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MUSTANGS IN THE BATTLE OF NORMANDY

P-51Bs and P-51Ds of the 361st Fighter Group ready for takeoff on D-Day, June 6, 1944. (USAF Official)

 

Adapted from “Clean Sweep: VIII Fighter Command Against the Luftwaffe - 1942-45"

Text:  Thomas McKelvey Cleaver


Once SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) assumed operational control of all air forces in England at the beginning of April 1944, Air Chief Marshal Tedder, second in command of the invasion force to General Eisenhower, placed himself in overall command of air operations. He directed Eighth Air Force to concentrate its missions against the rail transportation system in Germany, Holland, Belgium and France in the weeks leading up to D-Day.

 

April also saw Eighth Air Force commander General Doolittle's decision to standardize VIII Fighter Command on the Mustang, re-equipping the groups equipped with P-47s and P-38s as P-51s were delivered and became available. Priority was given to re-equipping the Lightning groups, due to the airplane’s poor record in the command.

On April 8, when the Fourth Fighter Group’s score was 296, Don Blakeslee set a goal of 500 destroyed by May 1, a good indication of how fast the air war was now moving, since the Fourth only had a score of 100 over 18 months of combat at the end of January. The Eagles outdid their leader’s challenge, with credits for 207 destroyed in the air and on the ground by April 30, for a total score of 503, passing their long-time rivals the Wolfpack to become to top-scoring fighter group in the Eighth Air Force.

Following an epic party on the base the night of April 30, the Fourth was still able to provide escort on May 1 to Saarbrucken. John Godfrey, now promoted to flight leader in his own right and no longer in Gentile’s shadow, led his flight after a gaggle of 12 Bf 109s he spotted below. He chased one to low altitude where he hit the engine solidly and the pilot bailed out to give him his 14th aerial victory. Ralph Hofer scored his tenth victory when his enemy pilot bailed out so close ahead of him that “I could see his uniform and his black boots in the sun.” Two other pilots also scored off this group of enemy fighters. The Fourth didn’t score again for a week.

A P-51D of the 4th Fighter Group’s 334th Fighter Squadron with D-Day identification markings. (USAF Official)


On May 8, the bombers went to both Berlin and Brunswick. The mission saw the 352nd Fighter Group fly their first all-Mustang escort mission and the “Blue Nosers” finally appeared over Berlin. The Jadgdwaffe responded with over 200 fighters. The group’s patrol area was soon the scene of dogfights from 30,000 feet to street-level with the action hot and heavy for nearly an hour.

 

“I then broke away from one shooting at me and got onto another ’190’s tail… “

 

Over Brunswick, the 487th squadron’s 2nd Lieutenant Carl Luksic gained the distinction of being the VIII Fighter Command first “ace in a day.” His encounter report provides an accurate description of the action:

“While Lieutenant Bob O’Nan was chasing this Bf 109 I saw on my left five or six FW 190s which I immediately turned into. I put down ten degrees of flaps and started queuing up on one of the ’190s. I fired very short bursts from about 300 yards, 15 degrees deflection and observed many strikes on the canopy and fuselage. He immediately pulled up and rolled over and the pilot bailed out, his airplane going straight in from fifteen hundred feet. At this time in this vicinity there were three ’chutes – one from the enemy aircraft that I had shot down and one from the enemy aircraft that Lieutenant O’Nan had shot down, but I do not know where the third one came from.

I then broke away from one shooting at me and got onto another ’190’s tail and fired short bursts, but did not see any hits. However, the pilot evidently spun out as he went straight into the ground from eight hundred feet or so and blew up. I was then joined by two P-47s but lost them, and finally joined up with two from our own group, Captain Cutler [from the 486th squadron] and his wingman. He started down over Brunswick to strafe a ‘drome, but observing so much ground fire and flak I pulled up and away and lost them. I then saw another airplane which I thought to be a P-51. I closed on it to about thirty yards and identified it as a ’109. I gave a short burst, but don’t know if there were any strikes, and I found myself riding his wing as I was at full throttle. He was about two hundred feet off the deck, and when he looked at me he pulled up, jettisoned his canopy and bailed out. I went down and took a picture of the airplane, which had crashed into a small wood, and right onto a small fire.

