On October 14, 1938, the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk made its first flight, leading to an eventual production run of 13,738 of the rugged fighters. Although often referred to as “obsolete” at the beginning of World War II, and famously rejected by the British for combat in the Northern European theater, the plane flown by the Flying Tigers with its intimidating shark mouth paint job became one of the main Allied fighters of World War II. (Previously, on November 6th we featured an article, The Hawker Hurricane: The Most Underrated Fighter Plane of World War II, and on May 29th we ran another article titled 10 Most Underappreciated Fighter Planes, while on December 20th we published the article History and Headlines Corrects What History Got Wrong About the Flying Tigers. Please see these articles for more context on the subject of the P-40.)
Digging Deeper
Developed from the Curtiss P-36 Hawk, a decently performing fighter for its time (introduced 1938), although under-gunned with only a single .50 caliber and a single .30 caliber machine guns, the P-40 differed from the P-36 mainly by the use of an inline V-12 Allison engine with a single speed supercharger and improved armament of 2 X .50 caliber and 4 X .30 caliber machine guns (later upgraded to either 4 X .50 caliber machine guns or more commonly 6 X .50 caliber machine guns). While only 1115 of the P-36 models were built (215 for the US Army and the other 900 for export), the P-40 became the third most produced US fighter plane of all time, trailing only the P-47 and the P-51. (All P-40’s were built at the same Curtiss factory in Buffalo, New York.)
