American Curtiss P-40 Warhawk Fighter – 438 Pieces

The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk series of fighter aircraft was a further development of the Curtiss P-36 “Hawk” line (detailed elsewhere on this site). The Warhawk became a legendary aircraft of the famous American Volunteer Group (AVG) fighting in China against the Japanese, earning themselves the nickname of “The Flying Tigers”. Over the course of the war, the P-40 would be generally replaced by incoming improved types but she nonetheless remained one of the more important Allied fighters early in the World War 2 – used by the desperate Americans, British and Soviets alike. It was a pair of P-40s, piloted by American airmen George Welch and Ken Taylor, who were able to get airborne during the December 7th, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor while Soviet pilots Nikolai Fyodorovich Kuznetsov, Petr Pokryshev and Stephan Novichkov all became aces flying their Lend-Lease P-40s. The P-40 was a good. solid gunnery platform for its time, limited to an extent by production numbers and demand of the wartime economy. Eventually technological developments found in incoming fighter lines like the Grumman F6F Hellcat and Vought F4U Corsair pushed the P-40 past its usefulness and strengths.

438 Pieces