoplane, and a decade later, the dual-prop N-1M of 1939–1941. Northrop's pioneering all-wing aircraft would lead Northrop-Grumman many years later to eventually develop the advanced B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, which debuted in Air Force Inventory in 1989.

Stipa-Caproni, an experimental Italian aircraft with a barrel-shaped fuselage (1932).

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Vought V-173, the "Flying Pancake", an American experimental fighter aircraft for the United States Navy (1942).

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Photo: San Diego Air & Space Museum/Scribd

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Blohm & Voss BV 141, a World War II German tactical reconnaissance aircraft, notable for its uncommon structural asymmetry.

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Photo: wwiiaircraftphotos.com

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Douglas XB-42 Mixmaster, an experimental bomber aircraft, designed to have a very high top speed (1944).

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Photo: U.S. Air Force

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Libellula, a tandem-winged and twin-engine British experimental plane which gives the pilot an excellent view for landing on aircraft carriers (1945).

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Photo: William Vanderson/Fox Photos/Getty Images

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North American XF-82. Stitch together two P-51 Mustangs, and you get this long-range escort fighter (1946).

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Photo: U.S. Air Force

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Northrop XB-35, an experimental flying wing heavy bomber developed for the United States Army Air Forces during and shortly after World War II.

McDonnell XF-85 Goblin, an American prototype jet fighter, intended to be deployed from the bomb bay of the Convair B-36 (1948).

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Photo: U.S. Air Force

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Martin XB-51, an American "tri-jet" ground attack aircraft. Note the unorthodox design: one engine at the tail, and two underneath the forward fuselage in pods (1949).

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Photo: U.S. Air Force

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Douglas X-3 Stiletto, built to investigate the design features necessary for an aircraft to sustain supersonic speeds (1953 - 1956)

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Photo: NASA/DFRC

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Lockheed XFV, "The Salmon," an experimental tail sitter prototype escort fighter aircraft (1953).

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Photo: U.S. Air Force

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De Lackner HZ-1 Aerocycle flying platform, designed to carry one soldier to reconnaissance missions (1954).

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Photo: U.S. Army/army.arch

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Snecma Flying Coleoptere (C-450), a French experimental, annular wing aeroplane, propulsed by a turbo-reactor, able to take off and land vertically (1958).

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Photo: Keystone/Getty Images

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Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar, a VTOL disk-shaped aircraft developed as part of a secret U.S. military project (1959)

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Photo: William "Bill" Zuk/Wikimedia Commons

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HL-10, one of five aircraft built in the Lifting Body Research Program of NASA (1966 - 1970).

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Photo: NASA/DFRC

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Dornier Do 31, a German experimental VTOL tactical support transport aircraft (1967).

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Photo: amphalon

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Alexander Lippisch's Aerodyne, a wingless experimental aircraft. The propulsion was generated by two co-axial shrouded propellers (1968).

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Photo: Flying Magazine, Apr 1960

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Bartini Beriev VVA-14, a Soviet vertical take-off amphibious aircraft (1970s)

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Photo: Alex Beltyukov/Wikimedia Commons

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Ames-Dryden (AD)-1 Oblique Wing, a research aircraft designed to investigate the concept of a pivoting wing (1979 - 1982).

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Photo: NASA/DFRC

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B377PG - NASA's Super Guppy Turbine cargo plane, first flew in its out-sized form in 1980.

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Photo: NASA/DFRC

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X-29 forward swept wing jet plane, flown by the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, as a technology demonstrator (1984 - 1992).

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Photo: NASA/DFRC

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X-36 Tailless Fighter Agility Research Aircraft, a subscale prototype jet built by McDonnell Douglas for NASA (1996 - 1997).

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Photo: NASA/DFRC

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Beriev Be-200 Seaplane, a Russian multipurpose amphibious aircraft (1998).

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Photo: amphalon

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Proteus, a tandem-wing, twin-engine research aircraft, built by Scaled Composites in 1998.

