Steve T wrote:
Hi--
To nitpick...this isn't the XP-75, it's the production model P-75A Eagle. The XP was a genuine freak, being an amalgam of parts from aircraft already in production--wings and canopy were P-40, aft end was SBD Dauntless, main gear was F4U. Constructed by the Fisher auto-body division of General Motors. Interesting idea, and it flew more or less okay, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) its performance wasn't a match for airplanes of less "mongrel" origins! Fisher revised the design into an all-new type, the P-75A, and a handful were built for evaluation, one of which, improbably enough, survives. I think it's a striking-looking beast, and wonder how it might have done with a turboprop engine...
Incidentally, a peculiar footnote: there's a gap in the P-series designations just before the Fisher Eagle project. There's no P-73 or P-74, even among unbuilt projects. Retrospectively, however, those two numbers seem occasionally to get assigned to the USAAF's "reverse Lend Lease" Beaufighters (P-73) and Spitfires (P-74). Anyone have a handle on when those references began to be made??
S.
Are you saying that my photos are of the P-75A and not of the XP-75 or are you talking about the one at the Air Force Museum? I'm pretty sure when I scanned them that they said XP-75 but they could have been wrong. Thanks!