Hobbycraft's 1/48 scale
Curtiss P-36 Hawk

by Reidar Berg

Curtiss P-36 Hawk

Hobbycraft's 1/48 scale Hawk 75 is available online from Squadron.com

9 April 2015 is exactly 75 years since Germany invaded Norway and Denmark.

In this respect, here are some pictures of a Curtiss P-36 that I have built in scale 1/48. This was an ex Norwegian machine (Norwegian Curtiss Hawk no. 469) that the Germans captured in Norway 9 April 1940 and sold to Finland to fight against Russia.

I wanted to build an Finnish machine with the marking CU-553 since I really like the color/camo of this Finnish machines. The black and white photo below shows this machine as I wanted to build it with very little weathering of the airframe.

The Hobby Craft 1/48 kit is very basic but the shape is good. The interior was mainly scratch built with a little help from an old Eduard set designed for this kit.

The whole front of the airframe is modified to get the right version for the plane I decided to build.

The canopy is vacuum formed, it took a lot work to make this fit perfectly.

The engine is from Quickboost – a big improvement over the original plastic parts.

The wheels are resin from Squadron.

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This was a fun project to do. The kit is old and not up to the standard we expect from the big manufacturers today, but I had a good time building this kit.

Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2015 by Reidar Berg
Page Created 9 April, 2015
Last Updated 9 April, 2015

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