Hobbycraft Hawk 75 in Finnish colors.

Hobbycraft's 1/48 scale Hawk 75.

A rare contemporary color image.

My latest project is the Hobbycraft Curtiss Hawk 75 in 1/48 scale. This build is something of a kit-bash. I owned one HC  Cyclone powered Mohawk kit that I planned to build as a Dutch fighter in the East Indies campaign, but I later came across a copy of the HC "Allied Hawks" kit which included the Dutch markings, so I set this one aside. A bit later I got an HC "French Hawk" kit for cheap. The reason it was so cheap, it turned out, was that it was missing several parts. It did contain, however, all the part needed to convert my Mohawk into a Twin-Wasp powered A-4 model.

So I decided to model a Twin-Wasp Finnish Hawk 75. The Finn's Hawks had an interesting history. They were originally build by Curtiss for France. When France fell, Germany confiscated many examples both Wasp and Cyclone powered versions, some still in their crates. They came across some other Hawks in Norway. The Germans took all these aircraft as "war booty", refurbished them, and sold them to Finland. The Finns were successful with the Hawks, although they found the same problems with the Cyclone powered versions that other users found...indifferent performance especially while doing any hard maneuvering.  Eventually, all the Cyclone Hawks were converted to Wasp engines as well. 

In all, Finland received some 44 Hawk 75s from Germany, delivered in three batches with the last arriving in early 1944! The Finnish Hawks were well liked by the pilots and were quite successful, having the third highest kill numbers behind the ME-109's and Brewster Buffaloes(!). Certainly, the Finns were the most successful operators of the little Curtiss fighters.

It begins!

Construction begins with sorting out the parts I'll need from the two kits, the front end and engine from the French Hawk, and the rest from the Mohawk. Everything then got a wash. I primed some of the parts like the interior and cockpit. 

Cockpit details.

I found that Hobbycraft had actually done a pretty good job with the interior. I had been tempted to by a resin interior for the kit but I found what was supplied was close enough to the original for my taste. Careful painting of the cockpit wall details and the instrument panel resulted in a pretty good approximation. I did add some photo-etched German style harnesses for the seat.

Pilot seat. A little too upright, i fixed that.

The photo above shows the one problem I had with the interior: The pilot's seat sat straight up and the seat itself was attached to the rear bracket in a very flimsy manner. I solved these problems by snapping off the rear bracket and gluing it at a slight angle back towards the bulkhead. I then added a couple pieces of sprue to the underside of the seat. This allowed it to be firmly attached to the cockpit floor.

One other interior fix was to the headrest. The one supplied in the kit seems too short so I carved a larger one out of sheet styrene.

Coming together.

The construction of the major components went along quite nicely without any real problems. It was soon time to begin painting. After an overall coat of primer I started with the most difficult color first: the yellow theater markings! I taped off the sections to be painted and then shot a coat of flat white. After this cured a couple of coats of straight Tamiya XF-3, flat yellow was applied.

Nest came the underside camo...Tamiya XF-23 mixed to a 1 to 1 ration with flat white for the light blue.

Now came the tricky part, the upper camouflage. There was no way I would be able to do the separation between the lower and upper colors freehand so I masked. A study of the Finnish scheme revealed an unusual, asymmetric pattern to the upper and lower colors' demarcation.  on the fuselage sides.

As always, it's a tense time for me when I begin removing masking tape! Thankfully, the Tamiya tape performed well and did no harm to any of the colors!

Tape off! Looking good!

Now it was time for the decals! Actually, the decals for this machine are pretty simple. I was able to use some from the "Camouflage and Decal" publication with a couple more borrowed from an old Aeromaster's sheet. 

Final assembly was now at hand. One tricky area was the rear glass immediately behind the cockpit. It was difficult to eliminate a bright silvery seam where the clear plastic met the fuselage. I finally solved that by painting the rim of the clear parts. Since I was using  "Elmer's" white glue the result was a fairly invisible seam!

The seam faded out well.

The final assembly and the myriad other little details now played out. The radio aerials are surprisingly complicated! I used four pieces of fine EZ line to assemble them. Then some globs of Elmer's glue to simulate the insulators and the other little blobs evident on the real aircraft. 

I picked up a set of Eduard PE gunsights in 1/48 scale and these provided a really nice touch to the finished model. Model manufacturers have bravely tried to provide these in various models of the P-36 and P-40, but you really can only pull it off with PE!

A last few details: I dabbed a bit of aluminum paint on each navigation light, then applied Tamiya "Clear" red, green and amber where appropriate. That adds a nice touch.

Port side view. Compare the camo demarcation on the side to the starboard side view below.

Starboard side, notice the unusual demarcation between the light blue undersurface and dark upper side camo. If you check the port side, you'll see a completely different line. This was a standard practice on the Finnish aircraft.

A look into the cockpit to inspect the instrument panel. also check the PE gunsights, offset to starboard.

This was an pleasant build of a subject I enjoy. I have two more Hobbycraft Hawks, a fixed gear type N and the Dutch Hawk, (Cyclone powered), I hope to build in the future.