Boeing P-12C

The Boeing P-12 was a single-seat biplane fighter that served the U.S. Army Air Corps and, as the F4B, the U.S. Navy through the early and mid-1930s. One of the most successful American fighters of its era, it was agile, robust, and widely produced. The P-12C variant, delivered in 1931, introduced refinements over earlier models, including a revised landing gear arrangement and detail improvements to the Pratt & Whitney R-1340 Wasp radial installation.

Like its sister marks, the P-12C featured fabric-covered wings, a metal-structure fuselage, and an open cockpit, and was armed with two forward-firing machine guns. The P-12/F4B family equipped front-line pursuit squadrons until faster monoplane fighters such as the Boeing P-26 and later types replaced them. The P-12 is remembered as a high point of the classic open-cockpit biplane fighter just before the monoplane revolution.