| The P - 40 (Tomahawk) |
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| This plane won fame as a FLYING TIGER |
CURTISS AREONAUTICAL CORP kew a good thing when they saw it. This company was formed in the late 20s when the Wright Bros merged with their rival Glenn Curtiss to form this conglomerate. They were successfull with the HAWK biplanes where they took a basic design and modified it for all it was worth. With the death of Biplanes in the mid thirties, It was time to get a new design going. They came up with the Model 75 which won the fighter competition the second time around in 1937. With warclouds looming 2 years later it was time to experiment again and the result was the model 81. You know these planes as the Curtiss P 36 and the P 40. With Production well underway for both the re-equipping US ARMY AIR CORPS and desperate French and British airforces, Curtiss was well positioned to enter WW2. They buit 200+ P 36's and nearly 14,000 P 40's but were unsuccessfull with he other experimental designs. Either the technology wasn't there to support he concept, the design was a dead end or it was too little too late. Curtiss closed its doors shortly after the war.
The Planes offered are the P 36, P 40 and the experimntal P 37 (turbocharging)P 42 (testing streamlining a radial engine), P 46 (the lightweight fighter that wasn't), the beatiful but never built P 53 and the last white hope, the P 60. The last effort could have replaced the P 40 but by then, better designs were in full swing.
The book is 64 pages with 14 11 x 17 CAD drawings.
| Planes you can build |
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| Shown are the TIGER SHARK , P 40 Q, P 53 P 40 B and P 36 |
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