1:48 RAF SEAC Curtis Mohawk IV

[Kallisti]

I've just realised that I didn't post about the 5 Sqn Curtis Mohawk I built towards the end of 2012. This was during my period of - ahem - enforced absence from BM at the end of 2012, so it got completely missed.

This was as a preliminary build for the "Aircraft my Father Fixed" project I've been working on for the last coupleo f years and which you can read more about here. This build involves a plane that was used by 5 Squadron in India/Burma in the end of 1941 until it was replaced by Hurricane IIc and IId in June 43 after which in Nov 43 my father was posted there from his time with 81 Sqn in North Africa and Sicily.

The Curtiss Mohawk IV (also designated Curtiss P-36 Model 75) was considered a formidable fighter in close dogfighting by the Japanese air forces. The RAF's Mohawk IVs came from at least three different sources. The majority of them were part of a French order for 795 Hawk H75A-4s. These were powered by a 1,200hp Wright R-1820-G205A Cyclone engine, replacing the Pratt & Whitney engines of the earlier French aircraft and the Mohawk I, II and III. They were armed with six 7.5mm guns, two in the nose and four in the wings.

The source kit is an old one from HobbyCraft:

with decals sourced from Aeromaster:

I can't truthfully say its one of my best builds - several things went wrong or didn't turn out as I intended. For a start, the base didn't work as well as I expected. Its made up of a layer of claycrete (aka papier mache) which when it dried shrank much more than I expected, so pulled away from the edges and also lifted the base card up at the corners!

The major thing that went wrong however is I attempted to fade the paintwork using a new technique which didn't turn out at all well (as you can see!) It was a useful experiment in that it told me NOT to try this again!

To add some interest, I broke out the 1:48 scale Aber toolbox PE I picked up a couple of years ago and spent a headache inducing afternoon working with microscopic sized PE pieces to assemble the tools - each spanner came in two parts and the handles on the screwdrivers, files and hacksaw were also two extra pieces. The pliers and scissors were also two pieces. The toolbox should have been a 3 layer cantilever thing, but It was waaay too small and complicated! The steplader was robbed from my old Battle of Britain diorama and comes from the ICM RAF ground crew set.

(this photo showed me that some of the machine guns are a bit crooked!)

Toolbox:

As I said, not one of my best builds but interesting in its own right and I thought I'd post it here anyway for completeness sake with my ongoing project.

[batcode]

Nice work,looks great

[Kallisti]

Thanks

[HOUSTON]

KallistiUK,

STUNNING. Work....

Now looking forward to your Javelin or the and TGE lavoro Anson..

Way to go..

[tonyot]

Very nice indeed,

Cheers

Tony

[wyverns4]

Nice one! Always great to see a P-36/H-75 especially when built as nicely as this

I have a cunning plan to build at least one from all 14 nations that used this airframe and seeing that we might be exiled to africa for longer than agreed, , it might be happening sooner...

Christian the Married and exiled to africa, what to do? Hmmmmm, stash...