I agree with you on the P-35. It would've made a decent fighter trainer in CONUS, but as a front-line fighter in the Philippines? Forget it. The P-35s that were sent to the Philippines were originally sold to Sweden, but the planes were requesitioned before they were loaded aboard ship, and the birds wound up in the Philippines-in their Swedish markings, all the tech orders were in Swedish, instruments in metric, etc. It took the 17th Pursuit Squadron a while to figure out the plane, and when they got P-40Es, the newly arrived 34th (whose P-40s were still en route to the Philippines on 8 Dec 41 and never arrived) PS got the P-35s. There were 36 in the Islands on 8 Dec. Two made it thru the Bataan campaign to fly out the night before the surrender, one of them having two pilots riding in the baggage compartment, while the other had three pilots riding in that compartment. There were two on Mindanao also, but they were destroyed before the general surrender in the Philippines.