The Brewster buffalo still think it could have been better

I think the buffalo could have been a better plane like the fm2 wildcat. If Brewster had reworked the plane a it and put a more powerful engine. I know that's what the f2-a3was supposed to be but they had added so much more weight and the power increase wasn't enough to compensate for it. The navy thought it could be a better plane and commissioned that longer fuselage and other changes they say it should have been a great plane, but Brewster for some reason instead of simple stretching the fuselage he completely redesigned the framing and added more framing than necessary and added a huge amount of weight that caused the plane to be a failure. The navy was not happy he was way behind schedule and what should have been a decent new plane was a waste of taxpayer money. They started an investigation that showed Brewster not only couldn't manage his company but his sale staff cheated him of millions. They seized control of the company for most of the war and released it after they didn't need the facilities after a lengthy court battle Brewster got part of the company back and sold it under a bankruptcy claim. I really don't know why the call the buffalo the wrist fighter ever at least they got a decent number of kills, the boomerang from what I read never got a single kill, they got so close a number of times but just when the pilot thought he had the enemy dead right his guns would fail to fire. It said they had lots of problems with the humidity causing the guns to jam or the electrical firing system to fail. But they had that problem with all fighters and yet they didn't had the amount of problems the boomerang had. The Australian Air Force regulated them as trainers since they could never seem to resolve the gun problem. Too bad as I think they did a great job putting together an industry most thought they could never manage. They did build a number of p51s from kits and parts sent from the USA. Also some bombers so their industry did make a good contribution. Still looking for my Buffaloes I stored so I can do that ficticous French plane and the xa32 and later maybe a Buccaneer.

 

Well, The Finnish pilots never complained about the Brewster. They just flew and dropped enemy planes.

Finnish Air Force Buffalo aces

Finnish Air Force Buffalo aces

 

Yeah I read they loved the plane easy to fly when it seemed they were not going to,be able to get more they built that copy with wooden wings they used wood to reduce the use of steel as Finland had low steel reserves I wonder if they salvaged all,those Russian tanks for the steel I know they repaired many of the tanks they knocked out and thus had a small,armor force plus later the Germans supplied them with some tanks and aircraft. I read that plane is in a museum in Finland as it was the first indigenous fighter ever built. I read they built some improvements that they felt the plane needed and the first engines were rebuilt commercial engines from passenger planes. They passed on the idea when Germany started supplying aircraft which as always the Finnish Air Force made very good use of knocking down lots of soviet planes. I read you guys captured a number of soviet planes too. Most pieced together wrecks that they salvaged as they needed aircraft some they captured from forward air bases the soviets setup and got over run by advancing Finnish troops. That's impressive those bases weren't that close so they must of over ran and pushed back the soviets for miles. Mark one models has the g50 in my scale and a couple of boxing with finish markings, it's on my with list the g50 is not a bad looking plane and it's another one they the FAF had a high kill ratio in. They also captured a number of bombers too.
I'm pretty impressed they were able to copy the buffalo from the pics it looked really good pretty much an exact copy but I think it said besides the wings being wood the prop was wood as well. I guess they really had a shortage of steel and did Finland have a steel plant for making sheet steel?

 

The steel problem? I recall an old joke. As the USSR could not invade Finland, Stalin claimed some super power must be giving us tanks, guns, artillery etc. The Finns said " Yes, indeed." Referring to massive Soviet army losses to Finland...oooppsss.

 

The Finnish Buffalo was pretty much the aircraft Prospero suggests - a much lighter version of the original.

 

It's an intriguing idea, but with the FM-2 as our lightweight fighter for CVEs, the F6F for the first line, and the F4U, there was probably not felt to be a need for an additional fighter and its logistic pipeline.

Also there may not have been much confidence in the Brewster company to develop it.

 

Very interesting, I didn't know the Finns substantially modified the Buffalo. I did know they used the Buffalo successfully. It makes sense now why.

The Finns made several successful improvements to the Mosin Nagant 91/30 rifle.

Probably worth mentioning by the time the Corsair and the F6F were available in numbers the emphasis in the Pacific had shifted from dogfighting to ground attack.

 

The big problem was in the company itself

Brewster Aeronautical Corporation - Wikipedia

The other offerign from Brewster, the scout bomber was rejected for combat by the RAF and USAAC and has been described as one of the worst allied aircract of the war.

 

The Finnish liked the buffalo so much they started their own copy as they thought they were not going to be able to get more planes they had like three planes they were working on a copy of the French fighter, a plane a modified copy of another craft and a buffalo with plywood wings, steel was in short supply so they decided to build a plane using plywood for strategic resource reasons and said it worked rather well but then Germany started to supply them with 109s and some captured French planes and they decided they could use the resources for other war needs. The plane still exists in a finish museum.

