Shipbucket

Below entry was completely unplanned (by me, that is), but as they say 'when people make plans, God laughs', so...

(and at least there will be some "real-life entry", as recently it seems that 90% of Forum are either AU's or Challenges )

As some of You may remember, when Naixoterk was retiring from our community, he left several works to be finished by willing members. Some were finished by me and some others were outsourced. Among these was P-36/P-40 family which went to Nighthunter. Unfortunately, some time ago, Nighthunter lost his computer with all the work done.
So, because already looong time has passed when waiting for these Curtisses, I decided to do them myself (in a 'break from my semi-retirement from FD' of sorts). ( )

Generally, such things should be posted in appropriate FD Scale Aircraft threads, but because of the size of it, I though that perhaps it would be more practical to post it in the dedicated thread.

(Quantity of these drawings may serve You as partial explanation why I cancelled Polish Wings - when I started re-drawing stuff, it was all turning out in similar numbers, and it was just too much to handle - it seems I have a problem knowing when to stop... )

First member of the P-36/P-40 family was of course the Curtiss Model 75, in US service named P-36. Initially created as company's private venture, it quickly gained interest of USAAC which wanted to get a fighter that would be at least roughly in league with new generation of fighters built at that time in Europe (such as Bf-109, Hurricane or Spitfire). Eventually the plane had also significant export success with number of operators on various continents. Largest of these ('original') buyers was France, where it turned out to be country's most effective fighter of 1940 campaign. After fall of France, remaining deliveries were turned to Great Britain (and South Africa) where it was named Mohawk, while number of captured French and Norwegian aircraft, via Germany, ended up in Finland.

Curtiss Model 75 / P-36 / Mohawk (USA, Argentina, Brazil, China, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Iran, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Thailand)



























Besides the countries that actually operated Model 75 / P-36, there were some would-be operators. Poland (whose air force in exile later used P-36 in France) contemplated purchase of 143 aircraft in mid-1939 but offered delivery dates were too distant and no orders were made. Some time later, 30 Mohawk's were to be transferred from RAF stocks to Greece, but successes of German offensive in April-May 1941 prevented this.




Although P-36's performance was significantly better than fighters used until then by USAAC, it wasn't quite as good as European fighters. Therefore US military ordered a creation of heavily-redesigned version of Model 75 with liquid-cooled supercharged V-engine, named Model 75I and YP-37 in military service. While both the airframe and engine suffered from number of deficiencies, general idea showed certain promise and led to further research that resulted in P-40.

Curtiss Model 75I / P-37 (USA)



One of the measures intended to improve the performance (mostly aerodynamics-related) of P-36 was experimental conversion (named Model 75S / XP-42) which kept the radial engine but with longer, streamlined cowling (optically resembling ones for V-engines) - and of course the longer propeller shaft). Although speed has increased significantly, problems with cooling effectively killed the idea.

Curtiss Model 75S / P-42 (USA)




Most famous member of the family, the P-40 (which had two manufacturer's designations - Model 81 and Model 87) emerged as a result of mating P-36 airframe with V-engine (though before it reached production status, the number of serious modifications). With nearly 14 thousand aircraft produced, it was one of the most-produced US combat aircraft of the war, which served on nearly all major theatres and in numerous air forces. P-40 (Tomahawk and Kittyhawk in service of British Empire air forces) had number of models, differing, most significantly, with engines, and later with stretched fuselage.

Curtiss Model 81/87 / P-40 / Tomahawk/Mohawk (USA, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Turkey)





































Curtiss Model 86 / P-46 was intended as P-40's replacement, but offered very little improvement in performance so eventually was cancelled.

Curtiss Model 86 / P-46 (USA)

So many gorgeous fighters, excellent work as always!

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DeviantArt

WOW that's a lot!

Amazing stuff.

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A bunch of Curtiss material. I am impressed! Nice work.

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In your dreams. ~ Yae Miko
報園-872 (方義鑑銃)
Patriotic Presentation Number 872, Q-102 (A6M3-32 captured in Buna, New Guinea)

Once again, you did it! Excellent series, excellent effort! Nice drawings! Thanks to you and to Naixoterk. Cheers.

Holy shit eswube, that's one hell of a job you did there!

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Would you please not eat my gun...

Nice to see these in their full glory

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Wonderful and amazing. Great artwork and excellent research
to produce so many versions and different air forces using this
aircraft. Thanks a lot.

Fantastic work! Not enough praise for all this hard work and research!

This is so timely, I've been reading a lot about the P-35 this week by pure chance! In Aviation Historian there is an excellent article in the last issue on the Peruvian P-35s. All B&W photos though, but it seems the P-35s got a very smart matt dark sea blue colour scheme for most of their lives until around 1946 when they reverted to natural metal.
Four of them lasted in the training role until mid-1956, the last P-35s anywhere.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Pixels God's will be pleased by this offering.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!