The Soviets Loved the Hated P-39 and P-63 Warbirds

When most aviation enthusiasts think of military aircraft bearing the name “cobra,” chances are the first warbird that comes to their minds is the AH-1W Whiskey Cobra helicopter gunship. This is understandable, as it is the longest-serving, most successful, and newest (relatively speaking) warbird to bear these venomous snakes’ moniker.

Yet several decades before the rotary-wing Whiskey Cobra, there were two fixed-wing fighter planes that were also named for the deadly serpent: the Bell P-39 Airacobra and P-36 Kingcobra of World War II. One of the great ironies is that these two “Flying Snakes“ were mostly disliked by the fighter pilots from their country of origin—the United States of America—yet mostly loved by the pilots of one of America’s WWII allies, the Soviet Union.

P-39 and P-63 Initial History and Special Features

The P-39 Airacobra and P-63 Kingcobra were manufactured by the Bell Aircraft Corporation on April 6, 1938, and December 7, 1942, respectively. The P-39 was innovative in multiple ways:

First, it had an Allison V-1710 engine located mid-fuselage, i.e., at the center of gravity.

Second, it had a tricycle undercarriage to distribute weight more evenly.

Third, it had a Browning M4 37mm nose-mounted cannon as its main armament (backed up by four Browning M2 “Ma Deuce“ .50 caliber machine guns).

Although the P-63 directly descended from her fellow “Flying Snake” and accordingly featured the same armament setup, same unusual mid-engine configuration, and a cosmetically similar appearance, the Kingcobra was significantly larger (2.5 feet longer in the fuselage, 4 feet 6 inches greater in wingspan, 2,300 lbs. heavier in max takeoff weight) and used an advanced laminar flow wing design similar to that of the P-51 Mustang.

Operational Performance/Combat History Part I: Disliked By Most Yanks…

One of the exceptions to that rule was no less than the late, great Chuck Yeager. With 20/20 hindsight, it is rather coincidental if not downright poetic, as the P-39 was made by the same Bell Aircraft Corporation that made the legendary X-1 in which Chuck became the first man to break the sound barrier. As Chuck wrote in his bestselling 1986 autobiography,

“Our guys even sang a song about it … Well, it was true that the drive shaft ran right up the center of the cramped cockpit, that the airplane performed beautifully at low altitudes, but was underpowered up high, and that if you stalled it, you might wind up boring a deep hole because it spun like a top going down. But once you had a feel for the ship and understood it, the Thirty-Nine was a fun airplane to fly.”

The U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) did use the plane in combat in the Pacific Theatre of Operations. Therein, in head-to-head match-ups against Imperial Japan’s vaunted Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane between April and December 1942, the P-39 tallied a rather inauspicious 15:44 kill-to-loss ratio against the more nimble and maneuverable “Zeke.” However, depending on which source you consult, at least one American fighter jock became an ace in the Airacobra—1st Lt. Bill Fiedler—and possibly as many as five USAAF Airacobra drivers attained ace status (minimum of five air-to-air victories). One lucky bloke, retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Robert E. Case, even managed to sink both an Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer and a barge with that hard-hitting 37mm cannon.

The P-63 had an even less auspicious wartime record in American hands, not seeing combat at all. Instead, they were used for an innovative and high-tech (for that time) form of target practice: furnished with special armor plating and a system of lights to indicate when it had been “hit,” manned P-63s would be fired on by aerial gunnery trainees using special frangible bullets; the flashing lights earned the special modified Kingcobras the nickname “Pinball.”

Operational Performance/Combat History Part Deux: Yet Loved by Most Russians

We now switch scenery to the Eastern European front. In accordance with the Land-Lease Act,  5,000 of these serpentine airframes were delivered to the Soviet Union.

As the Russians’ luck would have it, the P-39 was much better suited for the medium and lower altitudes where most Eastern European air combat took place. Soviet Airacobra drivers lovingly nicknamed their planes Kobrushka (“little cobra”) and Kobrastochka (a blend of “dear little cobra” and Lastochka, i.e., “swallow”). The Kobrushka enabled Soviet fighter pilots to aggregate the highest number of kills attributed to any American-made fighter flown by any nation’s air force in any conflict. The most noteworthy individual example was Alexander Pokryshkin, who made forty-eight of his fifty-nine total kills from the cockpit of a P-39.

Meanwhile, 2,397 P-63s were also sent to the Sovetsky Soyuz, but due to their comparatively late arrival, they didn’t make as big an impact (literally or figuratively) in Soviet air combat as the P-39 predecessors did. The Russians did use the Kingcobra for close air support (CAS) and ground-attack missions against the Japanese. The plane’s only confirmed air kill took place on April 15, 1945, whereupon a Jr. Lt. Miroshnichenko shot down a Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa (“Peregrine falcon;” Allied reporting name “Oscar”).

Where Are They Now?

Though not appreciated by most American combat aviators during the war, these “Flying Snakes” were plenty appreciated by American civilian pilots who provided the planes a new lease on life on the air racing circuit.

Roughly twenty Airacobras remain out of the 9,588 that were produced, four of which are airworthy, among them being Reg. No. 42-19597 “Miss Connie/Old Crow” with Commemorative Air Force (CAF) CenTex Wing in San Marcos, Texas.

As for the Kingcobra, fourteen out of the original total of 3,303 that were built still survive today, and of those fourteen, a Fanged Fab Four (so to speak) remain airworthy, including Reg. No. 42-68941 “Miss Betty“ with CAF Airbase Georgia) in Peachtree City, Georgia.

About the Author: Christian D. Orr

Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ). He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch , The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS).