Bell XP-52

The Bell XP-52 was an unusual United States fighter aircraft design by the Bell Aircraft Corporation. It was submitted as part of a United States Army Air Corps competition held in the winter of 1939.

The fuselage was round and barrel-shaped, with the pilot in the nose and the piston engine behind him, driving a pair of contra-rotating propellers at the rear of the fuselage in a pusher configuration. The wings were mid-fuselage and swept back at an angle of 20 degrees, and the horizontal stabilizer was connected at each end to booms from the wings, similar to the P-38 Lightning's layout.

The design was one of six chosen for further development, but was then canceled 25 November 1941 in favor of a new design called the XP-59, which was unrelated to the later jet-powered Bell P-59 Airacomet.