1:72 Curtiss Hawk 81-A2

A shark mouth over Burma

The Hawk 81-A2 is the factory designation of the export version of the Curtiss fighter known in American service as the P-40B and P-40C. One hundred examples of this batch ended up at the end of 1941 in the hands of the volunteer group of American pilots in China, the unit the world knows as the Flying Tigers. It was their machines that carried the painted shark mouth on the radiator cowling, a motif taken from a photograph of British machines in North Africa that became one of the best known aviation markings of all.

An aircraft without illusions

The Allison V12 had no two-stage supercharger, so its power fell away quickly at greater altitudes. The unit's commander drew from that a tactic which turned the shortcoming into an advantage: attack from a climb above, pass through the formation and break away in a dive that the lighter Japanese fighters could not follow. A turning fight was the road to defeat in this machine.

The model in a small scale

A wingspan of just under twelve meters gives an aircraft about sixteen centimeters across in 1:72 scale. The main work will be on the surface and on the markings: the combination of the Chinese blue and white national star, the fuselage number and the shark mouth mentioned above is among the most demanding, but also the most rewarding tasks this scale has to offer.

Before building it is worth deciding which particular aircraft of the unit you want to build. The machines differed in their fuselage number, in the shape of the painted mouth and in the degree of wear, and the Chinese national star on the wings had its own placement rules. Two models of the same type standing side by side can therefore look completely different without either of them being built wrongly.