| A8V1 / AT-12 | |
|---|---|
 A8V1 "Shiokaze-go" used by The Asahi Shimbun Newspaper company | |
| General information | |
| Type | Fighter |
| National origin | United States |
| Manufacturer | Seversky |
| Primary users | Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service |
| Number built | 70 |
| History | |
| Introduction date | 1937 |
| First flight | 15 August 1935 |
| Retired | September 1952 (Sweden) |
| Developed from | Seversky P-35 |
The A8V1 Type S Two Seat Fighter was an aircraft operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service.
The origins of the Seversky P-35 single-seat fighter trace back to the Seversky SEV-3 amphibian, which was developed into the Seversky BT-8 basic trainer. Seversky's chief designer, Alexander Kartveli, also proposed a two-seat fighter derivative, the SEV-2XP. This was powered by a 735 hp (548 kW) Wright R-1670 radial engine. It had fixed landing gear in aerodynamic spats and was armed with one 0.50 in (12.70 mm) and one 0.30 in (7.62 mm) forward-firing machine guns plus an additional 0.30 in (7.62 mm) machine gun for rear defence.
When the USAAC announced a competition for a new single-seat fighter in 1935, Seversky sent the SEV-2XP, confident it would win despite being a two-seater. However, the aircraft was damaged on 18 June 1935 during its transit to the fly-offs at Wright Field. The Air Corps delayed the fly-off until March 1936, which allowed Seversky time to rework the fighter into the single-seat SEV-1XP with retractable landing gear and re-engined with the Wright R-1820 radial. [1]
In what proved to be an unpopular move for Seversky, twenty 2PA-B3s were sold to the Japanese Navy, which briefly employed them in the Second Sino-Japanese War as Navy Type S Two-Seat Fighter or A8V1 (Allied codename Dick).
Two demonstrators ended up in the USSR; although a manufacturing licence was also bought, the Soviets undertook no production.
Sweden ordered 52 2PAs (known as the B 6), but only two were delivered before the remaining 50 were impounded in 1940 and put into service with the USAAC as the AT-12 Guardsman advanced trainer. On 18 June 1940, United States declared an embargo against exporting weapons to any nation other than the United Kingdom.
Japan 
Sweden 
United States 
Data from [2]
General characteristics
Performance
Related development
Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era
