Originally Posted by
JohnnyS
Seversky P-35?
Seversky P-35 is correct!
Your turn, JohnnyS,
"The Seversky P-35 was a fighter aircraft built in the United States by the Seversky Aircraft Company in the late 1930s. A contemporary of the Hawker Hurricane and Messerschmitt Bf 109, the P-35 was the first single-seat fighter in U.S. Army Air Corps to feature all-metal construction, retractable landing gear and an enclosed cockpit."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seversky_P-35
(Wikimedia photo)
Designer Alexander Kartveli, born Alexander Kartvelishvili ... "Aliened from his family after the collapse of the Russian Empire, Kartveli supported himself by working in a trapeze act in a Paris circus and as a designer for the Louis Bernand aircraft company. There, he designed a plane that would establish a world speed record. Kartveli then chased his dream by coming to America."
http://www.alexanderkartveli.com/design-genius/