This is "Pretty Polly" a Bell P-63A Kingcobra, serial 42-68864, owned by the Palm Springs Air Museum. She is one of only four airworthy P-63 Kingcobras left in the world out of 3,303 built.

The US Army looked at the P-63 Kingcobra, decided it was inferior to the P-51 Mustang, and gave nearly the entire production run to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease. The Soviets loved it. They used it extensively in combat against both Germany and Japan. America never fired a single shot with one in combat.

Instead the US Army found a different use for the P-63. They stripped the armament, added over a ton of armor plating, thickened the cockpit glass, and painted them bright orange. Then they had trainee bomber gunners shoot live ammunition at them while a pilot was inside. The sensors under the armor registered hits and a red light mounted where the nose cannon used to be would flash every time the plane was struck. They called them "Pinballs" because they lit up when hit. Real live human beings flying while being used as target practice.

You can actually see on Pretty Polly where the 37mm cannon used to be in the propeller hub. Gone now, but in combat configuration this aircraft fired a cannon directly through the center of the spinning propeller. The wing root intakes you see on both sides of the fuselage feed the cooling system for the mid-mounted Allison engine, the same unconventional layout shared with its predecessor the P-39 Airacobra, with a ten-foot driveshaft running between the pilot's legs to reach the propeller.

This specific airframe has had an extraordinary journey. After the war it went to NACA, the forerunner of NASA, where it was used as a flying research testbed for Allison engine development, fitted at one point with a P-51 belly airscoop. Then it became a memorial park display in Lancaster, South Carolina for 15 years. Then it deteriorated into a hulk. Then the Confederate Air Force stored it dismantled in Arizona and Texas for years. In 1988 warbird collector Robert Pond acquired it and sent it to Chino, California for a full restoration. First flight after restoration was October 2, 1992. Pond donated it to the Palm Springs Air Museum in 1997 where it has lived ever since.

She carries a dedication on the fuselage: "Dedicated to the Memory of Sandy Reed, Reno 2021." Pretty Polly raced at the Reno Air Races in both 2018 and 2021, the first Kingcobra to race at Reno in 40 years. Who Sandy Reed was and their connection to this aircraft has not been documented publicly. Some mysteries stay mysteries.

Originally there was no nose art name from World War II, Pretty Polly is the name Robert Pond gave her during the 1992 restoration. This aircraft never flew in combat. It went from the factory to NACA research to a park display to a hulk to Chino to Palm Springs. The story of what the P-63 was SUPPOSED to do is more interesting than what this specific airframe actually did.

This is one of those rare and obscure aircraft that had I not built a model of one as a child I probably wouldn't have even known what I was looking at when I saw it for the first time in 2011 at the California Capital Airshow. I then got a chance to catch more images of her at the 2026 Wings Over Solano airshow at Travis Air Force Base in California.



Full gallery: [https://wolf10851.com/gallery.html?search=Pretty%20Polly](https://wolf10851.com/gallery.html?search=Pretty%20Polly)

One of only four airworthy examples left in the world. Most people walk right past it without knowing what they are looking at.