Avro Lincoln

The correct answer was the P-66 Vultee Vangard.

The Valient and the Texan were both derived from it as it was not that brilliant as a fighter, being found to be inferiour to the P-40 when in US Army service in 1941 - 1942.

Bearing in mind that the P-40 was not a brilliant fighter when compared to European and Japanese fighters, you can see why it was passed on pretty quickly to the Canadians and the Chinese.

All Japenese Army aircraft are preceeded by the "Ki" monicker.

Ki-21 "Helen" twin engined bomber.
Ki-27 "Claude" fixed undercarriage mono-plane fighter.
Ki-43 "Oscar" fighter.

Try this one......

Clues:

Derived from the failed NF-1 US Navy first mono-plane fighter competition fighter. (It failed to leave the ground during the contest).

This is regarded as the least successful fighter of WW2 with just 1.5 kills from just over 1,000 aircraft built.

Flown also by the Australians for home defence only.

It was very fast at 380 MPH but suffer from poor agility and maniverability.

A very famous WW2 fighter was developed from it.

So what is it??

P-36 Hawk

And how many of these vanguards were used in the film tora tora tora? i count erm....none!!

Do you just wiki this stuff? ;) lol.

Wiki says the P-33 Ferris Bueller, famously flown by Casius Clay at the Battle of Punanni

Points to the mechanical pontiff for the lincon, didnt fall for the trap of saying lanc

0.o

keeping the ball rolling
http://tinyurl.com/yhes867

That be a Blackburn Buccaneer, but this one seems to have invisible landing gear ;)

I trawled through websites dedicated to "were also in service" fighters such as the P-66.

The P-66 formed the backbone of the early Taiwanese airforce and was involved in the Chinese Civil War against Mao's communists, as was the mystery aircraft.

The mystery aircraft isn't a P-36 Hawk. The P-36 is a Curtis designed aircraft, whilst the NF-1 was designed by Severesky before it became Republic.

This fighter was Republic's very first design and build contract for lend-lease only.

The P-47 was a scaled up version of this aircraft.

So what is it??