Curtiss P-40CU - 54PG Paine Field - 1/72 - Airfix
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Evan B...Finishing up. I have some touch-ups to attend to, install a PE gunsight, and then I'll take some natural light photos and do a writeup on this particular aircraft...
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In terms of breadth of use and users the Curtiss P-40 was probably one of the most important aircraft to come out of American industry. Used by a staggering number of air forces in a staggering number of roles the fighter could be found in many shapes and schemes that still capture the mind of historians and modelers nearly a century after the type's introduction. Fighter, bomber, trainer, racer, American, British, Chinese, French, Russian, Indonesian, Turkish…
P-40-CU "54P97" was a very early production aircraft that, at barely two years old, was looking somewhat worn when it was photographed by a USAAF photographer in early 1942. Assigned to the 54th Pursuit Group, this aircraft had just transferred from Hamilton Field in California to Paine Field just north of Seattle, Washington. The 54th at the time was assigned to coastal defense but was soon to transfer to the P-39 and deploy to Alaska to defend the Aleutians. In anticipation of this transfer, "97" was emblazoned with a shark mouth just before it was to be "donated" to the Chinese Air Force's "American Volunteer Group", better known as the Flying Tigers.
This model is my fourth time building Airfix's recent 1/72 kit offered variously as a P-40B, Tomahawk, or Hawk 81-A2. With minor detail changes, this kit can be made to represent a great many different early P-40 types. As "54P97" was an early production P-40-CU (CU wasn't a specific sub model, but the government identifier for the Curtiss factory in Buffalo, New York), this required changing the wing armament to single .30-caliber guns and filling and re-scribing some panel lines on the wings. In the period photograph of the aircraft, she is shown with both wing and cowl guns removed, so I simply drilled holes for the ports and left them empty. The model was completed with photo etched seatbelts and gunsights, and aftermarket decals from AML. The kit was otherwise built out of the box and painted with Vallejo Air paints.
