1/72 Airfix Curtiss P.40E

Gallery Article by Paolo De Sanctis on Mar 23 2010

 

The aircraft: the P.40E belongs to the American first generation's monoplane. She was quite a good aeroplane, with sturdiness as her main characteristic. She was fast enough to compete against some of her principal opponents but her main default was due the engine, the Allison V 1710 which was unsuitable for high level works. She was however very useful in the Middle and Far East fronts.

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THE MODEL: this is the old and aged Airfix series 1 kit; it is far from the perfection but it is not worth to trash away. I built it the last summer and I' assembled it OOB. It has only some scratch built interior plus the figure pilot. The kit was presented to me by a friend that didn't want it anymore but it lacked decals. Luckily I just had an old Hasegawa decal sheet for the P.40 that resembled the original very much.

The colours were those classic desert camo finish ones, Dark Earth, Middle Stone & Azure Blue, being these - in the Humbrol range - respectively H.29, H.63 (8^ Army Desert Yellow) and H. 144. Hasegawa's decals are better than the originals and with a drop of Tamiya Mark-Sotfer they adere very well. With a minimun of effort and a light shade of weathering I obtained a reasonable replica of the mythic 112° Sqn. RAF Shark-mouthed P.40. Good work to everyone!

Paolo De Sanctis

Photos and text © by Paolo De Sanctis