XP-32 was the USAAC designation given to the Boeing Model 278A, a company-financed design project of 1934. The XP-32 was basically a developed version of the earlier P-29 with a 750 hp P & W R-1535 Twin Wasp radial engine. The project drawings show a low-wing, cantilever monoplane design with a fully-retractable undercarriage and a fully-enclosed cockpit with a rearward-sliding canopy. The XP-32 design looked a lot like the Model 264 (YP-29A), but the XP-32 differed in the means by which the undercarriage was retracted. Whereas the P-29's main wheels retracted rearwards to lie partially-exposed underneath the wing, the main wheels of the XP-32 retracted inward to be stowed flush with the sides of the fuselage, a pattern that would be followed by the Brewster F2A-1 Buffalo of 1938. The gross weight was 3895 pounds.
The USAAC did not encourage the development of the project, and the XP-32 never got past the design stage. Boeing got out of the fighter business altogether shortly thereafter. Boeing was not to submit another fighter design to the military until the XF8B-1 long-range carrier-based fighter-bomber of late 1944.
Sources:
-
The American Fighter, Enzo Angellucci and Peter Bowers, Orion Books,
1987.
- Boeing Aircraft since 1916, Peter M. Bowers, Naval Institute Press, 1989.
