March 2020
While in Baton Rouge, we visited the USS KIDD Veterans Museum and discovered this P-40 suspended in a rear area. From what I’ve been able to gather, this replica aircraft has a bit of movie history to its credit. This is apparently a surviving movie prop used in the filming of “Tora, Tora, Tora” (1970). Some of the P-40’s that they used were mock-ups with actual P-40 noses bolted onto plywood bodies and sporting P-38 propellers, while others were tube fuselages with actual Allison engines, noses and P-38 propellers and Twin Beech outer wing panels and T-6 landing gear. Its hard to determine which type of replica this example is. One of those movie replica P-40s was then acquired by Universal in 1978 for the movie “1941” and used for cockpit close-ups with John Belushi and a crash scene in a downtown LA street. That replica later ended up in the Cradle of Aviation Museum and may actually be this same faux Warhawk in its new home. Fuji X-E2s w/18-135mm.