The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk easily got lost among the more glamorous names of World War II fighter aircraft like the P-38 Lightning, P-47 Thunderbolt, and P-51 Mustang. While the Warhawk saw extensive service and indeed was one of the most recognizable aircraft of the conflict due to its appearance, poor performance relegated it to relative obscurity in most modern military literature.
David L. “Tex” Hill, one of the Flying Tiger aces, put it this way: “In the hands of a good pilot, the P-40 was capable of performing well outside its designed parameters, and I’m convinced that it could out-maneuver and out-fight anything in the sky. It was rugged, had fine handling—except when you put it into a spin, and you never flew a P-40 if you didn’t wish you had something a bit better.” This, perhaps, is the best summary of the paradox of the Warhawk: an airplane reliable and rugged, yet it always left its pilots wishing for something just a bit more modern.
Led by Don Berlin, the chief engineer of Curtiss-Wright, development took the now-outdated P-36 design and married it to the Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled engine. Despite its lack of a supercharger, 13,378 examples would be built, making it by far the third most-produced American fighter of the entire war.
The Warhawk saw service in most theaters of the war, from the Pacific to North Africa. The aircraft was operated by many Allied forces. The American Volunteer Group, known as the Flying Tigers, achieved excellent success with the P-40 in China, Burma, and India. Led by Claire Chennault, AVG pilots formed and used tactics that took full advantage of the aircraft’s attributes, allowing them to best their chief Japanese opponents, the Zero and Oscar fighters. It was not long before the AVG’s shark-mouthed Tomahawks became the stuff of legend, said to have brought down nearly 300 Japanese aircraft against only 12 losses of their own to enemy bullets in exchange.
In the Pacific theater, a variant of the P-40N proved to be one of the most important, flying air-to-air missions, normally with escort of bombers, and ground attacks. Its resilience and efficiency in mismatched combat against Japanese fighters gave it an excellent reputation. The aircraft also saw action in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the China-Burma-India Theater, where it supported efforts against Axis forces and Japanese aggression.
Despite its many weaknesses, the P-40 quickly earned a reputation for its ruggedness and its capability to take a great deal of punishment. It could out-dive almost any target to which it turned the guns, very useful during the fighting. Built like a dump truck, the Warhawk carried heavy armament and became a steady workhorse under a lot of combat situations.
Its promise was not fulfilled without committing itself to war, early on, with the P-40. On December 7, 1941, 2nd Lt. George Welch took to the skies to engage the attack on Pearl Harbor, scoring four kills to become one of the 16-kill air aces. He showed that much more could be expected from the Warhawk if there was a good pilot behind the controls.
Modifications to give the P-40 better performance resulted throughout the war so that by the P-40D model, the nose was shortened and the radiator was deepened to give the Warhawk its definitive shape. The P-40F variant used the Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, but this much-improved model reverted to Allison because the high demand for Merlin engines was required for the new P-51 Mustang.
Today, the P-40 Warhawk is a testament to resilience and bravery. There are about 20 or so of all varieties of P-40 still flying, with some 80 more preserved in museums or under restoration. The P-40 was slow in comparison to its contemporaries, but it sealed its place in history by holding the line where nothing else could in the most difficult period of modern warfare. As General Henry “Hap” Arnold was heard to say,” But for the P-40, the Japanese would have come to Australia.”