Shockwave Wings of Power II Curtiss P-40 For FSX

he Curtiss P-40 was a plane that attracted equal quantities of praise and abuse in its time and yet it remained in service right throughout the Second World War, thanks to its rugged nature. Obsolescent by the time war broke out, the P-40 still managed to claim numerous firsts, including the first Japanese aircraft to be shot down over the Pacific, which fell to a P-40B over Pearl Harbor. At least nine different air forces flew the P-40, but it gained fame with the Flying Tigers of General Chennault's Volunteer Group, who flew from Kunming and other fields, supported by a legendary airlift that flew supplies to them across the roof of the world.

By the time the prototype flew in late 1938, it was clear that the P-40 wasn't going to come up to expectations, but the warring nations desperately needed aircraft and it was put into production despite its deficiencies. Although many were exported, the USAAF took the lion's share of P-40 production and as late as summer 1943, P-39s and P-40s comprised more than half of its fighter force. The original hulls were fitted with Allison V-1710 engines, which had a rated altitude of only 12000 feet, way below the level at which the majority of interceptions were taking place. Initial combat results were discouraging, particularly when the P-40 was pitted at altitude against the highly maneuverable Zero, which literally ran rings around the Curtiss design; so tactics were evolved which utilised the P-40's high speed in a dive to attack and break away. Ironically, the P-40 was an effective fighter at low level, it just didn't get many chances to prove itself.

In 1941, the P-40 found itself with a new engine under the hood, when the British shoe-horned in a Rolls-Royce Merlin 28 into a Kittyhawk I airframe in an attempt to improve its dismal high altitude performance. This engine still developed over a thousand horsepower at 18000 feet and boosted the maximum speed in level flight to 373 mph. These results were impressive enough that the P-40 was fitted with various Packard Merlin engines, the most powerful production example being the P-40L, which had 1300 hp on tap and a ceiling of 36000 feet.

Besides China and Burma, the P-40 served in North Africa and Italy, Alaska and the Aleutians, the Soviet Union and Brazil. For a plane that no-one wanted, it didn't do so badly, gaining fame as a fighter with the Flying Tigers and as a ground attack aircraft in the Western Desert. A total of 16000 hulls had been built by the time production ended in 1944, the P-40's replacements being the P-38, P-47 and P-51 - all of which were far better aircraft, but none of which had been available to plug the slot that the P-40 so effectively filled in the dark days of 1939 - 1941. Give the P-40 its due - besides, it has to be one of the best-looking fighters of all time.

The Shockwave P-40 belongs to the 'Wings of Power' series, which has been around since 2004, as far as I can recall. The original pack was released for FS2004 and contained eight different bombers and an He 162; this was followed by a fighter pack and various singles including an He 219. The developer's stated aim is to build aircraft 'that not only look beautiful, but also fly and function authentically' and with the release of the P-40 I can confirm that they have succeeded in their aim. This is one of the best FS warbirds I have ever seen - on a par with the iconic RealAir Spitfire XIV and in some respects surpassing it.

The package is a 77 Mb download from the Pilot Shop and installation is easy, the only challenge being to enter your name and the key code. When installation was finished, I found a new Wings of Power II group on the Start Menu, with a link to a 36 page pdf manual and a couple of website URLs. I looked all over, but could not find a minimum hardware specification, but that may be intentional, since theoretically the P-40 isn't any more complicated than the default planes and should run on any system that can handle FSX. I did the review using a 2.66 Ghz Core2Duo with 4 Gb of RAM, a 768 Mb GeForce 8800GTX, Windows Vista and FSX SP1, but I would think that anything faster than a 3.0 Ghz Pentium ought to be able to run the addon flat out as long as you turn off the Autogen.

The manual gives a welcome insight into the development effort that went into the P-40 and adds considerable interest to exploring and flying the addon, not least because the team highlight various features of the plane, based on their personal experience. After the preamble, the text describes each of the variants included in the package, which are: a USAAF P-40B, which survived the attack on Pearl and is currently owned by The Fighter Collection, Duxford in England; a P-40B of the American Volunteer Group, based at Kunming; an RAF Tomahawk IIB in desert colors; and a Soviet Air Force Tomahawk IIB. Differences between the planes are limited to the fuel system, drop tanks and gunsights.

