Aircraft of World War II: Bell P-39 Airacobra (ePub)

The Bell P-39 Airacobra was a low-wing single-engine fighter produced by the US Bell Aircraft Corporation.
It was the most controversial fighter aircraft used by the US during World War II.
It was the first fighter in the world to have a tricycle gear and always the first to have the engine installed in the center of the fuselage, behind the driver.
But his engine proved totally inadequate at high altitude, and, both in Europe and in the Pacific, the P-39, as an interceptor, found himself outclassed and was gradually relegated to secondary roles.

The Bell P-63 fighter plane Kingcobra was a single-engine low-wing developed by the US Air Force Bell Aircraft Corporation in the early forties and used during the Second World War.
Evolution of the previous P-39 Airacobra, launched in an attempt to correct the defects of that model, the United States Army Air Forces not evaluated never suited for combat, relegating him to the role of tow targets.
As a result, nearly two-thirds of the production was assigned to the Soviet Union and about 300 units to units of Free France. He was initially assigned the provisional designation XP-39E, but the amount of changes convinced the military authorities to consider a new model by assigning it a name of its own.