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Photo: NASA/DFRC

Veterans and their stories: Willi and the Messerschmitt

A Tail of a fighter: The Messerschmitt Me BF109E and the story of a veteran

I have recently embarked on a mission of recording some of the amazing stories I have come across as a doctor dealing with WW2 veterans. Many of these stories have been lost, as the veterans pass on. I feel it is important to a least record some of the amazing stories I have heard. Living and training in South Africa I occasionally came across German veterans. I recall seeing a Stalingrad survivor (minus an arm) ; a Dresden Bombing survivor (minus a leg) , and a most interesting aircraft engineer, just off the top of my head.

Post-war photo of Messerschmitt

I met the aircraft engineer in the surgical ward of a Pretoria hospital, when I was still a student. He was a thin, unwell man at the time. He told me he was an engineer, and was, in fact still active. He was sitting up in his hospital bed working on an arched architectural design. He was in his late 70s then, and suffering from pancreatic cancer. We struck up a conversation, with him enquiring as to my German name, and as to where my German family roots lie.

He told me his real passion was for aircraft, and that he was an aircraft and glider designer. Of course, off we went... Aircraft nut in action:

Turns out that he started his career working in a factory where the first Me 109s were built. He related that he lived in a village in the Alps, and had to walk or cycle quite a distance from where he lived to the factory.

Messerschmitt was a hard task-master, and did not tolerate his employees being late. He had a two strike policy. On clocking in late for the second time, summary dismissal took place.

Wartime Bf 109 production line

The engineer in question had worked as a production assistant in the tail-assembly line. At the time (Me 109 B-model) there was a problem with the tail configuration, specifically with the ailerons.

Willi Messerschmitt kept a suggestions box at the clock-in station next to the factory floor. Our engineer took a piece of paper and drew what he thought was as the solution to the tail problem, and had put this in the box some weeks before.

Tail section of a later model- note absence of struts on tail

He relates that he arrived 2 minutes late for work one morning. Fearing for his job he set to work.
Within a few minutes he had a tap on his shoulder: " The Chef wants to see you!"

"Good grief" he thought, "Messerschmitt himself was going to fire me for being late." 

He obediently went up to Willi's office, to find the man there, not with the clock-in record, but with his drawing from the suggestions box in his hand:

 " Did you draw this? " he asked, "Tell me more about your thoughts!"

So it came about that his idea was incorporated into what became the definitive tail configuration for the Me Bf 109E. He was 17 at the time, and only allowed to work in the factory as he was a year to young to go into the army.

On his sick-bed he quickly dashed off a drawing while he was talking. It was, without doubt, the tail assembly of a ME109 that he drew for me. He pointed out what design alterations he had influenced: The shape of ailerons and the support struts.

Messerschmitt and Hitler

He spent the rest of the war working on various other projects with Messerschmit, as aircraft engineer. At the close of the war he hid his tools and instruments in a cave in the Alps.

After WW 2 Germany was not allowed to build aircraft for many years, and he turned his hand to glider design and building. For many years this had to take place in secret, without the occupying US and UK forces noticing. He never lost his love of aircraft and flying.

I only knew him for a week, from brief discussions between ward rounds, and getting my job done, but all the time he beavered away at drawings and designs. He was informed that the public system in S.Africa in the early 1980s could not offer him any hope of a cure for his cancer. 

He decided to fly to Germany to seek treatment there. I have often wondered what became of him, and what other fascinating discussions we could have had on the whole of the wartime he spent working with Willi Messerschmitt.

 I cannot recall his name, but I'll never forget his passion.

Probably the most famous Me109E, that of Adolf Gallant

The Me109E, with the tail struts and the aileron shape

 he could still dash off on a piece of paper 

5 decades or more after working on them with Willi Messerschmitt. 

First Day cover commemorating the anniversary of Messerschmitt's death

Note the Anglicised spelling of Willi (Willy, as he was known after the war)

Cutaway drawing of the Me109