Airacobra

Last spring many an American Airlines pilot, stopping for passengers at Buffalo, N. Y., sunburned the roof of his mouth watching the test flights of a new pursuit ship that the U. S. Army Air Corps called XP-39. Slim as a lance, it ripped across the field faster than anything they had ever seen, faded to a dot against the sky before the thunder of its exhaust had echoed off the hangar walls. And when it came home to roost, at the hangar of Bell Aircraft Corp., it waddled up to the apron on three wheels with its tail in the air, something no pursuit ship had ever done before. More mindful of its deadly speed, its paralyzing armament, than of its spraddle-legged look on the ground, proud Bell Aircraft called it "Airacobra.".

Last week Bell made international aviation news by telling just how fast and how heavily Airacobra could strike. Out of the experimental stage and now plain P-39, it has a speed of 400 miles an hour with full military load. It is the fastest pursuit ship in the U. S. and probably in the world, can leg it a full 20 to 40 miles an hour faster on war missions than Germany's famed Messerschmitt 109 (which had to be stripped of its guns and precariously ''souped up" to set the international speed record of 469 m.p.h.).

With a cruising range of more than 1,000 miles (at 325 m.p.h.) it can operate above 36,000 feet, lugs its pilot in comfort in a streamlined cabin with automobile-type doors. Strangest thing about it is that its engine, a 1,000 h. p., Prestone-cooled, inline Allison, is not in the nose, but behind the pilot. Built for sleek streamlining, the twelve-cylinder Allison (made by General Motors) drives the three-bladed prop through a shaft. Best thing about this is that it makes Airacobra's air-splitting nose thin and wartless, still leaves room up front for Airacobra's most deadly fang: a 37-millimeter (1 1/2 |inch) cannon which fires through the propeller hub. Alongside its cannon, biggest carried by any single-engined pursuit ship, are two .30-calibre and two .50-calibre ( 1/2inch) machine guns.

To square-chinned, 46-year-old Lawrence Doane Bell of Bell Aircraft, the Airacobra is a thesis in an aeronautics course which began 28 years ago. He left high school in Santa Monica, Calif, to become a mechanic for famed Lincoln Beachey--the "greatest flier" in many a pilot's lexicon--and for his own big brother, Grover Bell. Next year death came to Grover Bell in a crash, and discouraged Larry left the game. But by the time Beachey was killed in 1915 Larry Bell was back as a mechanic for Early-Bird Glenn L. Martin (whose firm was then listed in the Los Angeles telephone book under "Amusements"). By 1925 he was vice president and general manager of Martin, by 1929 had the same job with Major Reuben Fleet's Consolidated Aircraft Corp. at Buffalo.

When "Rube" Fleet moved his company to San Diego in 1935, Larry Bell leased the old plant, raised $400,000 by stock sales in Buffalo and became president of Bell Aircraft Corp., with Robert J. Woods as his boss designer. While Woods was turning out the two-engined Airacuda, Bell Aircraft was making ends meet by subcontracting for other manufacturers; but by the time the Air Corps had bought 13 Airacudas, Larry Bell could see the Airacobra and a real manufacturing future ahead. Last week on Bell's books were Air Corps orders for 93 Airacobras, and its backlog stood at $7,400,000. And if the P39 should be released for export, Larry Bell could see more business ahead than he dreamed of a year ago. Last week the industry was abuzz with a report that a French mission was negotiating for as many Airacobras as Larry Bell could put out.

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