Pavla 1/72 Boeing P-26 Peashooter By Jim Schubert

History

Boeing initiated design work on the Model 248 fighter at their own expense in September 1931 in the absence of a US Army requirement. The Air Corps, however, immediately began telling Boeing what they wanted in this transitional fighter and to ensure that they were heard, executed a contract to bail engines. instruments and other equipment to Boeing for three test airplanes designated XP-936. The first flight of this new plane occurred on March 20, 1932 from Seattle's Boeing Field . The second airframe had, earlier, been sent to Wright Field in Dayton for structural testing by the Air Corps. The third plane was sent to Selfridge Field near Detroit for service testing. The two flyable planes and the structural test specimen were bought by the Army and redesignated, in quick succession, XP-26, Y1P-26 and finally P-26.

To reduce weight Boeing took some backward steps from the Model 214 Monomail and B-9 designs, which both had retractable landing gear and cantilever wings, giving the all-metal P-26 fixed undercarriage and wire braced wings. It was quite clean in spite of this and with only 20 hp more was almost 30 MPH faster than the P-12F and had a 500 feet/minute better climb rate.

A ground loop and fatal flip by a P-26 early in the type's service caused Boeing to redesign the headrest to make it taller and stronger to provide turn-over protection for the pilot thus giving the type its characteristic profile. So modified, the planes became P-26As.

The production version, Boeing Model 266, was ordered by the Air Corps in late 1933. A total of 136 Model 266s were built along with a dozen export Model 281's. Four panels of split flap were added to the Model 281 to reduce landing speed. The Army tested the first 281 and liked the flaps so much that they had all extant P-26's retrofitted with the flaps and made them a standard feature of the rest of the production run. After fitment of the flaps, there were no externally discernible differences amongst the P-26, P-26A, B, C or 281s. Later an extended tail wheel strut was retrofitted to many P-26's to improve the pilot's visibility on the ground.

The Army bought 136 Model 266s plus the three Model 248 prototypes. Boeing speculatively built another 12 Model 281s for export. The first and fourth 281s, c/n's1959 and 1962 (civil registrations, X-12271 and X-12275) were used as demonstrators and specially painted. The first was used to successfully sell ten 281s to the Kuomintang Government, but was destroyed in a crash after the sale was made. The second was used in an effort to sell planes in quantity to the newly elected Spanish Republican Government. They, instead, bought the less expensive Hawker Fury in quantity but did buy X-12275 as a specimen for their nascent aviation industry. So, altogether, a total of only 151 P-26's were built.

Despite being so few in number they were a colorful lot and a modeler's delight. The Air Corps had, in sequence, four basic liveries, Boeing's two demonstrators were each differently painted, the Chinese planes had two liveries, the US hand-me-downs that went to the Philippines had two liveries and the US hand-me-downs that went to Guatemala also had two liveries. In Army service before WWII the P-26s were amongst the most brightly and wildly marked airplanes ever. There are two surviving P-26s - one in Ed Maloney's Planes Of Fame Museum in Chino, California is flyable and the other is on static display in the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC both came back to the US from Guatemala in 1957. The US Air Force Museum in Dayton has a reproduction that was built for them in the early 1990s. Two flyable reproductions are presently under construction in Oregon

The Kit

The first question on most older modelers' minds when considering this kit will be, "Is it better than the late 1960s Revell kit?" Yes - but. Both have accuracy problems but Revell's, though more extensive, are easier to correct.

Pavla's crushable, but in this rare instance not pre-crushed, end opening box contains: 32 parts cleanly molded, with almost no flash, in medium gray styrene, 16 good looking parts cast in an off-white resin and two vac-formed windscreens. The beautifully cast Pratt & Whiney R-1340 even has the oil sump - a rarity in models. The engineering of the kit is conventional with the fuselage in vertically split halves. The wings and tail are one piece moldings. The wing is molded with the belly of the fuselage included.

The big accuracy problem is with the wing and it is tough to correct. Pavla ignored the dihedral break in the wing. The real P-26 wing center section was built as part of the fuselage and has no dihedral. The 3.75 ° dihedral of the outer wing panels begins where the outer panels are joined to the center section. This break is at the undercarriage struts. I plan to make a longitudinal saw cut part way through the fuselage piece - molded with the wings - on the inside, in line with the keel and cut the outer wing panels off at the dihedral break line. After the belly/center section is assembled to the fuselage proper, I'll make good the root problems that I've created with filler and files. The outer wing panels can then be reattached at the proper angle of dihedral. The trailing edge of the wing center section from the dihedral break inboard to the fuselage should be slightly "gulled". Far smaller problems are that the wheels/tires are too skinny and the propeller is rather nondescript. Both problems are easily solved by a raid on your spares box.

