History:
The last of the Curtiss Hawks from the P-1 Hawk of 1925, the P-40
Warhawk has always been something of an enigma. By no stretch of the
imagination could it be numbered among the 'great' fighter aircraft of World WarII.
Yet, with the exceptions of the Republic P-47 and North American P-51, it was
the most extensively built US fighter, with almost 14,000 delivered before
production ended in December 1944.
Construction of what the company designated as the Hawk 81 began in
1938, when the tenth P-36A production aircraft was withdrawn from the line for
an experimental conversion from radial to inline engine. At that period in the
development of fighter aircraft the latter type of powerplant was much in
favour: the Schneider Trophy contests, which terminated in the early 1930s,
were assumed to have demonstrated the superiority of the inline engine, and
early examples of the British Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire, and
German Messerschmitt Bf 109, appeared to leave little doubt that this was the
case. There were, of course, problems with the liquid cooling system of
high-powered inline engines: they added another vital system that was
vulnerable to combat damage, and they were heavier. But it was clear that
inline engines did develop considerably more power per unit of frontal area. It
remained for Germany's Kurt Tank to prove that the radial engine was inferior
to nothing, when his superb Focke-Wulf Fw 190 became operation al at the
beginning of 1941.
Therefore the tenth P-36A became powered by a 1,160-hp (865-kW) Allison
V-1710-19 engine, instead of the 1,050-hp (783-kW) Pratt & Whitney R1830-13
radial which was standard. In other respects it varied little from the P-36A.
When the Hawk 81 was first flown, on 14 October 1938, the coolant
radiator was mounted beneath the aft
fuselage; soon after this it was resited beneath the nose, associated
with the oil cooler in a common cowling.
In May 1939 the Hawk 81, by then designated XP 40, was flown in
competition against other pursuit prototypes and was selected for production as
most closely meeting US Army Air Corps requiremets. A total of 524 P-40s was
ordered into production on 27th April 1939.
(Text from: „The Hamlyn Concise Guide to American Aircraft of World War
II“, David Mondey, ISBN 1-85152-706-0)
All theaters in WWII has seen P40‘s in the air, before production
stopped in December 1944.
Assembly:
The
Trumpeter-Kit was
trouble-free to build; no clefts, no delay. Simply Oob, because the kit
contained also
some photo-etched-parts. But then I could not restrain myself - I must
oper the gun-bay and detail her with Resin-MG's, cables and conductions
.......
With the painting, I have used Vallejo-Modell-Air.
The
figures are from Verlinden and CMK (the laying pilot).
I want to show a P40-IIa of the 112th Suadron at Sidi Haneish in automn 1942.
Happy modelling
Wolfgang Strassmayer
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