P-40D Warhawk/Kittyhawk Mk.I ‘Four Guns’ 1/72
The P-40B/C Hawk/Tomahawk Mk.I/II fighter planes produced by Curtiss in the early war years and delivered both to the USAAF and their forces of the Allies lacked the performance of British fighters and most importantly of the German opponents. So the designers at Curtiss were faced with the necessity to improve the plane rather extensively and power it with the new vesion of the Allison engine, the V-1710-39 type. The emerging P-40D Warhawk/Kittyhawk Mk.I was to be the first type of this second generation of fighters. A total of only slightly above 40 was eventually produced, being armed with four wing machine guns. On the production line, the type was soon replaced by a futher improved and mass-produced P-40E Warhawk/Kittyhawk Mk.Ia which mainly differed by having six gun armament.
Despite onl very few P-40Ds were produced, our kit set is still very atrractive. It offers a mount of Neville Duke, the highest-scoring RAF pilot of the Meditteranean, a plane that wore the famous shark teeth on its nose, the second option is another MTO based Kittyhawk, this one as operated by the 3 Sqn RAAF. The third option is an ex-US machine captured by the Japanese on the Philippines island of Mindanao which therefore wears Japanese markings, a yellow nose section and also a very nice looking shark mouth. The final scheme is that of a US machine as flown during a pre-war military exercises and bearing temporary applied markings.
- limited edition
- interesting schemes
- excellent styrene parts, 3D-printed parts plus an etched template to adapt the machine bays panel lines
- also separately available is a pre-cut masks set plus large variety of other detail sets.
The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk is an American, single-engine, metal fighter-attack aircraft in a low wing configuration with a classic tail. The flight of the prototype took place in 1938, and serial production was carried out in the years 1938-1944. The last of the Hawk family of planes - the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk was, apart from the Republic P-47 and the North American P-51 Mustang, the most widely built American fighter. At the end of production in December 1944, the number of machines exceeded 15,000. The development of the design began in 1937, when the prototype airframe of version 75 was adapted to the installation of the 1167HP Allison V-1710-11 in-line engine. The plane became the first American construction capable of flying at speeds over 483 km / h. The version for the RAF was called the Tomahawk Mk IIA. The planes had self-sealing fuel tanks and two wing-mounted 7.7mm machine guns. The Tomahawk MkIIB were equipped with American radio hardware and armed with six 7.7mm machine guns. Some American P-40s were modernized in 1941 for reconnaissance tasks. They received the designation RP-40. Meanwhile, work on the Hawk 81-A was underway at the Curtiss facility. The changes included the installation of the Allison V-1710-39 engine with a capacity of 1167KM, providing constant power up to a height of 3563 meters, adaptation for installation in the wing of four 12.7mm machine guns and the installation of a fuselage node that could carry one bomb weighing 227 kg or thrown back additional fuel tank. The US Army placed an order for these machines in September 1940, awarding them the designation P-40D. Over the next three years, Curtiss made every effort to expand the application possibilities of the P-40, creating numerous new versions of the aircraft. Despite these efforts, Warhawk's performance was lower than that of contemporary Allied and Axis fighters. Technical data (P-40E version): length: 9.66m, wingspan: 11.38m, height: 3.76m, maximum speed: 580km / h, rate of climb: 11m / s, maximum range: 1100km, practical ceiling: 8800m, armament: fixed - 6 M2 machine guns, caliber 12.7 mm, suspended - up to 900 kg of cargo.
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