...that gets panned by the amateur historians and internet experts.

This again illustrates the difference between a good airplane and a good weapon, the Curtiss Hawk series certainly in the latter category. They were robust hardy things that flew off forward airstrips hardly worthy of the name from the cold and wet of the Aleutians and Russia to the jungles of Burma and the Solomons to the Western Desert. A solid all-rounder, it was not only an excellent ground support advance-deployed fighter-bomber but an air-superiority fighter that produced over 200 aces.

This one is modelled for a Tomahawk IIb flown by a squadron leader in Egypt in 1941, interestingly still painted in standard RAF green and brown rather than the tan and brown more commonly known.