P-51s prepare for takeoff from the Fourth Fighter Group’s base at Debden. (USAF Official)


I started to climb back up when I was rejoined by my wingman, Lieutenant O’Nan, and Red Leader, Captain Davis. We started back towards the bombers when off to our left at nine o’clock low we observed about twenty-plus in close formation going down through the clouds. The three of us immediately turned into the attack and came down on them through the

clouds. I found myself directly astern of a ’190, with a ’109 flying his wing in close formation. I was evidently unseen as I got in a very successful burst at the ’109 and observed numerous hits on his wings, fuselage and tail. He was at about eight hundred feet, and after catching fire he went straight down into the ground.

I immediately kicked a little right rudder and got in another successful burst at the ’190 and observed numerous hits on its left wing, engine and canopy. The ’190 went into a tight spiral and crashed into the deck from a thousand feet. At this point there were about fifteen or more enemy aircraft in the vicinity and they started aggressive tactics, and since I was alone, and they were making head-on passes at me, I had to take violent evasive action. I evaded into the clouds.”

 Following close behind Luksic were 487th squadron commander Lt. Colonel John C. Meyer and Lieutenants John Thornell and Clayton Davis, who claimed three each. The group returned to Bodney with total claims of 27 destroyed, their best day ever. The day’s action earned the Bodney Blue Nosers their first Distinguished Unit Citation, while Luksic, Meyer, Thornell and Davis were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

P-51Ds of the 20th Fighter Group’s 77th Fighter Squadron. The 20th exchanged their P-38s for P-51s in July 1944. (USAF Official)


While the Blue Nosers scored over Berlin, VIII Fighter Command Mustangs were ranging farther and farther afield. That same day, the Fourth escorted bombers to Brüx (Most), Czechoslovakia, nearly 800 miles from Debden. JG 27's Bf 109s provided opposition, but the Mustangs came out on top with five pilots submitting claims for five destroyed. The next day, the group flew east of Berlin to pick up bombers returning from a strike on Poznan, Poland over the Oder river.

While the Eagles flew to Poland, the 352nd went to Berlin again on May 13, the Blue Nosers got involved in a massive battle with intercepting enemy fighters. Nearing Tribsees-Demmin, huge formations of Bf 109s and Fw 190s were spotted forming up to attack the bombers. First blood was drawn by the 328th squadron’s Captain John Coleman and his element leader 1st Lieutenant Francis Horne, who each scored two. Group commander Colonel Joe Mason led the 486th squadron into a force estimated as “100-plus.” The squadron broke into individual flights, with the Mustangs attempting to break up the enemy formation.

 

“The first burst knocked his left flap off…”

 

Mason, leading White Flight swept through enemy fighters that turned away, and he later reported:

“I saw strikes on the wing of one Me 109. Upon coming out on the far side, I lost the rest of my flight. As I pulled up in a climbing turn and looked down at the large formation of bandits, I saw two Me 109s spinning down, one with about two-thirds of its wing gone. This collision was forced by my flight flying through the large formation of bandits at about a ninety-degree angle. I am not certain as to whether the ’109 I damaged was one of the two I later saw going down.

My wingman broke away and down when we started through, and my second element pulled up and came in on the rear of the bandits. They did not see the collision. I then rolled back and down, chasing twenty FW 190s and Me 109s which had split off from the bunch and were diving for the clouds. I closed on an FW 190 and after a few short bursts, set him on fire. The first burst knocked his left flap off. He was taking evasive action in the clouds, and just before entering one, smoke, flame and debris came back over my ship and we both went into the cloud. I then pulled up to keep from running into him in the cloud, and came out on top. My ship was covered with oil from the ’190.”

 P-51D-10 “Straw Boss” of the 352nd Fighter Group, the “Blue-Nosed Bastards of Bodney.” (USAF Official)

The 352nd’s Captain Bill Whisner flew P-51B “Princess Elizabeth” - so named to commemorate a visit to Bodney in June 1944 by the future queen - throughout the summer of 1944. (USAF Official)


The Resumé of the hunting

 

Mason claimed two Bf 109s and one Fw 190 destroyed and one Bf 109 damaged.

