military aircraft p-75

In February of 1942, the USAAF issued a Request For Proposals (RFP) which called for aircraft companies to submit designs for a fighter/interceptor having an exceptional performance. On October 10, 1942, a contract for two prototypes was awarded to Fisher under the designation XP-75. In assigning the XP-75 designation to the Fisher design, the designations XP-73 and XP-74 were skipped, for reasons which are not altogether clear even today. The aviation historian James Fahey claims that the P-73 and P-74 designations were deliberately omitted as a result of political pressure applied to the Army by Fisher. According to the story, Fisher wanted the Army to assign to its new escort fighter a "nice symbolic number", a number that would sound nice in advertising copy and would make for memorable slogans--something like "The French 75 in World War 1, the Fisher P-75 in World War 2" was envisaged. The Army agreed, and skipped the designations P-73 and P-74 and gave Fisher the P-75 designation.

Description	Specifications
Manufacturer: General Motors / Fisher	Length: 40 ft, 5 in
First Flight: November 17, 1943.	Height: 15 ft, 6 in
Model: A	Wing Span: 49 ft, 4 in
Crew: one	Wing Area: 347 sq. ft
Nickname: Eagle	Empty Weight: 11,506 lb
Basic Role: Patrol	Max. Weight: 18,226 lb
Other Versions: Only eight XP-75s and six P-75As were built.	Armament: Ten .50 caliber machine guns and two 500 lb bombs
Principal User:	Propulsion
Performance	Power Plant: Allison V-3420 engine
Range: 2,600 miles; 3,500 miles (with external fuel)	Horsepower: 2,885 hp.
Max. Speed: 433 mph	No. Of Engines: One
Ceiling: 36,400 ft
Climb Rate: