Sky Tiger

When Buffalo's publicity wise Bell Aircraft Corp. delivered a single experimental super bomber-fighter to the U. S. Army Air Corps last July they dubbed it Airacuda--air for its medium; acuda, from barracuda, that giant warm-ocean pike-like fish noted as a tireless, reckless, vicious killer. To Airacuda Bell Aircraft proudly added a mixed-metaphoric subtitle "Tiger of the Skies." Last week, Army pilots who were testing it at Wright Field, Dayton, found it indeed a "tiger."

Two pusher propellers mounted behind the big Allison engines lift Airacuda swiftly to more than 30,000 feet, speed it through the skies at an estimated 300 m.p.h. Many of the machine's details are still secret but revealed this week were Airacuda's wing spread, 70 ft. (25 ft. less than the Douglas DC-3), its length 58 ft. and its weight loaded around 15,000 Ibs. From each of the fighting snouts ahead of the engines bristle big 37 millimetre (about 1 1/2 in.) guns (see cut) that throw 1 Ib. high explosive shells two miles. Cartridges come in clips of five, one in each clip painted with phosphorus to burn as a tracer. Beside them are two .30 calibre guns and on each side of the centre fuselage two .50 calibre (1 1/2 in.) guns sweep the skies from the rear.

Narrow passages provide for the interchangeability of the two pilots, navigator and three gunners who are protected from the danger of fire by having the gasoline tanks removed entirely from the fuselage and placed in the huge wings where they may or may not prove a greater hazard. Heated and oxygenized, the Airacuda is a high altitude fighter designed to destroy the "Flying Fortress" type of big bomber, is equipped to drop small bombs to cripple bigger machines flying below it.

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