Description

C-35 Martintxori was a single engine fighter developed in the basque region of spain by Iparraldeko Aeronautika mid 1930's and the start of the spanish civil war, it was the second aircraft produced by the company.

Design and development

• First drafted by designer Eneko Agirre.

• 7.9 m in length.

• 9.9 m in wingspan.

• 2451 kg empty weight.

• 3174 kg loaded weight.

• Powered by a license built version of the Gnome-Rhône 9K Mistral as well as imported french types at the beginning of the war, it was later slightly enlarged as well as supercharged over many iterations and this current example has a Gnome-Rhône 9Kz Indarra engine that produces around 1000hp

• Driven by a 3 blade fixed pitch propellers of 2.74m in diameter, later to be changed into variable pitch propellers of the same length.

• 428 km/h top speed at sea level 410 km/h at 3200m

History of the type

By the early 1930s, as political tensions in Spain escalated and the prospect of civil war loomed, a group of engineers and industrialists fled the unstable southern regions of the country. Many of them hailed from prestigious companies like Hispano-Suiza and Construcciones Aeronáuticas HESA. Their destination was the Basque Country, specifically Iruña, where they sought refuge and the opportunity to build a new future for Basque aviation. Among them were individuals like Eneko Agirre, an aeronautical designer with a keen understanding of lightweight structures, and Jon Etxebarria, an engine specialist who had worked extensively on high-performance radial engines.

Though their talents were considerable, they faced a daunting reality: the Basque industrial base was nascent, and while the Commune of France had provided investment and technical support, the country remained largely underdeveloped and lacking of a specialized workforce. The engineers soon found themselves entwined with the covert preparations of the emerging Basque government. Anticipating the eruption of the Spanish Civil War, the future leadership of the Basque Country laid the groundwork for a defense industry. To achieve this, they established numerous "private companies" as fronts for what would later become a functional wartime industrial sector and import centres.

One such company was Bultzatu Aero, though it operated under a different name—Iparraldeko Aeronautika—until the 1950s. With time working against them, the engineers lacked the luxury of designing an aircraft from scratch. Instead, their first aircraft was a slightly modified version of a French Commune design, adapted for civilian use and later retrofitted for military service. Despite these efforts, the need for a dedicated fighter aircraft remained unfulfilled.

That changed when fate intervened in an unexpected way. A United States P-26 Peashooter, brought to Spain for an airshow, was seized under extraordinary circumstances. A defector, sympathetic to the Basque cause, took off under the cover of night and managed to evade interception. Running low on fuel, the aircraft was forced to land near the village of Artazu, the site of the future Bultzatu Aero testing facility. With this unexpected boon, the engineers wasted no time in dismantling and analyzing the aircraft. Using the P-26 as a foundation, they set to work on an improved design that would better suit Basque needs. This effort culminated in the development of the C-35, a more robust and reasonably modern fighter that would serve as a the main production fighter airframe for the emerging nation though the first examples of the type were barely different from the original p26.

Maintaining the Semi Monocoque construction of the P-26 as well as the semi cantilevered wing and static landing gear a more powerful engine was installed this necesitated an increase in overall size resulting in a longer aircraft with a significant increase to wingspan and overall weight, which made the aircraft feel sluggish and underpowered at least during the earlier parts of the war, numbers of the aircraft were a reocurring issue, due to the nature of the war, production was limited as resources went to different industries, as the war wore on, more resources would be allocated to the aereonautic industry as france prepared for war and was unable and unwilling to lend support to other nations, still, some aid trickled in, most if it being technical expertise rather than materiel.

Afterword

That is in fact, a lot of text
I hope you enjoy flying it
I finished this thing like a month ago but i did not upload it