Click to enlarge.This morning at the Air Force Museum of New Zealand, staff, volunteers and invited guests gathered to celebrate the culmination of 16 years’ work as our newly-restored P-40 Kittyhawk was officially ‘unveiled’. 
 
Over 20,000 man-hours have gone into the rebuilding of this iconic World War Two fighter, and the process has involved scouring the globe for hard-to-find original components. Where original components could not be located, items have been faithfully replicated by the Museum’s skilled conservation technicians working from 1940s drawings. 
 
This particular aircraft was built for the USAAF in New York in 1941 as a Rolls-Royce Merlin-powered, short fuselage, P-40F. It served with the 44th Fighter Squadron in the South-West Pacific and belly-landed on Erromango Island in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) on 23 December 1942 after running low on fuel. The aircraft was recovered from where it lay in 1989 and moved to Australia for restoration. In 1996, 41-14205 was acquired by the RNZAF Museum. As the RNZAF did not operate P-40Fs it was decided at that time to restore the aircraft as an Allison V-1710-powered P-40E. After 16 years and 22,319 hours of restoration effort, the work was completed in May 2013. The aircraft is painted to represent a generic RNZAF P-40 Kittyhawk in Pacific theatre colours, and has been given the display identity of NZ3000. The Royal New Zealand Air Force operated 297 P-40s in the Pacific during World War Two, with 99 confirmed enemy aircraft destroyed.
 
Due to inclement weather preventing the aircraft from being moved this week, our technical team plan to have the P-40 on public display in its new location in the Aircraft Hall early next week.
 
Curtiss P-40E Kittyhawk Restoration Project Completed