P-35 36-354 at Wright Field 2
P-35 36-354 at Wright Field
P-35 PA57 of the 1st PG
P-35s of the 27th Pursuit Squadron flying in Formation 1940
Seversky P-35 20
P-35s of the 27th Pursuit Squadron, 1st PG over Selfridge Field
P-35 PA34 of the 1st Pursuit Group, Cleveland 1938
P-35 at Felts Field 1941
Men of 41st PS, 31st Pursuit Group sight machine guns on P-35 at Camp Skeel 1940
Crashed P-35 of the 17th PS in the Philippines
P-35s of the 27th PS over Selfridge Field 1938 2
P-35 of the 41st PS taxis along snow banked runway at Camp Skeel 1940
P-35 #10 of the 31st PG prepares for take off at Selfridge Field 1940
P-35 PA66 of the 1st Pursuit Group
P-35 36-409 PA69 of the 1st Pursuit Group
P-35s from 41st PS flying over Camp Skeel 1940
P35 PA31 of the 1st Pursuit Group
P-35A 41-17476
P-35 of the 17th Pursuit Squadron in the Philippines 2
Seversky P-35A
Seversky P-35 PA28 of the 17th PS, 1st PG
P-35 36-395
P-35A of the 17th PS Nichols Field Philippines 1941
Seversky P-35 36-367 PA40 of the 1st PG
P-35s of the 27th PS flying in formation
P-35 36-354
P-35A 41-17476 of the 10th Airbase Squadron Chanute Field
Seversky P-35 27th PS over Selfridge Field 1938
P-35 was a fighter aircraft built in the United States in the late 1930s. The P-35 was the first single-seat fighter in US Army Air Corps to feature all-metal construction, a retractable landing gear and an enclosed cockpit.
The origins of the P-35 trace back to the Seversky SEV-3 amphibious aircraft which was developed into the Seversky BT-8 basic trainer. The trainer proved grossly underpowered and was quickly replaced by the North American BT-9. Seversky’s chief designer Alexander Kartveli also proposed a two-seat fighter derivation of the SEV-3 called SEV-2XP. The aircraft, powered by a 735 hp (550 kW) Wright R-1670 radial engine, had fixed landing gear in aerodynamic spats and was armed with one 0.50 in and one 0.30 in forward-firing machine guns plus an additional 0.30 in for rear defence.
When USAAC announced a competition for a new single-seat fighter in 1935, Seversky sent SEV-2XP confident that it would win in spite of being a two-seater. However, the aircraft was damaged during its transit to the fly-offs at Wright Field. Fortunately for the company, USAAC delayed the fly-offs until March 1936 which allowed Seversky to rework the fighter into a single-seat SEV-1XP with retractable landing gear. As the aircraft was underpowered, the powerplant was upgraded to a Pratt & Whitney R-1830-9 Twin Wasp with 850 hp (634 kW) available on takeoff. The SEV-1XP won the USAAC competition on 16 June 1936, beating Curtiss H-75 in the finals, with the company awarded an order for 77 P-35.
Ironically, because of the unrest in Europe, the United States Army Air Corps also ordered 210 Curtiss P-36s. The difference in the number of orders was in part due to P-35 being considerably more expensive (more than $1,500 per aircraft) and, in part, due to the sale of 2PA two-seat aircraft to the Japanese Navy (see below). Modifications from SEV-1XP to production P-35 included partial instead of complete mainwheel fairings, seven degrees of dihedral to the outer wing panels and revised canopy.
The first production aircraft were transferred to the USAAC in 1937. Only 76 P-35 were built with the last production aircraft finished as Seversky XP-41.
Aiming to increase sales, Seversky personally took a P-35 on a tour around Europe in early 1939; in the process, he became the first American pilot to fly the Supermarine Spitfire. After he was voted out by the Board of Directors, Republic (as the company became known after reorganization), sold Sweden a refinement of the P-35 designated the EP-106 (Export Pursuit) to replace the country’s aging Gloster Gladiator biplanes. The EP-106 was powered by a P&W R-1830-45 Twin Wasp engine with 1,000 horsepower (750 kW), improving its performance by over 25 mph (40 km/h). The Swedes ordered a total of 120 EP-106s, with initial order placed in mid-1939, and 60 aircraft delivered. The aircraft were armed with two 7.9 mm machine guns in the nose and one 13.2 mm machine gun in each wing, and could carry 350 lb (160 kg) of bombs. The aircraft were given the Swedish Air Force designation J 9.
Seversky also built a two-seat version of the P-35 designated 2PA. Two aircraft, one with conventional landing gear and one with floats, along with the manufacturing license were sold to USSR but it appears that the Soviets never put it into production. In what proved to be an unpopular move for Seversky, twenty 2PA-B3 were sold to the Japanese Navy which briefly employed them in the Second Sino-Japanese War as Navy Type S Two-Seat Fighter or A8V-1 (Allied codename “Dick”). The Japanese were unimpressed with the aircraft and eventually relegated two of them to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper as hacks. Sweden ordered 52 2PAs (Swedish designation B 6) but received only two prior to the embargo. The remaining 50 aircraft were appropriated by United States Army Air Corps, re-armed with 0.30 in and 0.50 in machine guns, and used as advanced trainers named AT-12 Guardsman.
The P-35’s successor, the P-43 Lancer was based on the P-35 (and its lightweight higher-speed counterpart, the P-44 Rocket) and was already outdated when compared to British and German warplanes currently in service over Europe. Alexander Kartveli began to consider its successor using lessons learned from the P-35, P-43 and P-44, eventually emerging as the P-47 Thunderbolt.