The visual model is outstanding and conveys the chunky look of the P-40 extremely well, with considerable detailing and very realistic weathering. As you can see from the screenshots, the gear and the flaps are particularly well done, but if you look into the cockpit in external view, it looks better than anything else I can recall seeing in FS in a long, long while. The textures are almost perfect; the reflectivity is mostly right and overall the addon cries out for repaints, which Shockwave have catered for with a repaint kit which has recently become available on their website.

All the standard animations are there, including flexing gear and a pilot who looks where he is going (interesting how many animated FS pilots seem to spend their entire time looking somewhere else, no wonder there are so many accidents, should be some kind of rule). Above 8,000 feet, the pilot wears his oxygen mask and you get working cowl flaps, but there is no maintenance mode, so the engine is forever hidden from view.

Like most of the other aircraft of its generation, the P-40 wasn't complicated to fly, once you had got your head around the apparently random layout of the controls. Prior to electronics, a control went where its cable terminated, which led to some interesting arrangements and no two cockpits being anywhere near alike. Fortunately, the manual has a very good cockpit layout key and you can use the tooltips as well if you need them. Realistic engine starts are possible and the manual goes into considerable detail about the airspeed necessary to carry out all the standard maneuvers.

To all intents and purposes, the addon only has a virtual cockpit (VC) although it does have a 'mini-panel' style 2D cockpit that has the basic gauges arranged in a strip along the bottom of the screen. I can't think of any reason for using this unless you aren't happy about the idea of taking off and landing in a plane which doesn't have any view ahead worth discussing (-:

To describe the VC as a tour de force is an understatement, because it is just about the most awe-inspiring piece of work I have ever seen. I have reviewed an awful lot of addons over the years and have gotten pretty battle-hardened as a consequence, so, as regular readers will know, I am not prone to drooling over product, but if you want to see how a VC should be done, you are going to have to buy the P-40. When I first loaded the addon, I thought, 'There is just no way I am going to waste this by using the hat switch!' so I paused FSX, loaded TrackIR, stuck on the daft hat and drank it in.

Wow.

I just wish they were all like this. To be fair, Shockwave appear to have thrown a lot of time and effort into establishing themselves in the market, but the P-40 leaves everything they and 95% of other FS developers have done in the dust. The VC looks real and once you get the POV right with TrackIR, it feels real. I'm waiting for RealAir to bring out the FSX version of their Spit, but until it appears, with the exception of the Flight Replicas Messerschmitt Bf-109F, there isn't anything to touch the P-40 VC.

The flight model is as good as the VC, which is to say that the addon flies much as real P-40s reportedly do. This wasn't that hard a plane to fly; few WWII fighters were, given the short periods of training that could be afforded for pilots, but it isn't a Cessna and there are some things that it won't forgive and others that it won't forget, so the best way of describing the flight model is that it has personality in a way that most FS flight models do not. I will never get the chance to fly a real one of these, but having flown a fair selection of planes in my time, I can assure you that this is one of a select bunch of flight models that feels right.

The sound set is worth some few more words than usual, because it has been recorded with great thoroughness by a real artist and has been shoehorned into FSX with some love. If you swing the viewpoint around the hull, the sound varies and it is clear that a good deal of time has been spent getting the sounds just right, so that the noise in the cockpit is markedly different from what you hear standing behind the tail, for example.

Verdict? No more to say than that this is a great sim and the best warbird currently available for FSX, winning by a short head from the Flight Replicas Bf-109F. Just about the only possible challenger (apart from another fighter in the WOP II series) is the RealAir Spitfire XIV, which is slated for release for FSX and which we will review just as soon as we can lay our hands on a copy. But however good the Spit turns out to be, the Shockwave P-40 is a fantastic sim and even if you aren't interested in warbirds, you owe yourself a copy.

Andrew Herd
andy@flightsim.com

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