P-40E flown by David Lee ‘Tex’ Hill of the American Volunteer Group, the famous Flying Tigers. Skin is for the Chinese P-40E.
Born in Korea of missionary parents, Hill was flying SB2U dive-bombers from the Ranger on ‘neutrality patrols’ with VS-41 when he signed up for the AVG in March 1941. He was kept busy leading missions at Rangoon, and recalls that unlike many of the other pilots, he spent the nights ‘in the boondocks’ near the aeroplanes on the dispersal fields, rather than ‘leading the life of Riley’ with the British colonials. He enjoyed his first success on a 3 January strafing attack on Raheng, when he was credited with shooting a Ki-27 ‘Nate’ off James Howard’s tail. He was hit by 33 rounds himself, however. After four more victories, he returned to Kunming in February and, between bouts of dysentery and malaria, assisted with testing bombing equipment and ferrying aircraft from India. Following Jack Newkirk’s death on 24 March, Chennault promoted him to command of the Second Squadron. He flew many of the risky ‘morale missions’ in March-April 1942, scoring three more aerial victories. He led missions against Japanese ground forces at the Salween River Gorge in May, and ended his AVG service with a victory tally of 11.25 recognised by CAMCO. He agreed to extend his AVG contract for two weeks, then accepted a commission in the Army Air Forces in China as the first Commanding Officer of the 75th FS. He returned to the US in November 1942, but went back to China a year later as Commanding Officer of the 23rd FG – a position he held until October 1944. While there he was credited with the destruction of five more Japanese aircraft.
The first P-40E's arrived with the AVG to replace the older Tomahawks in March of 1942. They were distributed to the first and second squadrons, with the third squadron receiving hand-me-down Tomahawks from the first and second squadron. The P-40E's didn't receive the same level of detail in their markings as the Tomahawks. The shark mouth was simplified, squadron art was not applied, the "US ARMY" under the wings wasn't painted out and some didn't even have the fuselage band with the squadron color applied.
This is my first skin. I don't have the ability to do .dds files so this is a straight modification of the TGA skins in the game. I have tried to make it as accurate as my skills will allow. However I do have a problem that I don't know how to fix, and I could use some help. While in the hangar, the propeller spinner shows up as olive drab, which is what it is supposed to be. When I go into the missions, the spinner turns white, which is the default color in the P-40E skin. I even fried using the .blk file from the USSR P-40E, which doesn't have a white spinner, and that still didn't work. Any help will be appreciated.
Please enjoy and let me know what you think.
