1/48 Hasegawa Curtis P40 Kittyhawk

Gallery Article by Richard Spreckley on June 3 2016

 

      

Curtis P40 Kittyhawk RAF 1942 Neville Duke

With RAF Tangmere just down the road from me and my local model club displaying on the Museums 'Bader Down Day' this August I thought that this model would certainly fit in as Neville Duke has such a history with RAF Tangmere when he broke the sound barrier in his Hawker Hunter.

With RAF Tangmere just down the road from me and my local model club displaying on the Museums 'Bader Down Day' this August I thought that this model would certainly fit in as Neville Duke has such a history with RAF Tangmere when he broke the sound barrier in his Hawker Hunter.

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The Hasegawa kit is sublime, fitting extremely well with good detail for such a kit. Adding Eduards interior PE set rises the game to a new level. The only other extra that I did was to drill out the exhaust stacks and guns to add some depth.

The build went smoothly and having lots of photos of the AF Air-wing in 1942 it was obvious that these P40s were heavily used and in by no means a pristine condition, so I set out to add a level of weathering through pre and post shading, Tamiya powders and a wash to get the right effect.

As the build went on it became obvious that this bird needed to be shown its proper environment; the desert, so I found a resin RAF desert pilot and using a set of plastic from my local hobby store and other bits and pieces that I had lying around I built up a small diorama presenting Neville Duke with his aircraft.

Painting was done using Vallejo Air paints, which I love to use, the pattern was free hand as the middle stone was added in theater and was not neat (Duke's aircraft had clear over-spray on the side fuselage roundels).

Richard Spreckley

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Photos and text © by Richard Spreckley