Not a warbird, but what?

[mike furline]

Any ideas?

Attachments

31387664_10214317535144748_8938589621638638254_n.jpg (61.58 KiB) Viewed 2585 times

[quemerford]

I seem to recall this was subject of a loooong thread a while back, without a definitive answer.

[Hooligan2]

I seem to recall this was subject of a loooong thread a while back, without a definitive answer.

On Flypast wasn't it?

[quemerford]

I seem to recall this was subject of a loooong thread a while back, without a definitive answer.

On Flypast wasn't it?

I gave up on Flypast years ago so not there. PPRuNe maybe?

[JohnB]

It was somewhere I post, so either here or FlyPast (before their forum pretty much died).

No definitive answer.
Some guys kept saying it was an "X" with so many major changes, which taken as a whole, would not make it an "X" any longer.
Some guys think modifying an airworthy aircraft is as simple as chopping a '32 Ford.

The fixed gear dates it a narrow window since retractable gear came fairly quickly after monoplanes became big.
And the radial does not make it look European to me.

If it were American, I'd call it a Seversky, but I can't find a Severely To match it.

To me, it also looks like an early Nakajima, the record setting Mitsubishi Ki-15 Kamikaze from 1937, or a progenitor of the Aichi D3A "Val".

IIRC, Some called it a film prop, but I don't think so since studios could usually borrow real aircraft like the early B-17, A-17 and Seversky SEV-S2 used in Test Pilot.

Last edited by JohnB on Wed Aug 17, 2022 4:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.

[quemerford]

Maybe it was Flypast after all - it was obviously a few more years ago than I thought

For sure it's a lovely-looking machine and I'd love to find out the story behind the image, whether it's a well-executed piece of modelling/Photoshop or a genuine aircraft.

[Mark Sampson]

A Fokker perhaps- or a fixed-gear Curtiss Hawk 75?

[RyanShort1]

To me it looks like a Northrop product.

[Hooligan2]

Sure it was Flypast, think I was still working so that's pre-2018.

The other thread trawled just about every manufacturer people could think of in the US, Japan, right around Europe... nothing seemed to quite fit. "We was proper stumped..."

[Stoney]

Vultee?

[quemerford]

I think we run the risk of repeating all of the suggestions made on the other forum. I think that run went through the usual (Lockheed, Ryan etc), then to obscure Russian, Japanese and French types and so unless someone knows for sure what it is, I don't think we'll get any further.

[old iron]

Could this be the Granville Gee Bee R-6 (now in Mexico)?

[quemerford]

Could this be the Granville Gee Bee R-6 (now in Mexico)?

Spats too small, fin too large. Anyone have a link to that other thread?

[airnutz]

Could this be the Granville Gee Bee R-6 (now in Mexico)?

In that similar school, I was thinking the military version of the Hawks Miller HM-1...the Miller HM-1, but it had retracts...sigh...

[Archer]

I remember the original Flypast thread. As the search function there is pretty abysmal I tried another way and found this four page thread on a different forum about this image: https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/m ... aft.48498/

I'm pretty sure that the Flypast consensus ended up as 'unknown', I'll go and have a look at this thread I found now to see if they did any better!

Edited to add: no conclusive answer there unfortunately, but it's worth a read to see the options. It's definitively not a Fokker D.XXI variant.