Curtiss Hawk 75A/Mohawk. Part Seven. The Hawk 75 in Thailand

 

During the early 1930s Curtiss and the Royal Siamese Air Force (RSAF) held contacts and, in 1934 twelve Hawk II biplanes were sold, together with a production license. One year later, additional Hawk III biplanes were sold and delivered. 
As the situation in the region deteriorated with the turn of the decade, the Thai government sought to bolster their country's combat strength so, to that end they bought a number of warplanes, among them twelve Hawk 75Ns, a export variant with a fixed landing gear, to the United States. 
When designing the aircraft for Siam, Curtiss took advantage of its experience with the Chinese H-75H, skipping this way the need for a new prototype. However, several changes were made. The airframe was closer to the Y1P-36 than the Hawk 75B, just like the Chinese demonstrator. 
This new variant, however, featured glass panels behind the cockpit canopy and a number of minor modifications. The landing gear also modified as it was moved slightly forward and was enclosed by larger cowlings. 
The armament was changed too, although fuselage machine guns remained unchanged, wing armament was completely redesigned. 
It was considered the installation of two 8mm machine guns or 23mm Madsen cannons under the wings, in special aerodynamic pods. Eventually the decision was made to install cannons that could be detached at any time and, in their place bomb racks could be placed. 
This sub-variant was designated as "Hawk 75N" and its first exemplar flew for the first time on 1st November 1938. By 9th December all twelve ordered aircraft were delivered at a price of $ 31.074,50 each. On 22nd March 1939 one of the aircraft crashed and the remaining eleven were transferred to a squadron based at Don Muang airfield, close to Bangkok. 
They were employed in the Franco-Thai War achieving some limited success and during the short-lived Thai-Japanese War which lasted for just 5 hours. 
During this time the 12.7mm Browning machine guns of the Siamese Hawks were replaced with Danish Madsens of 11.35mm.
Nowadays only one Hawk 75N survives, located at the Royal Thai Air Force Museum.
The RSAF also ordered a specific two-seat version of the Hawk 75N, intended for training purposes, capable of carrying 450kg of bombs, to replace their ageing Vought V-93S Corsair biplanes. 
Curtiss rejected this proposal, as it was impossible to adapt the aircraft to carry such heavy payload and so few machines. Moreover, like any single-unit production, it would have been too expensive, so Curtiss offered some SBC-4 Helldivers instead, but this was rejected by te RSAF, which preferred the North American NA-69. This order, however, never reached Thai land as the shipment was intercepted by the Japanese after December 1941 and "sold" the RSAF some Mitsubishi Ki-30 of their own.

Sources:
1st  AJ-Press - Monografie Lotnicze 61 - Curtiss P-36 Hawk Part 1 (translated)
2nd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_P-36_Hawk