Jan 252012
The last Curtis fighter was the four-engined XP-87 (later XF-87). Coming right after the end of WWII, it had the bad luck of being just a bit behind the technological times. Fighter design was rapidly evolving towards supersonic; a four-engined straight-winged monster just wasn’t going to cut it. Even though it was planned to replace the four engines with two more powerful ones, it was simply too… World War II. Designed specifically as a night fighter, it lost to the Northrop F-89 Scorpion.
Below is a diagram from a 1947 NACA spin model test report giving full-scale dimensions in inches.
