A Fighter So Disappointing, They Used It For Landfill

The Bell XFL Airabonita is a WWII American fighter. It was an experimental shipboard aircraft developed for the US Navy. The aircraft first flew in 1940, but only one prototype was manufactured.

Alterations

The XFL measures 9.07 meters long, 10.67 meters wide, and 3.89 meters tall. Despite looking similar to the P-39, the design of the XFL underwent many small alterations to make it more well-suited to carrier-based life and the Navy’s wishes. The XFL was slightly shorter and wider to make taking off and landing on carriers possible.

The OG tricycle landing gear was replaced with a smaller tail wheel and the underwing wheels were moved slightly forward more towards the leading edge of the wing. The tail wheel would be the tail hook so that the force of the arresting cable pulling on the tail hook when landing doesn’t rip the plane in half. The fuselage was also slightly shortened and reinforced.

To reduce the plane’s landing speed to 70 mph, the wings needed to be a bit bigger and the flaps on the trailing edges were larger as well. Lastly, the pilot’s seat and canopy height were slightly raised. There was also a requirement from the Navy to have small underwing Bombays that carry tiny little 5-pound bombs. Pilots were to fly over bombers and use a very small window below the pilot to aim and drop them on the bombers. The rest of the XFL’s armament is pretty similar to the P-39, just a little lighter.

Issues

Since the XFL was to be a carrier-based aircraft, and the fuselage had to be reinforced, the weight increase as a result of that reinforcement started to get higher than what they anticipated. The first few test flights of the XFL weren’t great, overall. The engine failed mid-flight during the second flight necessitating an emergency landing.

Further test flights also showed consistent engine cooling issues, poor handling, and directional instability. Bell would respond to these issues by enlarging the tail surfaces and altering the air cooler air intakes. While these alleviated some issues, it didn’t necessarily solve them.

Sad End

The XFL was then passed over to the Naval Air Station in Washington DC for further testing. Further top speed and landing speed tests revealed pretty disappointing results. The top speed of 336 mph and landing speed of 78 mph were slightly below what had been anticipated.

In 1941 Vought received a production contract for the F4U Corsair, putting the Airabonita in very thin ice. It needed to wow the Navy in testing and it spectacularly failed to do so. This led the Navy to not give the XFL a contract. The prototype was passed over to a different Naval Air Station in Virginia to be used for target practice. The XFL would suffer a sad end post-war, being scrapped with some of its pieces used as landfills.