Hobbycraft Hawk 75 Fixed Landing Gear

Greetings iModeler amigos.

The P-36 Hawk represented America's leap into modern aviation on the pursuit side. After winning the 1937 pursuit competition, Curtiss received and order for 210 aircraft (largest order since WWI). P-36s flew for 14 countries, and saw combat in 7 of them. Around 1000 P-36s were built and approx 400 were delivered to the French. It's main contribution was to provide the airframe for the inline-engined P-40.

My original Hobbycraft Hawk 75M, Chinese 4 gun variant was old and damaged, and I lacked Nationalist Chinese replacement decals, so I converted it to a 'what-if' fixed landing gear, cannon armed version for France. Mainly, I was in the mood for some Armée de l'Air camo paint. Fixed landing gear Hawk 75s only flew for Argentina, Peru, Thailand, China. I added an additional 'what-if' with a cleaned up fixed landing gear w/single strut, rather than the klunky, actual wide landing gear spat that Curtiss settled for. Some reports I have read indicated the wide spats resulted in difficulty landing in cross winds. So I "fixed" that in my what-if. I debated doing my what-if in Finnish markings, but settled an France as my choice.

I believe this plane would have worked for France (better than say, the Koolhoven F.K.58 emergency order), in spite of France their having the logistics and maintenance 'savoir faire' for (all) an retracting landing gear force. My what-if scenario envisions that this variant could have served @100 statute miles from the front line (problematic after 13 May 1940), and its specialty could have been engaging Heinkels and Dorniers that were ripping up the front line airfields in the May-June offensive. In this role it would have engaged Bf-109D/Es at the limit of their endurance, and survived by outturning the Messerschmitts until the 109s' remaining fuel went critical. In the real world French Hawk 75s were armed with all 7.5mm (.30 cal) machine guns (no .50 cal nose guns) which meant they had to engage German bombers at an uncomfortably close range, and with no armored wind screen. A cannon-armed Hawk 75 could have engaged from beyond the range of German MG-34 defensive armament, and done more damage than a 4 or 6 gun (real world) MG variant.

I am also posting pics from all my P-36s, including the old (very) klunky AMT version from 1977. That model makes me wish that Monogram had produced a 1/48 version of the the Hawk 75 - they were so close after they made their epic P-40B/C model. It is a shame they did not do a 1/48 P-36 at the same time.

Thanks for indulging my outlandish P-36 mania for this post.

8 additional images. Click to enlarge.