Hasegawa 1/72 P-40E

Modeling Subjects Aircraft
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Flown by Col Robert L Scott 1942

One of my favorite books growing up was the autobiography Col Robert L Scott wrote about some of his time in the CBI in the early part of the war. Chennault of Flying Tiger fame had given Scott a single P-40E from a consignment heading for the flying Tigers for Scott to use in Burma and to act as escort for the ‘hump’ transports.

Scott called this plane ‘old exterminator’ and with it fought a one man war over Burma and the Himalayas, often repainting the spinner and changing his call sign to seem as if there were more then just Scott in the area.

Originally painted with a large ‘10’ on the sides, Scott had this changed to ‘7’ when the old number nearly killed him. One time while flying towards a base in China he forgot to broadcast his callsign and radioed ‘ONE ZERO HEADED NNW TOWARDS BASE’. The defenders thought he was reporting a japanese aircraft and fired on him!

Scott flew ‘Old Exterminator’ for so long it finally fell apart and was stripped for parts.







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Looks good but the serial doesn’t jive with the probable serial number of Scott’s E model. It is for Scott’s P-40K-1. It is probable that Scott received it with no painted serial on the tail, as it was originally the property of the Chinese government. Some information that I found states that when the 23rd FG came into being, Scott wanted to keep “Old Exterminator”, but since it was Chinese property, they finagled the serial number with another plane. One number seen is white 41-1456, which jives with that story as it is in a block of serial numbers used for BT-13’s. An artist did a painting of white 41-1456 with the concurrence of Gen. Scott, so it must be true?