Manufactured exclusively for the Military Aviation Museum. This custom-designed hat features our Curtiss P-40E Warhawk. It is an unstructured cap made of garment-washed cotton twill in the front and back, with a low, unstructured crown, a pre-curved bill, and a hook-and-loop closure, allowing you to adjust it to your exact size.
Col. David Lee “Tex” Hill: Our Warhawk bears the markings of an American Volunteer Group (AVG) P-40E (41-5658) belonging to the 3rd Squadron, known as the Hells Angels. Its livery features the AVG’s distinctive sharks mouth paintwork on the nose cowling, as well as their Walt Disney-designed Flying Tiger emblem on the fuselage. The P-40 also wears Nationalist Chinese Insignia in place of American Stars and Bars, since none of the AVG’s aircraft, nor their American pilots, were actually serving in the US Military at the time the AVG formed during the summer of 1941.
Although the AVG started out with earlier model P-40s, attrition had worn down that initial fleet of 99 fighters to just 20 operational aircraft by the time they received a shipment of replacement P-40E’s via Africa and India. “Tex” Hill, himself a part of the 2nd Squadron Panda Bears, borrowed ‘aircraft 108’ from the 3rd Squadron to lead an attack on the Salween River Gorge. The E-model’s improved 700 lb bomb capacity appealed to him for the mission profile involved, as did the extra pair of .50 caliber machine guns in the wings.
