Boeing P-26 Peashooter

Formation of nine Boeing P-26s of the 20th Pursuit Group

Deliveries to USAAC pursuit squadrons began in December 1933 with the last production P-26C aircraft coming off the assembly line in 1936. Ultimately, 22 squadrons flew the Peashooter, with peak service being six squadrons, in 1936. P-26s were the frontline fighters of the USAAC until 1938, when Seversky P-35s and Curtiss P-36s began to replace the P-26. A total of twenty P-26s were lost in accidents between 1934 and America's entry into World War II on 7 December 1941, but only five before 1940.

Air Corps units using the P-26[4] were the:

• 1st Pursuit Group (17th, 27th, and 94th PS), Selfridge Field, Michigan;
• 4th Composite Group (3d, 17th, and 20th PS), Nichols and Clark fields, Philippine Department.
• 8th Pursuit Group (33rd, 35th, and 36th PS), Langley Field, Virginia;
• 16th Pursuit Group (24th and 78th PS), Albrook Field, Panama Canal Zone;

Boeing P-26A Peashooter of the 34th Pursuit Squadron 17th Pursuit Group

• 17th Pursuit Group (34th, 73d, and 95th PS), March Field, California
• 18th Pursuit Group (6th and 19th PS), Wheeler Field, Hawaii; and
• 20th Pursuit Group (55th, 77th, and 79th PS), Barksdale Field, Louisiana.

Between 1938 and 1940, P-26s were assigned overseas to supplement Seversky P-35s in two defense units based at Wheeler Field, Territory of Hawaii:

• 18th Pursuit Group (6th, 19th, 73d, and 78th PS)
• 15th Pursuit Group (45th and 47th PS).

The 17th PG became the 17th Attack Group in 1935, and its P-26s were transferred in 1938 to the 16th Pursuit Group (24th, 29th, and 78th PS) at Albrook Field in the Panama Canal Zone. These P-26s were transferred in 1940 to the 37th Pursuit Group (28th, 30th, and 31st PS) which flew them until they were replaced by P-40s in May 1941. Some continued service with the 32d Pursuit Group (51st and 53rd PS), but only nine P-26s remained operational in Central America at the start of World War II.

P-26As were also flown by the 3d PS of the 4th Composite Group, based in the Philippines. Between 1937 and 1941, 31 were sold to the fledgling Philippine Army Air Corps.

The first Boeing P-26 to experience major combat operation was the Chinese Model 281. On 15 August 1937, eight P-26/281s from the Chinese Nationalist Air Force 3rd Pursuit Group, 17th Squadron, based at Chuyung airfield, engaged eight out of twenty Mitsubishi G3M Nell medium bombers from the Kisarazu Air Group sent to attack Nanking. The Chinese Boeing fighters helped shoot down two of the four Japanese bombers destroyed that day without suffering any losses. Subsequent engagements between the Chinese Peashooter pilots and pilots of the Imperial Japanese Navy flying the Mitsubishi A5M (Allied reporting name "Claude") were the first aerial dogfights and kills between all-metal monoplane fighter aircraft.[5] A single P-26 was in service with the Spanish Republican Air Force during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939, but no aerial kills were recorded with it before it was shot down in 1936.[6][7]

By December 1941, U.S. fighter strength in the Philippines included 28 P-26s, 12 of which were operational with the 6th Pursuit Squadron of the Philippine Army Air Corps.[8] In the skies above Zablan and Batangas Fields, Captain Jesus A. Villamor flew against Japanese Zeros, his squadron of Boeing P-26 Peashooter fighters engaged the enemy. Despite the disadvantage, Villamor and his squadron was credited with four kills – one Mitsubishi G3M bomber and three Mitsubishi A6M Zeros. Two of them by Villamor himself.[9] For leading his squadron and for his two confirmed kills, Villamor was twice cited by the United States Army for bravery, receiving the Distinguished Service Cross for actions on December 10, 1941 and an Oak Leaf Cluster in lieu of a second award of the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) for actions on December 12, 1941.[10][11] The P-26s were burned by their crews to prevent capture by advancing Imperial Japanese Army forces on 24 December 1941.[12]

Only nine P-26s remained airworthy, serving with the United States Army Air Forces (as the USAAC had been renamed in June 1941) in the Panama Canal Zone. In 1942–1943, the Guatemalan Air Force acquired seven P-26s, which the United States Government delivered to Guatemala as "Boeing PT-26A" trainers to get around restrictions on sales to Latin American countries.[13] The last two P-26s in service in the world were still flying with the Guatemalan Air Force in 1956, when they were replaced with P-51 Mustangs. The P-26's last combat operation was with the Guatemalan Air Force during a coup d'état in 1954.[14]

Although Boeing produced the prototype XF8B in 1944 and the X-32 entry in the Joint Strike Fighter contest in 2000, the P-26 was the last Boeing Company fighter aircraft to enter service until Boeing acquired McDonnell-Douglas and took over its production and continuing support contracts for the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet in 2002.

P-26A replica on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

P-26A replica '37' on loan at Museum of Flight in the markings of 73rd Pursuit Squadron 'Golden Bears'.

• A P-26A reproduction is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio.[16] It is painted as the commander's aircraft of the 19th PS / 18th PG, stationed at Wheeler Field, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii, in 1938.
• The San Diego Air and Space Museum has made a reproduction of an early model to Boeing's plans with the original design's "streamlined tailwheel" and without flaps and the crossover exhaust that were later additions. [17]
• P-26D: A flying replica completed in 2006 is in the collection of the Military Aviation Museum, Virginia Beach, Virginia. </ref> Mayocraft Inc., completed the final assembly in September 2006, and it went on display in June, 2011 after nearly 12 years of construction.[18] Retrieved: 17 March 2007.[19]
• P-26A: Two flyable reproduction aircraft using original blueprints are currently being constructed by Golden Age Aeroplane Works, LLC in Brownstown, Indiana.[20]