P03338.002 Accession Number: P03338.002

Description

Port (left) view of two Bell P-400 Airacobra aircraft in flight, possibly over Australia. Note the early Second World War American star on the side of the aircraft on both aircraft and the fitting of a centreline drop tank under the fuselage.

On the lower left-hand side of the nose is also written in white chalk 'Ready to Fire' which would usually indicate that the aircraft was loaded with live ammunition by the ground crew before take-off.

A key recognition feature of the P-400 version of the P-39 is the long thin barrel of the 20mm Hispano cannon which fired through the propellor spinner. This protruded from the nose. The P-39 Airacobra was fitted with a larger calibre 37mm M4 cannon which used a shorter barrel which did not extend as far from the nose as the longer barrelled 20mm Hispano.

The P-39 had a different arrangement of exhaust stubs which are located behind the cockpit, with six larger stubs rather that the P-400's twelve smaller engine exhaust stubs seen here. Internally, the lack of a turbo-supercharger in the P-400 engine made it perform poorly at high-altitudes.

The different cannon barrel and exhaust stub arrangements are key recognition features of the P-400, the Lend-Lease export version of the P-39 Airacobra which was made for British Commonwealth service. Several of these aircraft were rushed to Australia and the South Pacific in early 1942 as a reaction to the Japanese advances through the Pacific. They served extensively in the Guadalcanal campaign of 1942-1943 with the US Army.

Around 22-23 P-39D and P-39F Airacobras from the US Army Air Corps were delivered to the RAAF at the start of 1942 (using the serial A53) when modern combat aircraft were in short supply in Australia. In the period July 1942 to October 1943, 22-23 Airacobras were operated by the RAAF, notably in the defence of Sydney and Brisbane before being returned to the US Army Air Force in 1943.

An American Army P-400 Airacobra and its pilot, Lieutenant George Leo Cantello, the acting Commander Officer of the 41st Fighter Squadron of the 35th Fighter Group, was the only fatality of the second Japanese Navy attack on Sydney on the night of 7-8 June 1942. Cantello responded to the surface bombardment of eastern Sydney by a submarine (I-24) off Maroubra beach, by running to a parked P-400 at his airfield at Bankstown at around 1am and taking off into the night. Shortly afterwards his aircraft hit the top of a tall gum tree, and he crashed into the property owned by the Jewell family of Hammondville, close to the Australian Army base at Holsworthy. Lieutenant Cantello was killed in the crash, and his remains were buried in Rookwood Cemetery. Shortly after the war ended in 1945, his body was removed by the US Government and reinterned at the 'Punchbowl' War Cemetery on Oahu, Hawai'i. George was killed one day before the first birthday of his only child, his son Don.

The AWM holds images of LT Cantello in the collection as P05600.001, P05600.002 and P05600.003. A public Memorial to him was installed in his memory at the site of the crash at Hammondville in 1988.

Along with the Curtiss P-40E Kittyhawk, the P-400 and P-39 Airacobra played a key role in the defence of mainland Australia during the early stages of the Second World War. The 5th US Army Air Force operated both types of Airacobras with the 8th and 35th Fighter Groups in Papua and New Guinea during 1942 and 1943.

For further information on the use of the Airacobra in the defence of Australia, see an article by former AWM Curator Gary Traynor which was published in 2014 here: https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/p-39-airacobras-defence-australia.