What’s the plane in your signature? Seems to have contra-props, a radome and “nachtmuzic” guns.
Dan
I think it’s a “what-if” P-40 nightfighter he made a couple of years ago.
Al.
Yep, thats a hypothetical P-40 I did a couple of years back.
I grafted two Academy 1/72 P-40N kits together, swiped the wing radome and 20mm gun from a 1/72 Hasegawa F6 Hellcat nightfighter and called it the Commonwealth Nighthawk NF.MK.1
The general story is that the Nighthawk came about as an emergency solution to the cancelation of the RAAF P-61 Black Widow order.
The Japanese had a new radar equiped night bomber and a strangle hold on the Tasman Sea. I’n the wake of very successful night bombing raids against Brisbane in Australia and Aukland in New Zealand, it became clear that a solution had to be found.
Hastily, many of the RAAF P-40s were modified to the Nighthawk. The Mk.1s were not popular with their crews, the lengthened fuselage without lengthened wings created some very unforgiving flight characteristics and required a very competent and experienced pilot to fly it.
The Mk.2 Nighthawk was a more refined variant, being a dual seater by design and having refinements such as increased wingspan and tail surfaces. The radar moved to centreline and a pair of forward firing 20mm cannons in the wings.
The Mk.2 Nighthawk was more than a match for the new Japanese night bomber and is given the same legendary status today as the Spitfire and Mustang.
I posted more info on it on another site and I’ll try to get a link to that thread for you as soon as I can.
One day I’ll do a Nighthawk NF.MK.2b (the definitive version) in 1/48.
Thanks for being interested, that little beast does tend to turn heads.