Air Force Museum
Northrop A-17A
The Northrop A-17A descended from Jack Northrop's streamlined Gamma designs and added retractable landing gear to an attack aircraft intended to strike ground targets. It replaced earlier Curtiss attack types during the 1930s. The Air Corps soon shifted toward multi-engine attack aircraft, limiting the A-17 family's American future. Examples sold abroad later saw combat, demonstrating that one air force's obsolete equipment can remain operationally important under another nation's circumstances.
In depth
History & service
The A-17 series was a direct descendent of the pace setting Northrop "Gamma," made famous by the aerial explorer Lincoln Ellsworth. It replaced the Curtiss A-8 and A-12 Shrike and was the last of the pre-World War II single-engine attack aircraft ordered into production by the Army Air Corps.
Caught in the pre-WWII doctrine that emphasized air superiority over ground support, the A-17 was never fully tested in peacetime exercises or in combat. Its fate was sealed in 1938 when the Army Air Corps determined that all future attack aircraft procured would be multi-engine models.
Despite this handicap, the A-17's design and novel features such as split perforated flaps figured prominently in the success of a distinguished line of Douglas aircraft including the Dauntless dive bomber and the post-WWII Skyraider.
The first 109 production A-17s featured fixed, partially enclosed landing gear. One hundred twenty-nine A-17As configured with fully retractable landing gear and a more powerful engine followed between February 1937 and August 1938.
The A-17A could lift over one ton of bombs. The bombs were carried on four external racks and in an internal bomb bay that featured vertical chutes, which held up to 20 30-pound fragmentation bombs. In addition to the bombs, the A-17A was armed with four forward-firing .30-cal. machine guns for strafing, and one flexible mounted .30-cal. gun in the rear cockpit for self-defense.
A-17As saw unit service for less than four years. In June 1940, all but 20 A-17As were sold overseas. The remaining Army Air Forces A-17 and A-17As were used as advanced trainers and squadron support aircraft, most ending up as ground maintenance trainers. The last A-17A was written off of Army Air Forces records in early 1945.
The aircraft on display, Air Corps serial number 36-207, is the only A-17 series aircraft known to exist. It was delivered to the Air Corps and assigned to Barksdale Field, La., on June 25, 1937.
Following a brief stay at Kelly Field, San Antonio, Texas, the aircraft was assigned in April 1940 to Bolling Field, Washington, D.C., and also served as a support aircraft for U.S. Military attaches in Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti. The aircraft was dropped from Army Air Forces records in January 1945.
The aircraft is marked in the colors of the 90th Attack Squadron, 3rd Attack Group, at Barksdale Field in June 1938.
Details that tell the story
Single-engine attack aircraft · A-17A introduced retractable landing gear · Derived from the Northrop Gamma line · U.S. doctrine shifted toward multi-engine attack types
The aircraft in figures
Armament: Four fixed and one flexible mount .30-cal machine guns and up to 1,100 lbs. of bombs · Engine: One Pratt & Whitney R-1535-13 of 825 hp · Maximum speed: 220 mph · Cruising speed: 170 mph · Range: 732 miles · Ceiling: 19,400 ft. · Span: 47 ft. 9 in. · Length: 31 ft. 8 in. · Height: 9 ft. 3 in. · Weight: 7,543 lbs. maximum
A new invention becomes a public world
Before airplanes became routine transport, public demonstrations helped establish what they could do. Exhibition flights, races, and crossings placed fragile machines before crowds, officials, and potential customers. The audience saw courage and spectacle. Behind the spectacle were less visible questions about reliable engines, controllable wings, suitable landing grounds, and how to recover when the weather changed.
Different configurations competed at the same time. Some designers placed the propeller behind the pilot; others put it at the front. Biplanes used bracing to make light structures sufficiently rigid. Monoplanes reduced some of that external framework but posed their own structural and handling problems. Balloons and dirigibles remained part of the same aviation world, offering capabilities that early airplanes could not simply replace.
The famous firsts matter, but so does the period immediately after them. Flight schools, licensed manufacture, military trials, mechanics, and spare parts carried an invention outward. An aircraft could influence aviation through the pilots trained on it or the designs adapted from it, even after its own performance became outdated. The machines in Washington and Dayton preserve different points along that process. Their differences show how quickly an experimental achievement became an international industry, and how many people had to turn a remarkable flight into a repeatable service.
