I have this old Monogram P-40B in 1/48 scale and it comes with U.S. Army, AVG and British markings. Does anyone know if this type of plane wore shark's teeth when in the standard US Army markings? The directions show the shark's teeth on both the British and Flying Tigers versions, but the US Army version is OD over grey with just the roundels with red dots.

Any suggestions?

Rob,
I posted some additional pics in the gallery. Not much info available for the images but some interesting marking none the less (the skull squadron is cool).

P40 gallery

Jim

Sabot,for a P-40B the US Army Air Force planes did not have the sharks teeth that I know of.You may be able to find at least one but Im pretty sure they didnt have them.On the British P-40s,they were the original pilots to put sharks teeth on the aircraft.I cant remeber who it was but one of the personel for the AVG saw a British P-40 with the sharks teeth in a newpaper and put it on a aircraft.The rest followed.
The picture of the P-40 the Jim has isnt a B,its actually a P-40N that served with the 89th FS,80th FG at India in 1943.Still a really cool airplane.

When the US entered the war, part of the AVG went back to the Air Force.
I think they became part of the 14th AIR FORCE. I don't know if they still had P40B's
at that time or if they were reequiped... so maybe you can look in that direction...

Sabot,

You're pretty much "limited" to P-40E/K's on when doing USAAF P-40's with teeth, or even USAAF P-40's overseas or in combat. There are a few one-off P-40/P-40B/P-40C schemes for USAAF post-Pearl Harbor, but they mostly seem to be advanced training school planes with X-series fuselage numbers and colored bands on the nose.

Of course I could be wrong with that generalization, but it's from 30 years of wading through books and mags.

Let me be the heretic here -- there's some nice RAF/Commonwealth schems for P-40/Tomahawk Army Co-Operation Command birds in the Dk. Earth/Dk. Green/Sky and Ocean Gray/Dk. Green/Medium Sea Gray schems WITHOUT TEETH B^D

I'll also vote for the no Army P-40B's with shark teeth. Everything I've ever seen or read has them limited to the British and AVG birds. By the time the AVG was incorporated back into the USAAC they were flying P-40E's.

From what I've read from quite some stories, the Shark Teeth originate from the RAF 112 Sqn. AVG just copied the teeth onto their birds...

This is a nice piece that adds some "colour to the stories" :

The origin of the shark's mouth dates back to 1941, as documented in the Champlin Fighter Museum at Falcon Field, Mesa, Arizona. An American Volunteer Group pilot, Charlie Bond, was visiting the home of Roy and Alice Klein, American Baptist missionaries in Toungoo, Burma. Bond noticed their copy of the Illustrated Weekly of India, dated 2 November 1941, had a picture of a Curtis P-40B Tomahawk with a shark's mouth decorating the nose. The aircraft belonged to the RAAF #112 Squadron. The next day, 16 November 1941, Bond rode his bicycle into town, bought some paint, and by that afternoon, had marked his P-40B in the manner subsequently adopted by the AVG as the trademark of the "Flying Tigers." There were 13,738 P-40s built and used by twenty-eight countries. The last version was the P-40N. The British called them Tomahawk or Kittyhawk. The USA named the P-40 "Warhawk." Champlin Museum has one built in 1944 with fewer than sixty flying hours on the aircraft.

Coppied from : http://www.americal.org/174/oham-01.htm