Introduction
Most aviation enthusiasts assume that the Curtiss P-40N, like General Douglas MacArthur’s “Old Soldier”, just faded away after the end of World War II. This was most certainly not the case as far as the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force was concerned. As the Japanese began leaving their former Dutch conquests in 1945, they left behind a motley collection of combat aircraft, some of which were appropriated and flown by the Indonesian insurgents, who were determined to get the Dutch out of their islands so they could become an independent country, in accordance with the postwar trend of ending European colonialism in that part of the world.