North American NA 16-15?

[GuerraCivil]

According to documentation of aircraft purchase offer documentation of Finnish Air Force in 1936 there was such as North American NA 16-15 offered to Finnish Air Force, but likely it did mean some other NA model (5?). Anyway it was considered seriously for promising price/quality -basis (we talk of year 1936!).

Probably being a "paper plane" it was rejected in favour of Fokker D XXI, which was already available and there were good relationships of Fokker company, which was considered as reliable firm. During those days the retractable landing gear was also considered less reliable than the fixed one for the rough Finnish airfields. In Winter War Fokker did indeed prove to be able to consider from rough frozen lake bases and Finnish mechanics found it easy and simple to maintain. Also for license-building Finnish raw materials could be used. One reason mentioned why NA 16-?? was rejected is that there was no option to arm it with cannons, which was possible for Fokker. However when 20 mm cannons of single cannon-armed Fokker D XXI were tested in Winter War they were found so unreliable that they were soon replaced by machine guns - so Finns bought a more expensive and slower fighter for an cannon option which proved to be worthless!

When it comes to Seversky P-35, it was also considered but too late. There were also some problems like getting a license building option for it.

Brewster was adquired during Winter War for the simple reason that it was one of the very few modern fighter on offer to Finns during Winter War. The Brewster were bought for the Winter War, but they came too late to participate significantly in it. Brewster proved to be the best fighter of Finnish Air Force until Bf 109 G´s were bought from Germany in 1943.

The Polish project PZL 50/I - to my knowledge the prototype achieved only 430 kph and failed to meet the target of 500 kph. Poles had big problems to find suitable engine for their modern fighter and the project suffered of various delays - and resources were wasted in other ideas like failed PZL 38 project. Thus Poles remained with old PZL P 11 and P 7 as "modernizing" with slightly better PZL P 24 was not considered an effort good enough.