The ten page instruction folder includes a brief history of the type in both Czech and English, a parts map, a symbology, a list of colors (with FS numbers!), a ten step assembly sequence and a color and markings guide for four airplanes. The four airplanes are: a USAAC blue and yellow plane of the 18th Pursuit Group, 19th Pursuit Squadron from Wheeler Field, Hawaii in 1939, an olive drab and yellow plane of the 1st Pursuit Group, 17th Pursuit Squadron from Selfridge Field, Michigan, a Philippines Air Force plane in two shades of olive over pale gray from Batangas Field in December 1941 and an overall pale gray plane of the Chinese Air Force in Nanking in mid 1937. The decal sheet provided for these four planes is sharply printed in perfect register but has very little of the servicing stenciling found on P-26s.

The painting instructions are vague in placing a question mark (?) between callouts for aluminum and chromate yellow for the interior. There is no doubt at all about the fact that all Boeing, and most other US military, interiors were sprayed with aluminum varnish at this time. The instrument panels had a black crackle finish. Photos in the References cited below confirm these interior colors.

All the P-26s and P-26As were delivered without flaps; all the Bs, Cs and 281s were delivered with flaps and the As were all retrofitted with flaps. Pavla has correctly scribed the four flap panels. The other three makers - Monogram, Hasegawa and Hobbycraft - of P-26A kits have all missed the inboard flaps and show only the outbaords. And, yes - I know that Aurora issued a P-26A but choose not to acknowledge it because it is so inaccurate and is also to an odd "box-scale".

Conclusion

This is a good kit and will build into an accurate model if you correct the wing center section/dihedral problem. It'll be an even better model with fatter tires and a better propeller.

With reference again to the old Revell kit; its engine, Townend ring cowl and propeller are unusable and must be replaced with the same items from the Monogram F4B-4 kit. You must also sand off all of the oversized rivets that were in vogue back then. I used wheels/tires from an Aurora 1:150th Boeing 747 on my Revellogram P-26. You can still buy both of the old Revell and Monogram kits for about $5.00 each in most well stocked shops, which combined is less than half the $21.98 that I paid Seattle's Skyway Model Shop for the review kit.

Kudos to Pavla for the subject and brickbats for getting the wing wrong.

PS Included herewith is a photo of my Revellogram kitbashed P-26A built in 1971. The scallops, unit insignia, and stripes were all brush painted with Pactra flat enamels.

References

€ Aerofax Minigraph 8, Boeing P-26 Variants: Peter M. Bowers, Aerofax, inc., Texas, 1984, ISBN 0-942548-13-2. A terrific one-source reference.

€ Boeing P-26 "Peashooter": Edward T. Maloney, Aero Publishers, USA, 1973, ISBN 0-8168-0584-9. Great photos - a good supplement to the Aerofax.

€ Boeing Aircraft Since 1916: Peter M. Bowers, Putnam, London, 1966, Library of Congress Card 66-11374. The bible on Boeing airplanes. Mine is an original issue and only goes through the early 737-200s.

€ Mini In-Action Number 2; Larry Davis, Squadron Signal Publishing, Texas, 1994, ISBN 0-89747-322-1. A pretty good general reference.

€ Profile 14, The Boeing P-26A: Peter M. Bowers, Profile Publications, UK. A fair general reference; Pete's dress rehearsal for the Aerofax book?

€ Scale Models magazine, November 1974: Bob Jones review and build of the Hasegawa 1/32 scale P-26. Very good G.E. Codding drawings in 1/72.

€ Air Progress magazine, July 1965. Good James Triggs drawings except his bomb rack is a physical impossibility.

€ Air Enthusiast - Fourteen: Comprehensive history, color profiles and a very nice cut-away.

€ AAHS Journal, Spring 1972: Good interior photos of Ed Maloney's P-26.

€ World Aviation in Spain - The Civil War, 1936/1939 - American and Soviet Aircraft: J. Miranda & P. Mercado, Silex Publishing, Madrid, 1988, ISBN 84-7737-005-2. A good article on the Model 281 with numerous drawings and some interesting, mostly speculative, color schemes.