Special Hobby 1/72 P-40D Warhawk/Kittyhawk Mk.I ‘Four Guns’ Plastic Model Kit

The P-40B/C Hawk/Tomahawk Mk.I/II fighter planes produced by Curtiss in the early war years and delivered both to the USAAF and their forces of the Allies lacked the performance of British fighters and most importantly of the German opponents. So the designers at Curtiss were faced with the necessity to improve the plane rather extensively and power it with the new vesion of the Allison engine, the V-1710-39 type. The emerging P-40D Warhawk/Kittyhawk Mk.I was to be the first type of this second generation of fighters. A total of only slightly above 40 was eventually produced, being armed with four wing machine guns. On the production line, the type was soon replaced by a futher improved and mass-produced P-40E Warhawk/Kittyhawk Mk.Ia which mainly differed by having six gun armament.

Despite onl very few P-40Ds were produced, our kit set is still very atrractive. It offers a mount of Neville Duke, the highest-scoring RAF pilot of the Meditteranean, a plane that wore the famous shark teeth on its nose, the second option is another MTO based Kittyhawk, this one as operated by the 3 Sqn RAAF. The third option is an ex-US machine captured by the Japanese on the Philippines island of Mindanao which therefore wears Japanese markings, a yellow nose section and also a very nice looking shark mouth. The final scheme is that of a US machine as flown during a pre-war military exercises and bearing temporary applied markings.

• Limited edition
• Interesting schemes
• Excellent styrene parts, 3D-printed parts plus an etched template to adapt the machine bays panel lines
• Detailed instructions - Digital version available here