Lancer.

This is coolbert:

This was a new one on me.

The P-43 fighter plane from the era of the Second World War [WW2]. An aircraft half-way in technological and engineering development between a Brewster Buffalo and the American P-47?

At each stage of development the decision to put into production having been delayed, the war bird found to be lacking when compared to foreign contemporary military aircraft. Almost but not quite!

"The Republic P-43 Lancer was a single-engine, all-metal, low-wing monoplane fighter aircraft built by Republic, first delivered to the United States Army Air Corps in 1940 . . . While no world-beater as a fighter, the P-43A had a very good high-altitude performance coupled with an effective oxygen system."

Only a small and very limited number [t can be suggested that these were prototypes and not full production models] of these P-43 ever put into production, missions as flown by the American Volunteer Group [AVG] China, success hardly achieved!

But flown by the famous American WW2 combat aviator and author Robert L. Scott. "GOD is My Co-pilot".

"In June 1942, Robert L. Scott Jr—an AVG pilot—photographed the peaks of Mt. Everest from 44,000 ft (13,000 m), attesting to the strengths of this aircraft."

I had thought the AVG flew ONLY the P-40 but this is not so! Scott writes quite well concerning the mission to Mt. Everest, the P-43 capable of high altitude performance that was superb, other features of the aircraft found to be lacking however.

Indeed, it can too be suggested that the P-47 is merely a modified and improved version of the P-43? Self-sealing tanks, improved armaments, armor, etc. That same design team when the decision made to NOT GO with the P-43 continued work on future developments from which came the P-47? [proposals, equations, descriptions, diagrams and mathematical justifications for the P-47 put together in a package by three days of intense work by a design team!]

coolbert.