Seversky Aircraft
The Seversky Aircraft Company was founded in 1931 by Alexander de Seversky, a Russian expatriate and veteran World War I pilot who had lost a leg in the war. In the beginning, many of Seversky Aircraft's designers were Russian and Georgian engineers whom Seversky had rescued from Joseph Stalin's purges by bringing them to the United States, including Michael Gregor and Alexander Kartveli, who would go on to design many of Republic's most famous aircraft.
After several failed attempts, Seversky Aircraft finally won a design competition for a new United States Army Air Corps fighter, and was awarded its first military contract in 1936 for the production of its Seversky P-35.
In 1939, Seversky Aircraft again entered in a military fighter competition, this time with the much improved AP-4. Unfortunately, the contract was instead awarded to the somewhat inferior Curtiss P-40, but the Army Air Corps were very pleased with the aircraft's medium- and high-altitude performance and ordered 13 additional AP-4s for testing.
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