Grumman F4F Wildcat
The Grumman F4F Wildcat was the workhorse fighter of the US Navy in the first 18 months of the Pacific War. Designed as part of the competition for the Navy’s first monoplane fighter which was […]
Aircraft
Curtiss P-40 Warhawk/Kittyhawk
The Curtiss P-40 was a development of the company’s older P-36 Hawk design. The tenth P-36 was modified to replace the Pratt & Whitney R-1830 radial engine with a more streamlined Allison V-1710 inline engine. […]
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress
The Boeing B-17 was designed in response to any Army requirement for a long range heavy bomber to replace the existing B-10 and B-12. Due to a crash involving the first prototype the Boeing design […]
Yokosuka E14Y Type 0 “Glen”
Requested as part of the same 12-Shi requirements, issued in 1937, that produced the A6M Zero, the G4M “Betty” and the E13A, the E14Y was a small seaplane designed to be carried aboard the Imperial […]
Curtiss SOC Seagull
Ordered in 1933 as the primary reconnaissance seaplane for the surface fleet, the Curtiss SOC Seagull went on to have a long career with the US Navy. Originally it was designed for ‘observation’ only, in […]
Curtiss P-36 Hawk
The Curtiss P-36 Hawk was designed as part of a competition to replace the P-26 Peashooter. In that competition the P-36 actually lost out to the Seversky P-35, but was nevertheless ordered in limited quantities […]
Consolidated PBY Catalina
The Consolidated PBY Catalina was one of the legendary aircraft of World War II. In the late 1920s and into the 1930s the US Navy was interested in procuring long range patrol aircraft in order […]
Aichi E13A Type 0 “Jake”
The 1937 12-Shi requirements for new naval aircraft included a request for a new reconnaissance seaplane to be carried by cruisers and battleships of the Combined Fleet. This aircraft would replace the E7K and E8N […]
Nakajima Ki-43 Type 1 Hayabusa “Oscar”
Requirements were issued by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force in 1937 for a replacement for the Ki-27, which was just entering squadron service. The new fighter was to have the same manoeuvrability as the […]
Mitsubishi G4M Type 1 “Betty”
A requirement for a new naval land-based bomber was included in 1937’s 12-Shi program, along with the fighter requirements which resulted in the design of the Mitsubishi A6M ‘Zero’. Mitsubishi assigned Kiro Honjo, who had […]