PA-38 TomahawkPiper PA 38 Tomahawk airplane model. Design input for the Tomahawk came from a questionnaire Piper distributed randomly to 10,000 flight instructors during the 1970s. With their responses in mind, Piper developed the PA 38. The resulting aircraft featured a T tail and NASA Whitcomb GA(W) 1 design low set wing of constant chord and thickness (also featured on the competing Beech Skipper), a cabin wider than the Cherokee's (and thus much wider than the