Bell P-77 Airafighter family

The Bell Model 32 (or XP-77 for the U.S. Army Air Force) was a lightweight fighter prototype entirely made of plywood. The idea was to use non-strategic materials so as to keep it for the bombers, basically. A production version, the Model 35, had been planned, but eventually only a couple of prototypes were made and the project was dropped with war's end.

My "P-77 family" is a personal take on what might have been a production derivative, the Model 32E or P-77C Airafighter (reusing notably the shape of the Bell Kingcobra's fin and the Curtiss-Wright CW-21 Demon's engine).

The Baby Cobra takes the lineage one step further in the form of a racing aircraft. These were extremely popular in the postwar years, and the P-77 would have made a great starting point for that!

© Stéphane Beaumort / AviaDesign 2010