Belts look great, my friend @kopperhed!

Yes, they did have seatbelts/lap belts, they did not have shoulder harnesses. I guess they were going to leave that up to the British. When the P-40s were sent instead to the AVG, all they had were seat belts/lap belts no harnesses.

I do know the Export Hawk model 281 (i think that was the number) had british equipment like a british style seat and pitot tube.

G’day Kyle (@kopperhed), Tom (@tcinla), Seamus (@seamus1), George (@gblair) and Spiros (@fiveten),

The US didn’t seem to have adopted shoulder harnesses until early in the war.

Certainly P-40s delivered to the RAF and RAAF are described as arriving with lap belts only and were retrofitted with RAF harnesses. I guess to do that they must have come with the attachment points fitted - perhaps that was the reason for the squared-off export seat on early P-40s (including AVG P-40s).

Early USN aircraft - F4F and SBD for example - also only had lap belts.

I don’t recall reading when the US changed to full harnesses but it must have been due to information coming out of Europe.