The P-36 or Curtiss Model 75 Hawk, commonly called the Mohawk, began life as a private venture, soldiered bravely in foreign colours, and enjoyed modest if unspectacular success as the last major USAAC fighter before the outbreak of hostilities in World War II. A monoplane low-wing pursuit ship with retractable landing gear and an enclosed cockpit, the Model 75 prototype was powered by a 671kW Wright XR-1670-5 engine and was initially scrutinised by the US Army in May 1935 but not ordered, although Curtiss obtained permission to provide details to several foreign governments. Re-engined with an 633kW Wright R-1820 Twin Wasp radial and called Model 75B, the craft was re-examined by the Army in April 1936, when it lost a major production order to the similar Seversky P-35. As consolation, Curtiss received a contract for three service-test Y1P-36s, delivered in February 1937.

Based on Y1P-36 evaluation at Wright Field, Ohio, there followed in July 1937 a production order for 210 P-36A airframes, the Army's largest fighter contract since World War I. Delivery began in April 1938 at about the same time that 112 examples of a less complex export version, the Hawk Model 75M, were purchased by the Chinese Nationalist air force; 12 similar Hawk Model 75N and 29 Hawk Model 75O aircraft went to Siam and Argentina respectively, a further 20 being assembled locally in the latter country. Two export Hawk Model 75Qs went to China, one being presented to General Claire Chennault by Madame Chiang Kai-shek. In the USA, the relatively new P-36As were rapidly considered obsolescent as war clouds gathered.

The sole P-36B, a converted P-36A model, was powered by a 745kW Pratt & Whitney R-1830-25 radial. The XP-36D was tested with two cowl-mounted 12.7mm and four wing-mounted 7.62mm guns. The XP-36E was also a solitary armament test ship with one nose 12.7mm and no fewer than eight wing 7.62mm guns. The XP-36F, also a one-off conversion, had two underwing 23mm Madsen cannon plus one 7.62mm and one 12.7mm nose guns. Production efforts shifted to 31 examples of the P-36C with engine improvements.

Examples of the Hawk Model 75A went to France and a few fell into Vichy French hands, resulting in aircraft of this type confronting each other in combat. The bulk of the French order was diverted to the UK's Royal Air Force, which assigned the familiar Mohawk nickname and operated the type with lacklustre results. A total of 24 Hawk Model 75A-6 machines reached Norway before a 1940 embargo by President Roosevelt on US fighter deliveries to Scandinavia. The 30 P-36G aircraft had been intended as export Hawk Model 75As for Norway but were operated by the USAAC.

Worldwide use

The US Army dispersed its modest fleet of 243 P-36s widely. The 18th and 20th Pursuit Groups operated the P-36A, the latter employing no fewer than three squadrons at Barksdale Field, Louisiana. As late as 1942, while war raged in the Aleutians, the 28th Composite Group operated P-36As in Alaska. The XP-36B was tested exhaustively at Wright Field, Ohio. The 1st Pursuit Group, Selfridge Field, Michigan, despatched a dozen P-36Cs to the National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio, in September 1939, each machine painted in an elaborate, one-of-a-kind camouflage scheme which, ironically, was never used in actual exercises or war games. Although the basic design was by then long in the tooth and no match for the fighters of Messerschmitt and Mitsubishi, the XP-36D, XP-36E and XP-36F were included in a major exposition of 'modern' fighters at Boiling Field, Washington, DC, in January 1940. P-36 or Hawk 75 variants also served, sooner or later, with the air arms of the Netherlands, Finland, India, Portugal and South Africa, and a pristine example is on display at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. As Admiral Isoru Yamamoto's fleet approached the Hawaiian Islands, a handful of P-36s was also located amid the heat and red clay of Wheeler Field, Hawaii.

Combat

"It all seems so long ago," ponders Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Barneyback, running his eyes over Wheeler Field where the first blows were struck. "This place was a tropical paradise. We were not ready. We had no idea what was coming." Barneyback recalls that P-36 pilots were half-awake, stunned, and totally outclassed, neither as manoeuvrable nor as well-armed as the incoming waves of Mitsubishi Zeros. "If Sanders hadn't given the order to disperse some of the P-36s the night before, all of them would have been caught on the ground." Amid the 7 December 1941 Japanese carrier strike on nearby Pearl Harbor, First Lieutenant Lewis M. Sanders, commander of the 46th Pursuit Squadron, got aloft from Wheeler Field with four P-36As and led his men in shooting down three attacking aircraft. Second Lieutenant Philip M. Rasmussen was credited with one of the kills, as was Second Lieutenant George H. Sterling, Jr, who was killed in the action, one of the first American fatalities of the conflict. The era of pursuit fighter development between world wars was over, and the Curtiss P-36 had ended its American combat service the moment a new era arrived.

3-View

A three-view drawing (1280 x 920)