The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk never possessed the appearance of the Mustang, nor did it possess the brute force power of the Thunderbolt, but in men’s hearts who are well-acquainted with the history of World War II aircraft, it has a home. It was no showplane, and it was never perfect, but it was a fighter that gave solid pilots time and time again, trusting in it to see them home. Unpolished, gruff, and rugged, the Warhawk gained its reputation by surviving gritty battles and flying straight through everything when it counted.
The Warhawk series started off with the Curtiss P-36 Hawk, an aircraft that was tampered with more than it was left alone. It got the Allison V-1710 liquid-cooled engine installed by the engineers, creating an airplane that was not a pretty sight to behold and, above all, would take a ghastly pounding. Its ungainly single-seat, single-engine design wasn’t pretty, but it earned a reputation for extinguishing combat hits and bringing its pilot home alive.
Performance was adequate. With 1,240 horsepower provided by its Allison powerplant, the P-40 could propel itself to an approximately 318-knot plateau, with a ceiling of 29,000 feet and a rate of climb of 2,100 feet per minute.
Standard weapons were two heavy .50 caliber Brownings in the nose, with four lighter wing guns. While never the most speedy and agile of air fighters, the combination of firepower, speed, and ruggedness made it a reliable presence in ground attack sorties as well as air-to-air combat.
The Warhawk flew nearly everywhere the war required—whether on bomber escort, strafing ground targets, or mano a mano dogfighting with enemy fighters eyeball-to-eyeball. Pilots landed in aircraft with holes cut out of them but otherwise still flyable, a testament to the ruggedness of design. There are few photographs in the history of aviation so evocative as the snarling shark-mouth nose art painted on Warhawks, a logo that was respected and feared.
One of the pilots who has flown the heart of the P-40 is Keith Bissonnette. A career ballplayer before the war, he joined the Army Air Forces in 1942 as a combat pilot in the 88th Squadron, 80th Fighter Group. He flew more than 200 missions, initially in Warhawks and subsequently in Thunderbolts, against targets, on escort duties, and even on dangerous supply sorties across the enemy Himalayas, “the Hump.”
His performance was characterized by exceptional endurance and bravery, though it was abruptly cut short in tragedy in 1945 when his plane crashed in Burma. For his efforts, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, and the Purple Heart.
Compared directly to Germany’s Messerschmitt Bf 109, the P-40 rarely outperformed on pure performance. The Daimler-Benz engine that powered the German fighter provided it with more speed, more altitude, and faster climbs. But what the Warhawk lacked in agility, it gained in durability.
With greater armor shielding and a reputation for being able to absorb hits that destroyed other planes, it provided the pilots with the chance to fight when survival was at best a gamble. The contrast between the two planes tested competing philosophies, one that depended on precision and agility, the other on ruggedness and adaptability.
With the war’s conclusion and the onset of the jet age, the P-40 and its piston-powered contemporaries were quickly rendered obsolete. The majority were salvaged for scrap metal, but some escaped the junkyard. A few restored Warhawks remain today in museums or soar at air shows, a testament to an airplane that endured the rigors of combat even if it never won headlines.
The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk could never hope to achieve the same fame as the more aerodynamically sound or stronger family members, but its nickname has something more to it than superficiality. It was an airplane that was marked by reliability, ruggedness, and the determination of the pilots who operated it. While not remembered as the hero of the air, it is a testament to the unknown heroes of the air war—pilots and combat men who showed that grit and determination were every bit as legendary as courage.