Duxford’s Hawk Connection

While it was not the most spectacular fighter plane of its era, the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk (first named the Tomahawk or Kittyhawk by the British, the U.S. Army Air Forces did not use a name for its P-40s until the D model went into service) was available in quantity when its services were desperately needed, and held the line against Axis combat aircraft until more advanced fighter plane designs showed up in quantity. Before production ended in December 1944, a grand total of 13,738 P-40s had been manufactured for the USAAF and various allied air forces. However, with the end of WWII, the venerable Hawks soon disappeared from frontline service, though a number (primarily P-40E and P-40N models) did find new homes in the civil register.

Essentially an inline engine version of the earlier radial engine-powered Curtiss Hawk 75 (a grand total of 1,115 Hawk 75s were manufactured for the USAAF under the designation P-36, and for various foreign air forces, being named Mohawk by the British Royal Air Force), the P-40, known by Curtiss as the Hawk 81 and 87, was generally powered with various variants of the liquid-cooled Allison V-1710 inline engine, though the P-40F was fitted with the Packard-built Rolls-Royce V-1650 engine. The Hawk 81 variants sported rather pointy nose profiles, while the Hawk 87 variants had enlarged, beard-style radiators under the nose.

Except for a few static display models, Hawk 75s and Hawk 81s never made it into post-war civilian use, having disappeared from frontline service well before their Hawk 87 descendants. However, that situation changed in 1988 when Steve Hinton’s Fighter Rebuilders shop at Chino, Calif., completed the restoration of P-40C 41-13390 to flying condition for Stephen Grey’s Duxford, UK-based The Fighter Collection. Initially supplied to Britain under the Lend Lease Program, 41-13390 was transferred to Russia in September 1941 and wound up being shot down over the Karelian battlefront near Murmansk on September 27, 1942. The wrecked warbird was eventually recovered to Duxford
. . .