Sometime back, Mike Offutt (luftwaffle) posted some shots he had taken at the Chino airshow. Mike was kind enough to send me a buncha shots of the P-40s that were at the show and gave me the nod to put them on my P-40 site.
Here’s one of them…
This particular P-40 was owned by a fella here in WNY and I was able to get quite familiar with the aircraft over the course of ten years or so. Unfortunately, it suffered an engine failure, was bellied in and extensively damaged. Subsequently it was sold and is now flying again. She is currently owned by Tony Banta.
It sickens me when I see that… 10 or 12. When you think of how many were built and NOBODY said, “Hey, maybe it will be really cool to have this 60 years from now!” The Yak -9 was being put out at a rate of 70 or 80 a day at one point and i would not be surprised if the number still airworthy is similar. Not to mention the tens of thousands of others.
That is a fine line-up of war birds. I would like to have been at that air show for that
I’ve got a Flight Journal special issue on the P-40 (I buy them with hopes of helping my modelling). In the back it lists known surviving P-40s and their condition. I will try to tally them up and get back to you later.
Great bunch of P-40 photos. I like the E model with SU-E on the sides. I have a few photos of that plane from about 30 years ago when it carried the artwork “Sneak Attakc” on the rudder.
