Photo: Platinum Fighter Sales
Some time ago, we took a trip to the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Central New York, where museum staff had managed to piece together the remains of two Curtiss P-40 Warhawks that'd collided mid-air decades ago into something resembling an intact airframe. That in itself is a commendable feat any day of the week. But what if you want a crack at doing something similar? Except, maybe playing things on hard mode instead of nightmare mode as the museum did.
If you're the kind of nut job who can read an entire Second World War fighter plane's technical manual and piece together this 1942 P-40N Kitty Hawk, then consider this our gift to you. This particular Kitty Hawk was built at Curtiss's long-time production facility based in Buffalo, New York. It left the factory late in 1942, and by its end, it was shipped to the war-torn South Pacific to serve with the 7th Fighter Squadron of the U.S. Army Air Corp's 49th Fighter Group. With pilot Lt H W Harris and Lt J J O'Neil splitting flight duty behind the stick of this bird, the two managed to shoot down at least three Japanese warbirds by the end of spring 1944.
The P-40N, the final variant manufactured before the model was discontinued, proved to be an incredibly potent and dependable piston fighter in spite of its age. Alongside Navy Corsairs and Hellcats and Army Air Corps P-51 Mustangs and P-38 Lightnings, Kitty Hawks did a serviceable job backing up more modern, power-packing Allied fighters until late 1944, when what became known as White 17, or "Spooky" and "Dolores," was stricken from USAAC reserves and moved to surplus storage in favor of P-38 Lightnings.
From then on, this bird would spend the next 50 years broken up and placed in storage crates before work began attempting to piece it back together in 1999. Of course, you can't just slap together an airplane like this in eight to 12 months and expect it to hold together very well. It's taken the better part of 25 years for White 17 to be re-assembled to something even resembling a working warbird. Its Allison V-1710 V12 engine looks pretty worse for wear as well. But hey, where there's a will, there's always a way. That's especially true if you have moolah to blow.
With Platinum Fighter Sales out of Redondo Beach, California, handling the North American listing for this Kitty Hawk, the challenge of putting all the pieces together can be yours for the "low-low" price of $695,000. If you're curious, you're liable to spend as much on a fully restored, airworthy P-40 example as you would a Bugatti Chiron or a Pagani Utopia. Or in the ballpark of $2 million. Is it worth the extra labor to someone out there? One can only assume so.
The P-40N, the final variant manufactured before the model was discontinued, proved to be an incredibly potent and dependable piston fighter in spite of its age. Alongside Navy Corsairs and Hellcats and Army Air Corps P-51 Mustangs and P-38 Lightnings, Kitty Hawks did a serviceable job backing up more modern, power-packing Allied fighters until late 1944, when what became known as White 17, or "Spooky" and "Dolores," was stricken from USAAC reserves and moved to surplus storage in favor of P-38 Lightnings.
From then on, this bird would spend the next 50 years broken up and placed in storage crates before work began attempting to piece it back together in 1999. Of course, you can't just slap together an airplane like this in eight to 12 months and expect it to hold together very well. It's taken the better part of 25 years for White 17 to be re-assembled to something even resembling a working warbird. Its Allison V-1710 V12 engine looks pretty worse for wear as well. But hey, where there's a will, there's always a way. That's especially true if you have moolah to blow.
With Platinum Fighter Sales out of Redondo Beach, California, handling the North American listing for this Kitty Hawk, the challenge of putting all the pieces together can be yours for the "low-low" price of $695,000. If you're curious, you're liable to spend as much on a fully restored, airworthy P-40 example as you would a Bugatti Chiron or a Pagani Utopia. Or in the ballpark of $2 million. Is it worth the extra labor to someone out there? One can only assume so.
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