Curtiss P-40N-1 Warhawk, white 60, “Rough Cobb”, 89th FS, 80th FG, Assam, India, 1944
This was for a group build our local club did for the show circuit in 2019. I completed this Hobby Boss P-40M as a P-40N-1 back in 2018.
This was a fun little build suggested by a member in our local Club (Southern Maryland Scale Modelers). Ultimately he made a base for it in order to mimic a famous photo.
The Subject
A good history of the Burma Banshees is here. In short, they initially trained on the P-47 for deployment to England but were redirected to India and converted to the P-40N in 1943.
The P-40N-1 was externally similar to the P-40M, the N model being a lightweight variant of the P-40. Only 400 were produced before the factory shifted to producing the N-5 its the revised canopy typically associated with the P-40N.
The Model
This is the 1/72 easy build kit by Hobby Boss. It’s an obvious copy, albeit simplified, of the Academy P-40M because the shape issue with the rear quarter lights behind the canopy match the Academy kit.
I did not mind this one flaw (for now anyway) and it meant I could quickly get to a finished model. The markings are by Rising Decals who provide a sheet for quite a few P-40s for the 80th FG.
Construction was quick, I was able to complete the basic build in an afternoon, to include some light filling and sanding along the seams. I cleaned up the fiddly hits and prepped it all for painting.
Paints used were Tamiya for the Olive Drab (XF-51), Neutral Gray (XF-83), and Insignia Red (XF-7). I used Mr Hobby H340 for the Medium Green distributive blotches. Everything was airbrushed.
As already noted, decals are from the Rising Decals sheet dedicated to Burma Banchees P-40s. The settled down nicely with water but I applied MicroSol to help them just to be certain and had no issues with silvering.
Summary
Definitely a fun build. We brought all out models in and lined them up on the base. It even made it the 2019 Nats at Chattanooga!
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