George Preddy, leading the 487th squadron, joined the fight shortly after Mason scored his victories. Spotting 30 Bf 109s below, Preddy led the squadron’s bounce on them and personally downed two, with these he became an ace with a tally of 5.333 aerial victories. While Preddy scored, Lieutenant Nutter closed in when the remaining Bf 109s tried to flee and sent another down on fire. “Ace in a day” Carl Luksic and his wingman Glennon Moran spotted a Ju 88 attacking a B-17. Both attacked and the Junkers crash-landed in a ploughed field. When it didn’t catch fire, Luksic strafed it and set it afire. The 352nd’s score of 16 destroyed made them the top-scoring VIII Fighter Command group for the day. Colonel Joe Mason was awarded a DSC. The Jagdwaffe reported 58 losses, three less than the day before.

P-51D-5 “Short Fuse” was flown by Captain Richard E. Turner of the 354th Fighter Group’s 356th Fighter Squadron. (USAF Official)


The result of the success the fighter groups had achieved in April and early May saw morale in the bomber groups begin to recover as the crews realized they were flying missions with fewer casualties, due to the offensive fighter escort tactics. Losses would get progressively lower for the rest of the war, but May 1944 was when those who climbed into the bombers began to believe they had a chance to make it home, even when Doolittle increased the tour to 35 missions that summer.

 

Chattanooga Day

 

Range for P-51s would increase as the Mustang-equipped groups saw their aircraft modified to allow them to carry two 108-gallon paper tanks, rather than the metal 75-gallon tanks they had been using. The modification took several days for each group and was carried out a group at a time over mid-May, the Fourth was the first to do this between May 14-18. Now able to take their Mustangs to places where no American fighter had been seen before, or to stay longer for the fight over targets like Berlin, the Fourth continued amassing victories.

On May 21, as part of the Transportation Program SHAEF planners had developed to disrupt German rail transportation, VIII Fighter Command and IX Tactical Air Command flew what was called “Chattanooga Day” (named for the popular song, “Chattanooga Choo-Choo”), with 552 Mustangs, Lightnings and Thunderbolts turned loose over central and western Germany, and northern France and Belgium, to attack railroads. The groups came back with claims for 225 locomotives attacked, with 91 considered destroyed. Strafing ground targets had not been limited to railroads, since the pilots also claimed 102 aircraft destroyed on airfields, with a further 76 damaged. The 361st Fighter Group, led by Philippines and Guadalcanal veteran Colonel Thomas J.J. Christian, the great grandson of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, made their first appearance flying P-51s after transferring from P-47s and submitted claims for wrecking 23 locomotives. Chattanooga Day was the pre-invasion high point of railroad attacks that had begun back in February and saw over 900 locomotives destroyed over four months.

 Eighth Fighter Command recommended groups apply camouflage to aluminum-finish P-51s in May 1944 before the invasion, in the expectation the fighter groups might deploy to mainland Europe following the invasion. The 357th Fighter Group was the only group in Eighth fighter command to completely paint their Mustangs, using RAF Dark Green on upper surfaces and RAF Sea Grey Medium on lower surfaces. (USAF Official)


Return to Berlin

 

Berlin was attacked again on May 24. Jim Goodson led the Fourth and spotted 40-plus near Hamburg gathering for an attack on the bomber stream. When the Mustangs hit the formation, they soon came across several other gaggles nearby. Ralph Hofer later reported seeing “several gaggles of Fw 190s.” When they returned to Debden, the pilots claimed another eight destroyed.

The next day, Goodson again led the group, this time an escort to bomb the railyards in Chaumont-Sarreguemines in northern France. He later reported, "We saw fighters and immediately went to investigate.” The opponents were from JG 26, with 20 Fw 190s from II Gruppe, covered by 30 Bf 109s from III Gruppe. “We split them up, but due to the fact that we were outnumbered fifty to eight, we were not able to destroy any. My wingman and I ended up alone on the deck. As he climbed to rejoin the group, Goodson spotted 24 Bf 109s and Fw 190s flying in close formation of six “vics” of four each, in line astern. I told my wingman we would try to sneak up behind and knock off the last section and then run away in the haze. As we were closing on the last section, all the Huns broke, and a lengthy dogfight ensued, with the Fw 190s showing amazing fighting ability and aggressiveness. It was only after the most violent maneuvering and excessive use of throttle and flaps that I was able to get good strikes on the most persistent ’190. He pulled up and bailed out.” Goodson’s fourteenth aerial victory turned out to be his last.

