Subject: Number Thirty-Two in the Series--the Boeing XP-32

From: [email-masked] (Joseph F Baugher)
Date: 24 Oct 92 13:13:30 GMT

>From Joseph F Baugher <[email-masked]>

XP-32 was the USAAC designation given to the Boeing Model 278A, a 
company-financed design project of 1934.  The XP-32 was basically a 
developed version of the earlier P-29 with a 750 hp P & W R-1535 Twin 
Wasp radial engine.  The project drawings show a low-wing, cantilever 
monoplane design with a fully-retractable undercarriage and a 
fully-enclosed cockpit with a rearward-sliding canopy.  The XP-32 
design looked a lot like the Model 264 (YP-29A), but the XP-32 
differed in the means by which the undercarriage was retracted.  
Whereas the P-29's main wheels retracted rearwards to lie 
partially-exposed underneath the wing, the main wheels of the XP-32 
retracted inward to be stowed flush with the sides of the fuselage, a 
pattern that would be followed by the Brewster F2A-1 Buffalo of 1938.  
The gross weight was 3895 pounds.  

The USAAC did not encourage the development of the project, and the 
XP-32 never got past the design stage.  Boeing got out of the fighter 
business altogether shortly thereafter.  Boeing was not to submit 
another fighter design to the military until the XF8B-1 long-range 
carrier-based fighter-bomber of late 1944.  

Sources: 

  The American Fighter, Enzo Angellucci and Peter Bowers, Orion Books, 
  1987.  

  Boeing Aircraft since 1916, Peter M. Bowers, Naval Institute Press, 
  1989.  

Joe Baugher       AT&T Bell Laboratories    2000 North Naperville Road 
		  Naperville, Illinois 60566-7033.   (708) 713-4548