History

What more can be said about the P-40? The P-40 was made famous by the AVG “Flying Tigers”, but was utilized by almost all of the American allies during World War II. The Warhawk was also used in almost every theater of operation during the war.

Every county involved during the war evaluated captured aircraft in some form or another, even with pressing them into service due to the lack of spare parts, such as the example of his kit.

Kit

This is a Limited Edition kit from Hasegawa, and compliments the rest of Hasegawa’s P-40 line. The kit is produced in light grey plastic. It features recessed panel lines with a minimum of flash.

As with most aircraft kits, you start with the cockpit. When complete, you have a nice representation of a P-40 cockpit. One downside is that there are no seatbelts on the seat. You will have to go aftermarket for these.

The next steps include fuselage assembly. You need to use care here, because Hasegawa utilizes the front halves of the fuselage for several variants and just changes the rear halves for the different variants. The instructions would have you glue the front fuselage halves together, and then add the rear fuselage plugs. Doing it this way can lead to some nasty steps and panel line misalignment. I recommend taking your time and gluing the rear pieces to their respective front ones, and then gluing the complete fuselage halves together. I did it this way and still had some slight steps and one panel line misaligned. It took some Mr. Dissolved Putty, sanding, and a little rescribing to fix it, and even then some of it is still visible.

When assembling the wings, I would recommend sanding the trailing edges of the wings. This will give them a more realistic appearance, as they are a little on the thick side.

From here on out, the rest of the build is pretty straightforward. One other note of caution – the propeller is connected by a poly cap. Once the propeller is inserted, there was and extremely sloppy fit. I ended up gluing the hub to the fuselage.

There are three different marking choices provide in the box, and a bonus on the decals to make the “Aleutian Tigers” with instructions for decal placement. The markings that I chose were of “The airplane tested with investigation at Bandung airfield in Jawa, 1942”. This is not a misprint – that is how it is written in the instructions.

Overall, this is a pretty nice kit. I would not quite put it into the shake and bake category due to the facts of the fuselage plugs and the seam filling that is involved. When done, you will have a well known plane in unusual markings.

I would like to thank Hobbico for providing the review kit and IPMS/USA for allowing me to review it.