1/48 Trumpeter P-40C Tomahawk

Gallery Article by Phil Mead on June 15 2011

 

Of all the P-40s, this is the one that I like most with its long slender nose, so why did I wait so long to build one?  Well if you build Australian subjects, you have to wait for the decals to be available and then a decent kit.  I have made the old Monogram kit many years ago and the cockpit area was appalling.  The Academy kit is not bad but I think that Trumpeter have come up with the best in 1/48.  This is a kit which has some good points and others which make me scratch the back of my head and wonder “Why?”.  I particularly liked the off-set tail fin (this is to counteract the prop wash, particularly on takeoff) and the separate ailerons, rudder, elevators and flaps.  I do wonder about the instrument panel and why have clear plastic formation lights but grey plastic Navigation lights?

 

3 Squadron RAAF were the first unit to operate the new Curtis P-40s in the Middle East theatre,  training at Lydda in July 1941.  The Squadron moved to Rosh Pinna in the same month and I assume that it was there when Alan Rawlinson used this aircraft to shoot down 3 Vichy-French Martin 167s during one sortie, having previously scored a “Hat Trick” using a Hurricane.

 

I was looking for a quick build that wouldn't go on for months and with minimal modification. I wanted a result and had been eyeing off the Tomahawk for a while having the decals I wanted in stock. I often took it out of the box for a look and it looked good. It was a bit of a surprise, then, that when I started to build it I noticed for the first time that the other side of the parts were pitted with large ejection pin holes. Lots of them! There were enough craters to populate the Moon and on one undercarriage door one went right through to the dark side. The good news was that in most places the kit is engineered to hide them. I only needed to fill the undercarriage doors and the flap areas using Millput so that I could remove the excess with a Cotton bud dipped in water.

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Cockpit
The cockpit is a bit disappointing with minimal detail. The seat provided was about 1/72 scale so I replaced it with an ancient etched metal one which was at least in scale. I cannot understand why Trumpeter moulded the Instrument panel in clear plastic with holes for the instruments backing onto a blank piece of Grey plastic. Not even a printed piece of acetate with the instruments on it was supplied. I painted the clear piece matt black and the backing gloss black and left it at that. I did like the fact that the head rest was moulded separately and could be added after painting. Eduard painted seatbelts are the highlight of this area.

Undercarriage
The main wheels are moulded in five parts allowing individual parts to be painted before construction. Well done! Unfortunately the tail wheel strut must be added before the fuselage halves are combined but its not a large problem.

Fuselage
I assume that the moulding process required the upper cowls of the fuselage (parts A19 & A20) to be moulded separately. Two machine guns with 45mm long barrels are attached to part A19 and must be pushed through the holes at the front of part A20 so I decided that I would put them on in one go. This was tricky, especially as the gun magazine (part A24) pushed part 19 out of alignment. I tried to clamp it in place but it still ended up out of position on the left side. Looking on the net I noticed that other modellers had the same problem so I hid it as best I could with weathering. If I were to build another one I would cut the top off the magazine (because you can't see it) and glue parts A19 and A20 together before adding them to the fuselage. By the way, only 1 mm of those machine guns can be seen. I noticed that all the photos I had of 3 Sqn Tomahawks had an aerial mast on top of the rear fuselage so I made one with some Aeroclub airfoil extrusions. The HF aerial was added from the wings to the tail fin with EZ Line. 

Wings
The wheel wells have all four sides added with good detail and that is more than some of the more established companies give you. The only thing I didn't like about the wing was that the four machine guns must be added before the wing tops and bottom are mated and as they are very, very thin this is precarious at best and I took daily odds on the chances that they would survive the build but they are surprisingly resilient and lasted the distance. Next time I would cut the barrels off and insert them after painting. I have to say that I thought that these barrels were well under scale but when reference photos were checked they were about right after all.

It is great to see a kit with all three flying surfaces and the flaps moulded separately.

Call me old fashioned but I like my ailerons to oppose each other. The kit ailerons have stubs moulded on them so when added they both droop! I had to laugh and cut them all off. I noticed that on the Trumpeter Wellington box there are photos of the finished kit with both ailerons drooping but on inspection of the instruction sheet I found that they appear to be moveable so it must have been the photographers fault. 

Propeller
The Propeller is not attached to the spinner but wedged between it's two parts and the back plate seems to be undersized. I didn't think that it would stay together but it has. Some nice detail is given on the fuselage front but is completely hidden by the spinner. If you want to see it don't glue the prop on.

Lights
The landing light is provided so I glued a small piece of shiny aluminum foil inside the wing, masked the lens and attached it. The navigation lights are moulded to the wings and tail fin. The lights on the wings were painted Silver Chrome Trim and then covered with Clear Green and Clear Red. I cut the lights off the tail as they would be clear and added two of the clear lights provided in the Special Hobby Wirraway kit. I had replaced them with bigger ones on the Wirraway because I didn't think that I could get them in place but they went on easily after having their backs painted silver. The two blue formation lights on the fuselage sides were painted silver on the inside and the lens with Clear Blue. These parts seemed undersized but when it was time to attach them they proved to be a tight fit. 

  

Paint
The colour scheme supplied with the decals was Curtis Dark Earth FS30099, Curtis Dark Green FS34092 and Curtis Aircraft Grey FS36473 with a Sky Blue spinner FS35550. I used a different blue for this but the Green and Brown are the same FS numbers a RAAF Foliage Green and Earth Brown. 

I used Gunze Sangyo FS34092 for the green and Tamiya Sky Grey (FS26622?) for the Grey. I have always had trouble with the Polyscale paints but I found an Australian brand of thinner supplied by Just Glues(?) which worked a treat so I used Poly S FS30099 for the brown.

The Photos of these aircraft all seem very clean with little fading so I kept the weathering to a minimum.

Decals
I was very critical of the Aussie Decals product in my Wirraway review and the Tomahawk decals are no different. I decided to use the kit roundels and fin flash and Aussie decals for the rest. The kit decals are very, very thick! A lot of settling solution was needed to set them down over the access door on the left side of the fuselage and the lights on the tail fin. The Aussie Decals provided the nose art consisting of a small dog (Snifter) having relieved himself on the Palm Tree symbol of the Afrika Korps. Fortunately two versions are provided because while I was removing the water from beneath it the little dog came off the decal onto the cloth. I placed some Microscale decal fluid over the next one and replaced the first. Snifter, by the way, was an Australian cartoon character of the 1930s and '40s and can be found on the side of many Aussie aircraft from that era. The code letter R was not a problem but the aircraft serial had lines of print missing like the roundels.

Conclusion
There are probably after market items available for the cockpit which will improve it a lot. Clear navigation lights are available after market and of course the Aries coloured seatbelts add to the finished product.

I might complain about various aspects of a kit but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy building them. Fixing the errors is all part of the process. This was a fun quick build and I think it looks pretty good when finished and I'm happy to have it beside my other four P-40 variants.

I was going to finish the CA Fairey Battle next but I have a photograph of a 3 Sqn RAAF P40N Kittyhawk IV in Italy in the same colour scheme but with the famous Southern Cross emblazoned Blue rudder. With the Hasagawa kit in the stash it will be hard to resist. 

Happy modelling,

Phil Mead

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Photos and text © by Phil Mead