Hoping this is not too off topic...
In the late summer of 1938, Seversky Aircraft Corporation, then short of money, discretely / secretly shipped twenty 2PA single engine two seat long range escort fighters / fighter bombers to the Dai-Nippon Teikoku Kaigun, in other words the Imperial Japanese Navy. Known in the land of the rising sun as Seversky A8V1s, the 2PA may, I repeat may, have performed several missions during the Second Sino-Japanese War which had erupted in July 1937.
Seversky Aircraft’s need to keep this perfectly legal sale off the radar was easy to understand. In December 1937, Japanese navy airplanes had sunk a river gunboat, the U.S.S. Panay, anchored at Nanking (now Nanjing), killing three American servicemen and wounding 43. Japan’s aggressiveness toward China met with increasing hostility in the United States. If truth be told, both the United States Navy and United States Army saw Japan as their most likely opponent if their country was to become involved in a major conflict.
Sadly enough, The New York Times published an article in late July 1938 about the secret deal with Japan, negotiated by New York City-based Miranda Brothers, Incorporated, a colorful if not shady international arms trading firm, with the help of a front, American Trading Corporation.
For the United States Army air Corps (USAAC), unhappy as it was with Seversky Aircraft and its obsolescent P-35, this was the final straw. It all but refused to deal with Seversky Aircraft from then on. Unable to obtain production orders, the firm’s management came to see company head Alexander Prokofiev “Sasha” de Seversky as a liability. The latter was forced out his position as president in April 1939 - possibly while he was out of the country trying to get contracts. Seversky Aircraft officially became Republic Aviation Corporation in the fall of that year.