This photograph of a mixed formation of P-51B and P-51D Mustangs of the 361st Figher Group was taken in late July-early August 1944, and became one of the iconoic photos of the Second World War. (USAF Official)


With the fighters of IX Tactical Air Command striking every target they could find in Northern France and Belgium, and fighter groups from VIII Fighter Command strafing targets during their returns from every escort mission, while A-20 Havocs and B-26 Marauders of the IX Air Force and the Eighth’s B-17s and B-24s hit every rail target in the region, the German Army in northwestern France was soon cut off from its supply bases. The strikes on airfields forced the defending fighters to pull back deeper into France and Germany. The week before the invasion, the commander of the German Seventh Army, tasked with defending Normandy, called the roads in the army’s area of operations “Jabo Rennstrecke” (fighter-bomber racecourses).

The Luftwaffe had fewer aircraft available on the Channel coast at the end of May than had been available at the time of the Dieppe Raid. JG 2, which had been assigned to the Cherbourg Peninsula since 1941, was closest to the Normandy beaches. I./JG 2 had only recently returned from the fighting at Anzio. The Bf 109-equipped II./JG 2 was at Creil outside Paris, while III./JG 2's Fw 190s were in the process of transferring to Fontenay-le-Comte north of La Rochelle.

With a forecast for stormy weather during the first week in June that seemed to preclude any likelihood of invasion, JG 26 Kommodore Oberst Josef “Pips” Priller felt safe giving some pilots time off. II Gruppe left for Mont de Marsan near Biarritz for a week’s leave on June 1. The other two gruppen were ordered to move inland on June 5, with I Gruppe moving to Reims and III Gruppe to Nancy.

 

The Longest Day

 

Their ground echelons were still on the road when dawn came on June 6.

The Fourth’s Bob Wehrman remembered “June 6, 1944, really was the longest day. We had Double-Daylight Savings Time in England, which meant dawn came around 0300 hours. None of us had slept much that night. The sky was filled for hours with the drone of aircraft. I spotted bombers heading toward invasion targets and C-47s carrying what I later learned were the British and American paratroops.”

“Pips” Priller learned the invasion was on when he was awakened by the phone in his Lille command post. It was from 5th Jagddivision, ordering him to move his headquarters immediately to Poix-de-Picardie, closer to the anticipated invasion site on the Pas de Calais. The dawn skies were a leaden grey at 0800 hours as Priller and his longtime wingman, Unteroffizier Heinz Wodarczyk, mounted their Fw 190A-8s and prepared to take off for a reconnaissance of the invasion beaches. With Wodarczyk sticking close, Priller headed southwest at an altitude of 100 meters. East of Abbeville, he looked up and saw several large formations of Spitfires flying through the broken cloud base. Near Le Havre, he climbed into the cloud bank hanging at 200 meters and turned west.

Moments later, the two fighters broke out of the clouds, just south the British invasion beach code-named Sword. Priller only had a moment to stare out to sea at the largest naval force ever assembled in history. He could see wakes of the inbound invasion barges as they approached the beaches for as far as he could see in the hazy weather. With a shouted “Good luck!” to Wodarczyk, Priller winged over into a dive as his airspeed indicator climbed above 400 m.p.h. Dropping to an altitude of 50 feet, the two roared toward Sword Beach, where British troops dove for cover while ships offshore opened up with a barrage of anti-aircraft fire so loud those on the ground had trouble hearing Priller and Wodarczyk open fire as they flashed overhead, unscathed by the fleet’s fire.

“Ferocious Frankie,” a well-known P-51D-5 of the 361st Fighter Group. (USAF Official)


In a moment, the only appearance by the Luftwaffe over the Normandy beaches on D-Day was over. Priller and Wodarczyk zoomed back into the cloud bank and disappeared, having just flown the best-known mission in the entire history of JG 26, due to its later inclusion in Cornelius Ryan’s book “The Longest Day” and the movie made from it.

JG 26's I and III Gruppen flew the majority of the 172 Luftwaffe sorties in the invasion sector on June 6. It was a drop in the bucket compared to the 14,000 sorties flown that day by the Allied air forces. By the end of the day, II Gruppe arrived after flying across France in time to fly a mission over Normandy in the last light of day, during which they caught the Fourth’s Mustangs strafing enemy positions and shot down four P-51Bs in the first pass for no losses. For most of the next eight weeks, I. Gruppe and III./JG 54 operated from Cormeilles and Boissy le Bois, while II. Gruppe was based at Guyancourt outside Paris, and III. Gruppe from Villacoublay Nord and Sud, also in the Paris region.

