Bell P-63 Kingcobra
The Kingcobra
“The fighter with the engine behind the pilot and a car door to get in.”
Bell · military
Bell put the Kingcobra's engine behind the cockpit, drove the propeller through a long shaft between the pilot's feet, and gave it tricycle gear and a door on each side like a car. The US Army did not want it as a front-line fighter, so three quarters of them went to the Soviet Union, which loved it. A few hundred became flying targets: the RP-63 Pinball was armoured, painted orange, and lit up when hit by frangible bullets from trainee gunners.
The RP-63 Pinball was a manned target: gunnery students fired breakable bullets at it in flight, and a light in the propeller hub flashed each time they scored a hit.
Nose gear instead of a tailwheel, a car-style door below the canopy, and the exhaust stacks aft of the cockpit rather than on the nose. Looks like a big P-39.
One might be overhead right now.
Bogey turns the The Kingcobra from a dot in the sky into a card in your logbook.
