Curtiss H-75A-4/8/P-36G 'Late Hawks'

The Curtiss H-75 was the export version of the American P-36 Hawk (Curtiss Model 75) fighter of the mid-1930s. The biggest foreign customer was France, where the first planes entered service in the spring of 1939. Of the fourth French sub-variant ordered, the H-75A-4 (H-751), only a handful reached the country before it surrendered to Nazi Germany in June 1940 while the rest of 190 a/c were taken over by the RAF as the Mohawk IV.

In March 1940 Norway ordered 36 H-75A-8s, but in the event they did not reach Europe and were used as advanced trainers in Canada. Of these, 30 a/c were bought by the USAAF in 1942 and after a short service they were sold to Peru.

The H-75A-4/8 was a single-seat, all-metal low-wing monoplane with fabric-covered control surfaces. It had a retractable undercarriage with the main landing gear rotated 90° to fold flat into the wing. Powered by a Wright R-1820 Cyclone single-row radial engine, it was fitted with Curtiss Electric propeller. Its armament consisted of two machine guns in the nose and another two guns in each wing. Racks for two to five bombs could also be mounted under each outer section of the wing.

Following the fall of France a number of Curtiss H-75 aircraft were seized by Germans and some of them were used by the Luftwaffe for pilot training. In the summer of 1941 the first batch of ex-French H-75s, including seven H-751s, were sold to Finland, which extensively used them against Soviet forces.