Ace the Warhawk


In 1940 it developed a replacement fighter, mounting 10 machine guns and powered by an improved version of the Allison engine. By comparison, the Messerschmitt Me-109E used by the By the end of 1941 the USAAC had deployed P-40s overseas.

Ziegler was forced to bail out, breaking one of his legs, and a woman spectator was injured by the jettisoned canopy. Unfortunately, by the time the XP-40Q was built, the more capable P-51D was already available in large numbers. He was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, as was 1st Lt. Russell M. Church, Jr., who was shot down in flames and killed by anti-aircraft fire in the course of the raid. The radial engines were lighter and more compact, but their larger frontal area created aerodynamic drag. Lacking spare parts and replacement aircraft, the Americans were overwhelmed by May 1942.Thomas L. Hayes, who flew P-40Es with the 35th Pursuit Group, was originally supposed to go to Mindanao, but when his squadron was unable to reach the Philippines it was diverted to Java in mid-January 1942. That meant that Curtiss could put the P-40 into production with a minimum of delay, and at the highly competitive price of $24,566.60 apiece.

The XP-40Q, as the new version was redesignated, was the fastest of the Warhawks, with a top speed of 422 mph at 20,000 feet. After strafing five to seven Japanese planes on the ground, Wagner was attacked by three more Ki.27s but managed to shoot down two of them and then escaped.
We were indebted to our veterans, who told us, ‘You’re not going to turn and fight with a Zero — you won’t live to tell about it.’ Tactics were hit and run — if one had the altitude on a Zero, one could dive and get him. Aldridge. (HistoryNet Archives) The AVG was disbanded when an agreement was reached with the Chinese government to induct the Flying Tigers and their P-40s into the USAAF on July 4, 1942.Curtiss-Wright was well aware of the P-40C’s shortcomings. ‘The water-cooled Allison…moved the center of gravity forward,’ Hayes recalled. After escaping from the Dutch East Indies, he went on to fly P-39s over New Guinea, and North American P-51s over Europe with the 357th Fighter Group, Eighth Air Force, finishing the war with credit for destroying 8 1/2 German aircraft.By far the most renowned of all Curtiss fighters were the 100 dispatched to China for use by the American Volunteer Group (AVG), or ‘Flying Tigers.’ Usually referred to as P-40s, they were technically Tomahawk Mk.IIbs that had originally been built for the British. The last Curtiss fighter was the XP-87 Blackhawk, a postwar four-engine jet night fighter that was rejected by the U.S. Air Force in favor of Northrop’s F-89 Scorpion. In addition, the British sent 195 Tomahawks to the Soviet Union after the Germans invaded that country on June 22, 1941.The first serious use of the P-40 as a fighter occurred when Iraqi forces led by Rashid Ali El-Ghailani rose against the British in Iraq on May 2, 1941. They were armed with one .50-caliber machine gun in the fuselage and four 7.5mm guns in the wings. The XP-40K was rebuilt three times. The AVG’s exploits made the shark mouth so famous, however, that P-40 units all over the world began copying it from them.The AVG never had more than three squadrons of 18 P-40s at any time. Tomahawks of No. A new-style radiator was also built into the wing center section. In April 1941, Curtiss built the first of 2,320 P-40Es, or Kittyhawk Mk.Ias, armed with six .50-caliber wing guns.In an attempt to improve the P-40’s performance above 15,000 feet, Curtiss installed a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine in a P-40D to produce the XP-40F. All four were low-wing monoplanes of all-metal, stressed-skin construction with retractable landing gear and enclosed cockpits.Curtiss designated its entry the Model 75.


Many of the Tomahawk Mk.Is still had metric instruments and other French equipment that were not compatible with RAF service, and their French throttle control levers worked in reverse of the way British or American ones did. Therefore, Don Berlin decided to take a different approach to a P-36 derivative equipped with an Allison engine. Whether it was known as the P-40, the Tomahawk, the Kittyhawk or the Warhawk, Curtiss-Wright’s fighter was one of the truly classic combat aircraft of World War II.Maria Mitchell, the first female astronomer in the U.S.Yuri Romanenko, Soviet cosmonaut who set the record for the longest stay in space with 326 days aboard the Mir Space StationHistoryNet.com is brought to you by Historynet LLC, the world's largest publisher of history magazines. The General Electric turbosupercharger boosted the engine’s critical operating altitude — i.e., the altitude at which the supercharger would operate at peak efficiency — to 20,000 feet, but it proved unreliable and likely to catch fire. In 1933, however, Boeing had beaten Curtiss in competition for a lucrative Army fighter contract with its innovative P-26 Peashooter. Although its 1,150-hp Allison engine and aerodynamic lines gave it far better performance than the P-36, it had a number of serious drawbacks as a combat plane. Only three were built, and only one was evaluated — and rejected — by the USAAF.One XP-40Q turned up in Cleveland, Ohio, for the Thompson Trophy Race on September 1, 1947.

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