Curtiss P-40B Pearl Harbour Veteran

[mauld]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBrjdobW2p0

[champ driver]

Although it doesn't have the looks of the Spitfire or the Mustang, I still love the P-40's classic lines, and it's a B model to boot.
Thanks

[Louis]

I agree. If I had a budget for warbirds I'd much rather have a P-40 than a P-51. The P40 has a WWII history in my home state, flown by both the US Army Air Force and the RCAF. I've heard they fly nicer than P-51's too.

[dstaffeldt]

Unfortunately, this P-40 it out of commission for a while due to a recent incident after returning to the U.S. will be great to see it return to flying some day.

[Bill Greenwood]

Re looks , I might not be neutral observer, but no warplane looks as good as a Spitfire, but a P-40 does have its own appeal, with some of the 1930's antique flavor combined with monoplane fighter elements.

Thanks to Bill ( Tiger) Destefani I was able to get a short sample flight in his P-40, so a quick impressions; great ailerons light and effective, takes a Lot of force just to move rudder pedals to taxi, really heavy, not too good forward visibility on ground, Allison engine doesn't seem as smooth as a Merlin in flight.

In combat the key was to keep speed up and use good dive speed for one attack and then dive away. It's big deficiency was lack of climb performance, especially above 15,000 feet where the Merlin really began to shine.

[Bill Greenwood]

It would be surprising to find a P-40 whose history could be traced back to Pearl Harbor at the time of the attacks and which survived.

Can you tell us who owns this P-40 now and where it is?

Thanks

[Kyle Boatright]

They groundlooped it in Florida. Here's a link:

http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=170738

[1600vw]

They groundlooped it in Florida. Here's a link:

http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=170738

Bummer. At least no one was hurt but some pride.

Tony

[Kyle Boatright]

Bummer. At least no one was hurt but some pride.

Tony

It'll get rebuilt. Lots worse have. The gearbox and prop are the hardest bits to replace. Hopefully, they only damaged the prop.

There's a guy here in Atlanta who has built tooling for virtually all of the P-40 airframe parts. He's even set up to do forgings and some of the other things that are outside the capability of many people. You should see the projects he has in his shop.

[c322348]

No such place as Pearl Harbour...

[rwanttaja]

No such place as Pearl Harbour...
Captain Cooke might differ.....

Ron Wanttaja

[eiclan]

The Kittyhawk(P40) was used extensively by the RAAF in the western desert. Wg Cm Bobby Gibbes was the Commander of No3 Sqn RAAF and got ten kills with this aeroplane,having said that he was shot down twice and once three hundred miles behind the lines and after walking fifty miles was picked up by a LRDG patrol with the immortal words"gday cobber,got any water". The Australians loved them,they were tough and good for ground attack. Cheers Ross

[crusty old aviator]

A friend of mine was a WASP and ferried P-40's from Buffalo to Anchorage, where some Soviet pilot would take the plane west from there. She thought it was an awful plane to taxi and fly: the controls were heavy, unbalanced, and hard to keep in trim. She preferred the the Bell fighters much more. Instead of flying cross country across Canada, direct to Anchorage, she had to follow roads that paralleled the border, in case of a forced landing, such was the War Department's limited faith in the aircraft they were provide Stalin's air force. The only planes she had problems with were the Mustangs coming out of Dallas. Climbing out of Greenville, NC, she had the Packard Merlin pack it in so she bailed out. Returning to the airport, they gave her another one to fly to Gander, only to have that one seize up about five minutes out. She had to hit the silk again, and landed about 100 feet away from the burning pile that had been a beautiful P-51D a moment earlier.

My uncle grew up in Buffalo during the war, and he recalls the P-40's "buzzing around, everywhere, all the time."