An old P-40 Warhawk fighter from World War II firing live ammunition 82 years later

There are old airplanes that have a truly incredible history, among them an old Curtiss P-40N Warhawk from World War II.

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The P-40 Warhawk is a robust and beautiful American fighter that made its first flight on October 14, 1938. It entered service in 1939 and saw combat before its country, with the first batch of 140 aircraft delivered to the British RAF in September 1940. These aircraft were originally intended for France and were nicknamed "Tomahawk" by the British and later "Kittyhawk." The P-40 was the first aircraft of the United States Armed Forces to see combat in World War II and the first to shoot down enemy aircraft. Of the 29 aircraft that Japan lost in its attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, 10 were shot down by P-40s.

The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) received its first P-40s in February 1942, with a batch of 120 arriving at Brisbane harbor. Known as the Kittyhawk by its pilots, it was the RAAF's main fighter in World War II, serving in the Middle East, North Africa, Borneo, Papua New Guinea, and the Southwest Pacific.

In August 1943, Australia received a P-40N with the American serial number 42-104730. The RAAF assigned it the serial number A29-448. This aircraft crashed at Tadji, on the north coast of Papua New Guinea, in May 1944. Its combat record ended there. In 1973, the aircraft was recovered by Charles Darby and underwent a restoration process by Pioneer Aero Restorations in New Zealand. The aircraft was decorated with an olive green scheme and the roundels used by Commonwealth aircraft in the Indo-Pacific theater, featuring a white circle and a blue border.

In 2024, the aircraft was acquired by the Soaring by the Sea Foundation, a non-profit organization in Eugene, Oregon, dedicated to preserving military heritage and operating historic World War II and Korean War aircraft. The aircraft, now registered as the American civilian aircraft NL4730, was flown to the United States and decorated with Chinese roundels (it's worth remembering that American pilots of the Flying Tigers operated these aircraft in China between December 1941 and July 1942).

One of the aircraft's distinguishing features is that its machine guns are still operational, allowing it to fire blanks during displays. This Saturday, the Soaring by the Sea Foundation released a spectacular video on its YouTube channel, showing something that had become very rare since Brazil was the last country to retire these fighters from active service: a P-40 firing live ammunition, specifically in a desert area. It has been 82 years since this aircraft last performed such a feat.

Here you can see a video showing how this live-fire flight was done, with impressive footage recorded from an Aero L-39 Albatros training aircraft:

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Main image: Soaring by the Sea Foundation.