Replies

They were indeed the RedTAILS, not hawks.

The article I posted was only an excerpt. Here is a section of the article that I didn't excerpt that explains the name "Red Hawk."

“The name Red Hawk honors the legacy of Tuskegee Airmen and pays homage to their signature red-tailed aircraft from World War II... The name is also a tribute to the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, an American fighter aircraft that first flew in 1938 and was flown by the 99th Fighter Squadron, the U.S. Army Air Forces’ first African American fighter squadron.

So "Red" for the Tuskegee Red Tails, and "Hawk" for the P-40 Warhawk.

The only photo I found of the Tuskegee Airmen with a P-40 does not show the wing leading edge. Given the year (1943, apparently) and the greater production numbers, it is almost certainly a P-40E (six .50 Brownings instead of four like the P-40D). It is clearly an Allison V-1710 - not a Merlin V-1650 - model since its down-draft carburetor intake is visible, so it is not a P-40F.

Donovan Berlin was a brilliant designer, and the P-36 Hawk and P-40 Warhawk series were underrated. Berlin never got the two-stage supercharger he craved; that was the main flaw in the craft - as with other pre-war designs, the P-39 Airacobra and F2A Buffalo. That was due mainly to interwar military dogma that viewed fighters as largely low-to-medium-altitude ground support aircraft, not high-altitude interceptors.

The XP-40 had a belly radiator, and thus anticipated the P-51; the government forced Curtiss to move it forward, which increased drag. In fact, the P-51 was designed as a direct rebuttal to the British, who wanted North American to license-build the Warhawk. There is a clear design affinity: dimensions, including wing area, are very closely similar.

The official British test pilots rated the P-36 Hawk (and, separately, the F2A Buffalo) as a “superior flying machine” to the Supermarine Spitfire - maneuverability and handling, versus climb and speed - and even the P-40, heavier than the P-36, and underpowered, especially at altitude, was regarded as having excellent flying qualities: a pilot’s airplane.

The main advantage that the Messerschmitt Bf-109 and Mitsubishi A6M Zero-Sen had was thus due to their engines: fuel-injected Daimler-Benz 601/605 inverted V-12, and two-stage Nakajima Sakae twin-row radial, respectively.

The great success of the AVG proved that pilot skill and combat tactics were of vital importance: The outnumbered Flying Tigers, flying both earlier and later Warhawks (Tomahawk-B/C and Kittyhawk-D/E), achieved a spectacular kill-to-loss ratio against the various Japanese fighters, including the Zero. (Also, see the outnumbered Finns, who achieved a similar success ratio against Russia while flying the Brewster F2A-1 Buffalo.)

A two-stage late-war GM Allison, or the Rolls Royce Merlin XX (which is what Berlin coveted) would have made the Warhawk competitive almost to the end of WWII.

P.S.

Don Berlin gained access to Rolls Royce’s inner labs, and saw the Merlin XX bench tested. He came back to the US and tried to get that engine for the P-40. He actually got in trouble with the FBI, since that was a classified project.

In the end, it was the P-51 that got the two-stage Merlin, not the P-40.