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After Curtiss had won a contract for the P-36, the Army wanted to look into performance of the new Allison V-12 motor, equipped with a turbo-charger. Curtiss took the original Hawk 75 prototype, and fitted an Allison motor in place of the Twin Wasp radial in a lengthened nose. Prestone (glycol) radiators were fitted behind the motor, fed by air scoops, and the pilot's cockpit was therefore moved back to a position very near the tail. The turbo-charger was mounted under the engine. All this was done in a bit less than three months. The result was accepted by the Army as the XP-37 in June. In December, 1937, the Army ordered a trial batch of 13 machines, under the designation YP-37. These were slightly different than the original, with a longer nose, and with the fuselage lengthened a bit behind the cockpit, which was fitted with rear vision side panels, and some extra glazing on the fuselage spine. Building these took a great deal of time, with the first machine not being delivered till the end of April, 1939. Prior to official acceptance, this first YP-37 participated in a competition for a 'pursuit' contract in February, 1939, the other entries being a Seversky AP-4 and a Curtiss XP-40. A participating test pilot described the contest as having been won by the XP-40 by default. The YP-37 was more a test-bed than a serious attempt at designing a combat machine, Poor visibility, particularly in taxi-ing and landing, made the type quite unsuitable for service use. The machine's worst problems were inherent to the turbo-supercharger (by General Electric). These ran from basic metallurgy (finding materials that could stand up to the stress and heat of the turbine's task) to difficulties of controlling operation of the thing (early controls were manual and both difficult and distracting to work). These difficulties led the Army to discard turbo-chargers for the Allison in single-engine designs. The full batch of YP-37s was not delivered till then end of 1939. Ten were delivered to the 8th Pursuit Group and the 36th Pursuit Group at Langley Field in Virginia in 1940 for service trials. In short order at least four were wrecked in accidents. The rest did not last long. Several went to Maxwell Air Base in Alabama, two took part in cold weather tests in Alaska. One fetched up in camouflage at a display of camouflaged equipment arranged for a Congressional delegation at Bolling Field. Their final destination was Chanute Field, and the 10th Air Base Squadron of the Air Corps Technical School, where they shed their turbo-chargers and served as instructional airframes. This model represents one of the machine delivered to the 8th Pursuit Group, and the '102' number indicates it was 'extra' equipment of that Group's HQ flight. It is based on a photograph I found on a memorabilia site, where someone had posted up some of his father's pictures taken when he was a ground crewman at Langley. It is the only picture I have seen showing the old GHQ Air Force markings on a YP-37; most pictures of these show them marked with the later designator system. The model is built from an LS Models resin kit, and if anyone offers you one of these, back slowly away, showing your palms, and shaking your head. You do not want it. The model is finished with aluminum foil, boiled with egg-shells to take off the shine, and prepared with MicroScaIe foil adhesive. I built this early last year, as part of a P-40 STGB, and the whole sorry tale can be found here: One note; the framing on the cockpit 'hood' is wrong', it should be centered, not off to the rear. But with vacu-formed canopy there is only so much can be done....

My first work in progress so you can see why I hardly ever finish a model. The model is the Mitsubishi Ki-15-1 army recon plane from 1937. The model 1 has a 9 cylinder engine with ring type engine cowling and no cowl flaps. It is an old kit but the detail is very nice . The interior is bare so I decided to add some detail: Framing is first Nick Millman's blog tells us that the army's Mitsubishi Ki-21 Sally bomber had a blue interior. The Mitsubishi navy planes used green but I figured that the Army would insist on their own colour. The floors were next The doubled frame lines up with the main wing spar. The observer's floor with compass and the fuel tanks between the pilot and observer. The blue is Valleo 70.925 intense blue. I have only found three interior pics and the drawings from the Flight magazine. These are all from the record breaking flight of the Kamikaze in 1937. The army aircraft probably did not have the fuel tanks in the center as there is very little space for extra radios, RDF equipment, cameras and the like. Observers floor with compass, seat not finished Fuel tanks rear all for now. Garry c