The Daily Express (and the Sunday Express, too) has always used airplane rather than aeroplane, ever since the earliest days.
I suspect a diktat from the Canadian-born Max Aitken who took over the paper in 1916. Later, of course, he became Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Aircraft Production etc etc…but I’m sure you all know that anyway:D

I’ve just had a daydream…supposing the Burmese Spitfires had been real. What’s the cost of a remanufactured Spit against a Hawk, or its eventual successor?
You get my drift?

The Hurricane Mk V of 1943 also had a four-bladed prop. Essentially a Mk IV with a Merlin 32, only two were built.

That’s what I was trying to say. The Lockheed 14 was licence-built by first Tachikawa and then Kawasaki, and Kawasaki then built their own derivative as the Ki56. By that stage of events, I doubt if the niceties of licence payments came into it.
(Source: Japanese Aircraft of World War Two, by Basil Collier)

If the author’s aircraft recognition isn’t that brilliant, maybe he’s confused a Beech 18 with a Lockheed 14. Plenty of similarities to an inexpert eye, and Lockheed 14s were licence-built in Japan and had the Allied code-name Thelma.

Edit: Just done some Googling, and discover from Wikipedia (OK, not always 100% reliable) that the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force had 36 Lockheed 12s – even closer in looks to the Twin Beech, and some may well have fallen into Japanese hands.