 

“Too little, too late”

 

By the evening of June 7, there were only six Jagdgeschwadern left in Germany, while 17 had flown into northwestern France to oppose the invasion. Had these units been at full strength, this would have been over 1,000 fighters, a force that might have had an impact on the battle. Unfortunately, with the losses suffered over Germany in the preceding months and the disorganization of the move from Germany to France, only 289 fighters were listed as operational at sundown of the second day of the invasion. On their arrival in France, the Jagdflieger discovered that nearly all the Luftwaffe’s airfields in France had been too badly damaged by American bombing during the previous three months to sustain operations. They would be forced to fly and fight from improvised airfields that were so far from the battlefield they would only have less than 30 minutes combat time over Normandy. Due to the inability of 5th Jagddivision to exercise control of the newly-arrived units in the form of planning and direction of operations, most fighter missions flown during the Normandy battle were “freie jagd” uncontrolled independent fighter sweeps, an ineffective use of the limited resources. Over the course of the next two months, what was left of the flower of the Jagdwaffe would die in the Norman sky, outnumbered by odds of 100:1 and outflown by better-trained and more experienced Allied pilots. Even with the fighter force growing to 1,000 by the end of June, it was a case of “too little, too late.”

The day’s action saw Priller score his 97th and 98th victories, a P-47 and P-51 respectively. The hard-pressed pilots of I and II Gruppen scored eight for two losses. The next day, Priller led 11 Fw 190s of I Gruppe on a strafing mission against the invasion beaches, their “score” was the “destruction” of 15 crashed gliders.

Operation Pointblank had succeeded. The Allied air forces now had air superiority over western Europe. The five month campaign had cost the Eighth Air Force 2,600 bombers and 980 fighters lost, with 18,400 casualties including 10,000 dead.

Ralph Hofer was one of the real “characters” of the Fourth Fighter Group. On June 10, 1944, he became the first Allied fighter pilot to make an emergency landing on an Advanced Landing Ground in Normandy after suffering damage to his oil cooler in a dogfight. (USAF Official)


The weather cleared on June 10, a day that saw the Blue Nosers’ 328th squadron, led by Captain John Thornell, spot 40 bomb-carrying Bf 109s flying low toward the beachhead at 300 feet. When the German pilots spotted the Mustangs as they turned in to attack, they salvoed their bombs and split up, but not before Thornell got two of them for his 17th and 18th victories.

The day ended with Fourth’s Ralph Hofer making history as the first Allied fighter to land at the advanced strip near Grandcamp in Normandy after his oil system was damaged by small-arms fire during a strafing pass near Vire. When he returned to Debden the next day, he brought a German helmet and canteen and a German-language version of “Mein Kampf,” that he had bartered from the GIs near the front, which only added to his “screwball” reputation.

Throughout the battles over Normandy, the cloudy skies and rain would give cover to fighters of both sides, with units chancing on each other becoming involved in sharp, vicious fights.

American pilots also received a piece of personal gear that gave them a real advantage over their opponents - the “G” suit, which fit around the waist and thighs. The suit was plugged into the vacuum system, and under increased G-loads during air combat the suit tightened around the thigh and waist, preventing blood from pooling in the lower extremities and preventing the pilot blacking out while maneuvering. Ninth Air Force had been aggressive in obtaining the G-suits and all the P-47 groups in IX Tactical air Command were using it by D-Day. VIII fighter command first began getting the equipment shortly after D-Day and all groups had the gear by mid-summer. Bob Wehrman recalled, “We had just gotten the K-14 ‘no missum’ gyro gunsight in July, and then we got the new G-suit. Between the two pieces of gear and the new P-51Ds, we could outfly the enemy under just about all conditions. In April, the Fourth had tried using the British G-suit, which used water, but it had been discarded for being uncomfortable. As Wehrman described it, You didn’t even notice you had the new suit till it started squeezing your legs and you didn’t black out as before.”

Two P-51Bs of the 361st Fighter Group’s 376th Fighter Squadron prepare for takeoff at Bottisham. (USAF Official)


On June 16, the 357th’s Lt. Colonel Tom Hayes used an old trick he had learned while flying P-39s in New Guinea to attack a rail yard. The group only had 108-gallon paper tanks available, which provided far more fuel than they would need for the mission to the St. Pierre marshalling yard outside Paris. He instructed the pilots to drop their tanks, which were about three-fourths full, on the railyard in their first pass. Then they returned and set the tanks ablaze with gunfire. There were four large explosions and the target was on fire when the Mustangs departed. Word got around among the groups about the 357th’s success with using drop tanks as “incendiaries” for strafing.