 

No, not really...

The French fighter in question, the M.S. 406, was not a copy, but a modification of airframes sent by France in 1940, the a few years later, captured 406s sent by Germany.

The Finnish copy of the Buffalo took some 2 years to develop, and came in overweight & underpowered, also it had been surpassed by the more moder fighters of other nations - which relegated it's use to being strictly a reconnaissance aircraft.

 

I like the finish 406 it's slightly more streamed lined and the lower scoop looks better. I wanna get the French model and later modify it seems it should be simple and going to look into that other plane they were working on they got the prototype finished before the end of the war but didn't mass produce it. I think they just had so many other projects going on they just didn't have the industry and resources for everything they had going, modifying captured tanks and repairing the ones they had they took a number of BT tanks and made the BT 42 and made some into APCs seen pictures from the sides but would love to find a over head to seen what kind of troop arrangement they did and if they opened it up quite a bit like most of the fighting compartment opened and what did they do about the engine compartment close it off or partially open it? Looks like the box structure built to protect the troops inside were made of very thick lumber but raised so a gap was open between the top of the hull and bottom of the wood I'm guessing to give troops a way to peer out and stick their weapons out. It looks very crude but probably good enough to do the job move troops into the front and shield them from normal small weapons fire.

 

I'm still searching for my f toy buffalos I stored away I wanna try to make that French version that was never built as France fell so quick and then the A32 prototype and see if I can make a buccaneer as they say the buffalo was a scaled down model from the buccaneer that the designer thought he could just scale it down to a single one man plane it wasn't bad but should have done a little more thinning and streaming it was a bit thick in places that added a bit of drag. Originally he offered a design with a bubble canopy but the navy passed, funny as later most of our planes went to the bubble. At that time the navy used the big spine for radio equiptment and life raft storage, I wonder if that was why they wanted the large spine version as they made a practice of such installations. I read this thing on fighter aircraft radios and most had two transceivers and three receivers. Usually cramed into the plane behind the pilot seat. I guess they had multiples as to insure against component failur and if one got battle damage I guess you'd still have a back up. I wonder how much vacuum tubing those things used as solid state tech didn't come out till years after the war. We had some time getting there but it was really crude and huge back then using thin metal strips and heat sinks to regulate components till the modern resister and diodes, and caps we make stuff so tiny you need a magnifying glass to see them correctly and micro processors so tiny you can fit dozens on the face of a dime.

 

Be careful though, some of those shipped to Finland by Germany were the later M.S. 410s.

 

We had some of our own designs but due to need to get the planes to action af fast as possible we took what we got. Hurricanes, Blenheims, bf 109s, French planes, Italian planes etc. We had own prototypes like " Storm" etc but only a few were built during wartime.

 

Finding much of anything French wwii in my scale is a bit hard, I don't think any of the mainstream companies do anything in high detailed plastic or resin injection. There are a few Japanese resin companies and metal cast that do some French stuff there's a French company that did pewter 1/144 stuff looked great highly detailed but kinda expensive and I could never get a hold of them way back they did a p36 that looked great but was never able to get one now they have model one that does p36 and h75s that look great. Anyway two resin companies in Japan Dona ms406 the 410 looks very close and a 3D print company in the US does a ms406 but it pricey and the details look a bit heavy if I get a ms406 it will be most likely from one of the resin companies. And maybe a few French tanks, like the ft17 it was copied by so many countries, Italy, Russia, Japan, USA, and bought by so many countries that didn't have the industrial base to build their own. I think it's funny the Russians copied it so exact and didn't make a bunch of changes to simplify it for their style of manufacture. Like they didn't like the stuff they learned from German engineers and Stalin as paranoid as he was had all the workers and engineers that worked at the German factory arrested and imprisoned as possible tractors to the state like the guys hadn't even done anything and they were arrested and thrown in prison as possible trators not that they actually did anything. They say that's why the soviet Air Force was so far behind aircraft engineers were developing aircraft on for the soviets was new technology it takes time to develope and refine new technology but Stalin expected instant progress and we he didn't get what he wanted he threw people in prison as enemies of the state what an idiot. However as they kept getting pushed back and their air force was very ineffective his generals searched for those engineers many still alive in the prisons got them released to work on the planes they were so close to making before Stalin lost his wits. I also wondered how well was his country really ready for war as he screwed up his food production as well, one of his many purges wiped out many of the farm land communities and I read that caused a reduced harvest and increased famine in the Soviet Union Stalin really did a lot of negative things that cost the Soviet Union no wonder when the guy died the people went nuts and tore down lots of things dedicated to Stalin and they renamed the city he named after himself and they would refer to his time as the dark times. They say he had his special army perform purges during the war and made it look like the Germans did it. The man was diffinately a paranoid crazy man.