Bell P-63A-10 “Kingcobra,” Unknown Unit, Summer-Autumn, Siberia, 1945

Beginning in September 1944 the USA delivered 2421 lend-lease Bell P-63 Kingcobras (out of a total of 3,362) to the USSR. The aircraft, both P-63A and P-63C models, were flown across the Alaska-Siberian ferry route from Buffalo, NY to Russia; 2400 actually arrived.

USSR bound P-63As at the Bell Aircraft Factory in Buffalo, NY 1944



P-63As en route with a lend lease B-25 doing the navigating

Only a handful of P-63s joined VVS regiments in the West for the final assault on Nazi Germany; six were assigned to the 67th GIAP (Guards Fighter Regiment) in March 1945 and took part in the Battle of Berlin.

P-63Cs assigned to the 821st IAP (Fighter Aircraft Regiment),
which took part in the final battles against Nazi Germany in 1945

Many more P-63s went to the Far East in the buildup for "Operation August Storm," the brief Soviet war against Japan in August 1945. The 12th Air Army of the Transbaikal Front had four P-63A equipped fighter regiments, the 17th, 781st, 821st, and 940th, which participated in the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. P-63 equipped units also took part in the Soviet occupation of Japan’s Kurile Islands.

"No. 42," the P-63A-10 that is the aircraft modeled, is one of these, from an unknown unit photographed in Siberia in the summer/autumn of 1945.







The sole aerial kill credited to a P-63 occurred on August 15, 1945, the last day of WWII. The 17th IAP was operating out of Mongolia, and two of its pilots, Capt. Viacheslav Sirotin, (left) a Hero of the Soviet Union and 21-victory ace, and his wingman, Jr. Lt. Miroshnichenko, caught two Japanese fighters, either Ki-27 Nates or Ki-43 Oscars, and shot one down. It is unclear who was credited with the kill.