North American NA 50 "Torito", Peru, July 1941, scratch conversion from Academy /SH Harvard kit 1,72

[JWM]

Hi,

Within the Texan/Harvard STGB I tried to construct the NA 50 fighter conversion of Harvard. The work was prepossessed by discussion on WWII part of BM Forum 

Thanks for all comments given there. 

Following the discussion the WIP thread is here:

 

The NA 50 was a kind of "bush fighter" concept - an idea of cheep and "enough good" modern fighter based on a two seater trainer proposed to the small, underdeveloped countries. This idea, born in the end of thirties died when WW2 ended and US had thousands of not-needed (thus really cheep) much better war machines sold then to all over the world, among them to all Latin America countries. Th NA 50 was produced in series of 13 machines and the only country which used it was Peru. Then there were two more attempts of making a single seat fighter from  Harvard/Texan: the NA 68 (P-64) and CAC Boomerang.  Peru used those fighters in a war against Ecuator them in July 1941. This was a small local war (still people were dying in it), I think completely forgotten due to the times,  when it happened. Peru had much more advanced military equipment then Ecuador, the fight ended after about month. More here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuadorian–Peruvian_War. 

Below is the result of mine attempts, the machine No 50948 of Lt Cap. Antonio Alberti, (squadron leader) of 41 Escuadrilla de XXI Escuadron de Caza of Peru from the short war in July 1941 against Ecuador:

 

Comments welcomes

Regards

Jerzy-Wojtek

 

 

Edited July 5, 2021 by JWM

[Spitfire31]

Good model of an Interesting 'poor man's fighter' project that I hadn't heard of.

 

Creative modelling, indeed!

 

Kind regards,

 

Joachim

[Wulfman]

Looks good to me, great modelling of an interesting project !

 

Wulfman

[Old Man]

Great work on a great subject, Sir!

 

I will take a close look at your WIP to see how you did it.

[KRK4m]

19 hours ago, JWM said:

 

Th NA 50 was produced in series of 13 machines and the only country which used it was Peru. Then there were two more attempts of making a single seat fighter from  Harvard/Texan: the NA 68 (P-64) and CAC Boomerang.

 

 

 

Actually, Peru only used seven of them, as the total of 13 also includes the later 6-gun NA-68 (with a longer fuselage and a different wing), of which six (built for Thailand) ended up as USAAF P-64 fighter-trainers.

Anyway, well done, Brother...

Cheers

Michael

Edited July 4, 2021 by KRK4m

[JWM]

18 hours ago, KRK4m said:

Peru only used seven of them, as the total of 13 also includes the later 6-gun NA-68 (with a longer fuselage and a different wing), of which six (built for Thailand) ended up as USAAF P-64 fighter-trainers.

Thank you, it is like it is said in Wiki (what is misleading), but in fact Peru had just 6 and the NA 68 is more or lass different (new wings, tail, cowling, but not engine, armament and tail,  perhaps like differences among early and late Me 109 or rather between Spit Mk XII and Mk XXI)

Regards

J-W

 

[Josh G]

Excellent. I did the Planet Models 1/48 kit of this plane.

[JWM]

1 hour ago, Josh G said:

Excellent. I did the Planet Models 1/48 kit of this plane.

Thank you.

It is interesting that in 1/48 resin kit exists and none in 1/72. I followed the painting instruction of Planet 1/48 kit, but I think that I found it has wrong span of ailerons, I am sorry to say. Still, the main problem is lack of reliable drawings to it - despite preserved in Peru machine...

Regards

J-W