 

Luftwaffe heavy losses

 

At the end of June, the Jagdwaffe had lost 230 pilots killed and 88 wounded, with 551 aircraft shot down in combat over France and a further 65 destroyed on the ground. For this cost, they claimed 526 Allied aircraft shot down including 203 P-47 fighter-bombers.     

n July 1, Captain Wally Starck led 352nd group’s 328th squadron on a mission to strafe suspected V-1 launch sites, but the squadron became involved in a battle between the 78th group and 20 Bf 109s and Fw 190s over St. Quentin. The 78th group's mission had been dogged by bad luck from the beginning, when two P-47s had collided during a mass takeoff on Duxford’s wide grass runway and exploded. The P-47s were 12,000 feet over St. Quentin when Lieutenant James Stallings spotted five Bf 109s diving on the Thunderbolts, bombs tumbled from their wings at his warning. Stallings managed to avoid the attackers by throwing his P-47 into a violent spin, when he recovered at 3,000 feet, he found he had no elevator trim. “I’d taken two twenty millimeter cannon shells in my tail surface and was darn lucky my controls weren’t completely gone. I had to keep a lot of forward pressure on the stick to fly straight and level.”

Starck led the Mustangs into the fight and immediately became involved in a turning fight with a pair of Bf 109s that dived for the deck when they couldn’t turn inside him. He followed, opening fire on the wingman at a distance of 100 yards. The fighter burst into flames and the pilot bailed out, narrowly missing Starck’s wingman, Lieutenant Sheldon Heyer’s P-51. Starck closed on the leader and succeeded in damaging the Messerschmitt before losing it in the clouds. Two other Bf 109s were also damaged by Lieutenants Cyrus Greer of the 487th and the 328th’s “Punchy” Powell. This was the last fight the “Bluenosers” would engage in, despite flying eight more missions between July 4-12.

A P-51D of the 361st Fighter Group’s 375th Fighter Squadron banks away from camera. Note that the D-Day ID stripes on the fuselage do not carry around the bottom of the radiator. This was frequently done with these stripes, due to the P-51 being so low to the ground. (USAF Official)


The Battle of Normandy was over by early September, following the liberation of Paris on August 25. Steve Pisanos, who had remained with the Resistance since crashing in France back on March 5, remembered the liberation: “Over the two weeks before the Germans were chased out, my friends in the resistance had been terrified they would put up a fight for the city and leave it like Stalingrad. In fact, there was some attempt by the Germans to destroy things. They set out to rig the Seine bridges with explosives, but the resistance went out every night and removed the explosives. They would leave all the wires and the boxes the explosives were in, so the Germans wouldn’t realize what had been done. With the city restored, Pisanos was able to turn himself in to the American army and returned to Debden. I got back to Debden and three days later I was on my way back to America. I got there just in time to be best man for Don Gentile’s wedding.”

The Luftwaffe had been reduced to impotence during the battle for Normandy. I and II gruppen of JG 1, and all three gruppen of JG 11, which were dedicated anti-bomber units, had been transferred to France, where they lost a combined 100 pilots killed and 200 Fw 190s destroyed in the air and on the ground over the three months of combat. In comparison, III./JG 1, which had been transferred to the Eastern Front and fought there over the summer, suffered the loss of one pilot killed.

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INFO Eduard is a monthly scale model-historical magazine published in Czech and English by Eduard Model Accessories since 2010. The magazine is available for free on the Triobo platform and can be downloaded in PDF format. Eduard is a manufacturer of plastic models and accessories with over 30 years of tradition. Throughout its history in the plastic modeling industry, Eduard has become one of the world's leaders. Further details about the company and its product range can be found at www.eduard.com. You can subscribe to the INFO magazine and receive product information for free at: https://www.eduard.com/cs/info-eduard/

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P-40E Warhawk

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The Curtiss P-40 line of fighter aircraft stood out among American fighter types for having remained in front-line operations from the summer of 1941, before the U.S. entered World War II, through the end of the conflict four years later. Only Grumman’s versatile F4F Wildcat naval fighter could match that record.

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