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 The Lockheed P-38 Lightning Twin-engine fighter
 plane used by Army fliers in the Pacific 9,200 planes
 produced, starting in March, 1942.
 P-38J specs: 420 MPH, four 50 caliber machine guns
 and one 20 mm cannon, all nose-mounted with its
 two engines mounted on twin booms and the pilot's
 separate nacelle in between, the P-38 looked like no
 other plane. Lockheed's brilliant designer Kelly
 Johnson created the plane in response to a  1937
 Army specification for an interceptor that could reach
 20,000 feet in 6 minutes. With the engines of the era,
 this was quite a challenge, and the  innovative P-38
 design resulted. After lengthy production delays, the
 Lockheed appeared in force in the Southwest Pacific
 in mid-1943, and proved a devastating fighter.

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 The Bell P-39 Airacobra was one of the principal American
 fighter aircraft in service at the start of World Warr II
 Maximum Speed: 368 mph (592 km/h) @ 12,000 ft (3,658 m)
 Service Ceiling: 32,100 ft (9,784 m)
 Range: 1,545 miles (2,486 km)
 Powerplant: Allison V-1710-35,
 1,150 hp 12-cylinder Inline Vee, Liquid cooled.
 Armament: One 37 mm cannon. Two .50 inch machine guns.
 Four .30 inch machine guns. Bomb load 500 lb (227 kg).

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 When the U.S. Army sponsored a design competition
 for a new 2-seat liaison and observation aircraft,
 Cessna responded by remodeling their tried and true
 170 design & entered the stiff competetion of Stinson
 and Piper. The little Titan won & the L-19 Bird Dog
 was born.

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 The de Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk is a tandem,
 two-seat, single-engined primary trainer aircraft which
 was the standard primary trainer for the Royal Canadian
 Air Force, Royal Air Force and several other air forces
 through much of the post-Second World War years.

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 When the Beech Staggerwing biplane appeared in 1932,
 its distinctive feature was the negative stagger
 arrangement of its wings. Most contemporary biplanes
 had positive stagger, which meant that the upper wing
 was located some distance ahead of the lower. Walter
 Beech turned things around for a good reason. By
 having the lower wing forward, he was able to attach the
 landing gear directly to the lower wing in the manner of
 some low-wing monoplanes instead of to the fuselage,
 as was standard biplane practice. That made it possible
 to retract the landing gear into the wing, which gave the
 Beech 17 a big boost in performance.

 High speed 201.2 miles per hour
 Cruising speed (1873 r.p.m.).. 170 ml. per hr.
 Landing speed: 60-65 miles per hr.
 Cruising range: 1000 miles 
 Rate of climb: 1600 feet per minute
 Service ceiling: 21,300 feet
 Fuel consumption: (full throt.) .41 gal. per hr.
 Fuel consump: (cruising) 23 gal. per hr.

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 The Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" Two-Set Biplane was one of the 
 most popular planes of all time. Although the JN-4 series 
 of aircraft was technologically unremarkable, it was 
 significant in that it was the first mass produced plane and 
 was manufactured in larger numbers than any other 
 American plane up to that time. The Jenny never saw military 
 action but met the need for a dependable military trainer.
 From April 1917 when the United States entered World War I,
 it was used to train some 95 peercent of all U.S. and
 Canadian pilots.