Air International 1987-11
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In print
The development of low-drag cowlings for air-cooled radial engines was one of NACA Langley's major achievements, for which it was awarded the Robert J Collier Trophy in 1929. This Curtiss XP-3A has a full-chord NACA cowling, with the front fuselage sides built out behind it to improve streamlining.
After completing its test programme at Wright Field, the XP-51 41-039 was used by NACA at Langley for investigations into the drag of laminar flow wings.
Favourably reviewed on this page, "Engineer in Charge" records the successive arrival at Langley Laboratory of this aircraft in March 1943: a captured Mitsubishi A6M Zero-Sen fighter for a brief evaluation