1:48 Curtiss P-40E

Four fates of one fighter

The Curtiss in the form the British called the Kittyhawk was among the most widespread Allied machines away from the main European battlefields. It was neither the fastest nor the most agile, but it stood up to rough handling, to hard landings on sand and to cooling in the tropics. The sheet offers four very different faces of the same type, so one kit can yield a North African, a Pacific or a northern Soviet machine.

The first option belongs to the machine of a squadron commander who served in North Africa in 1942 with a unit carrying Sudan in its name. The second is a New Zealand one, from an overseas squadron operating over the islands. The remaining two bring the Soviet side of the story: aircraft delivered to the Soviet Union as they were used by pilots of the Soviet naval aviation in the far north and by a fighter regiment guarding the supply routes. The Soviet machines differ from the British ones not only in their insignia but also in a rougher finish, in wear and in hastily painted numbers.

What the sheet contains and how to work with it

This is a sheet of decals printed for 1:48 scale. The modeler obtains the kit and the paints separately; the sheet brings the markings, the national insignia and the lettering. Before applying them it pays to coat the surface with gloss varnish so that no air bubbles stay under the decal, and once it has dried to use a softener, which pulls the sheet down onto the rivets and the panel lines. A final matte coat evens the surface out and hides the edges of the carrier film.