Boeing XP-8

Boeing · United States · first flew 1928 · fighter

The Boeing XP-8 (Model 66) was a private-venture biplane fighter built around a PW-9 airframe fitted with an experimental liquid-cooled Packard engine, aimed at a 1925 Army pursuit competition.

Recognition (WEFT)

W — Wings	Mid-mounted, straight
E — Engines	1 × piston, nose-mounted
F — Fuselage	Radiator built into the centre section of the lower wing rather than mounted on the nose or fuselage sides
T — Tail	Conventional

WEFT is AircraftIQ's four-point recognition method — how it works.

Spot it by:

PW-9-style biplane fighter with an unusually long, slim inline-engine nose
Radiator built into the centre section of the lower wing rather than mounted on the nose or fuselage sides
Fixed tailskid undercarriage typical of late-1920s Army pursuit types

The embedded lower-wing radiator, in place of a conventional nose or fuselage-mounted radiator, is the aircraft's standout recognition feature.

Specifications

The Boeing XP-8 has a length of 7.14 m (23 ft).
It has a wingspan of 9.17 m (30 ft).
Its maximum speed is 283 km/h (176 mph).
Typical crew: 1.

Figures are for the representative variant described above; marks differ. See how AircraftIQ sources figures.

History

First flown in January 1928, its most unusual feature was a radiator built directly into the lowered centre section of the lower wing. Test pilots liked its handling, but persistent oil and water leaks into the 600hp Packard 2A-1500 engine meant it could never reach the required speeds.

Variants

It remained a sole prototype; no production order followed and the airframe was scrapped in June 1929.

Where you'll see it

It never entered Army Air Corps service, one of several unsuccessful liquid-cooled-engine fighter experiments Boeing pursued alongside its more numerous radial-engined biplane fighters.

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