Defending the Brewster Buffalo Again
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- Опубликовано: 20 окт 2021
- Just some more points to be made about the Brewster Buffalo. I don't believe in worst aircraft. Other factors generally contribute to success or failure. I still like the Brewster Buffalo, its a neat aircraft with interesting history!
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Best fighter plane in respect of the kill ratio in WWII is and was the Brewster 239 in finnish hands.
Kill ratio over the whole war ... 33 : 1, ....
kill ratio in 1941 (fighting the planes it was designed to fight with) 62 : 1.
The F2A "Buffalo" was a complete different airplane. The Brewster 239 was the plane Brewster designed and had excellent handling characteristics. In fact so well, that the Finns called them "Taivaan Helmi" ("Sky Pearls" in english).
The american Brewster F2A was an airplane that was buildt, after a "comitee of experts" insitet of several "improvements" which made it a sluggish pig.
It’s good that the Brewster Buffalo has someone in its corner.
New Zealand pilot Geoff Fisken shot down 6 Japanese aircraft over Singapore flying an RAF Buffalo, so in the hands of a skilled pilot it could be effective. He and went on to become the British Commonwealths highest scoring pacific ace, with his later victories being in P40’s at Guadalcanal.
If the war in the Pacific had started in 1939, the aircraft the Brewster Buffalo would have been up against were the aircraft one generation before the Zero, and with pilots with 2 years less combat experience. Timing is everything ,and it you look at the great planes of WW2 there period of ascendancy were measured often in months, rarely years. The few aircraft that had long life's were aircraft that were greatly modified from their original model , a classic example is that of the Spitfire. The Spitfire of 1945 was an entirely different beast from the Spitfire used in the battle of Britain in 1940.
great observation!
I have a Buffalo 239 in Combat Flight Simulator. Without the weight of naval equipment it can take on just about anything.
The Finnish loved them and used them well. Brewster had significant management and quality control problems with later models of the Buffalo, which also affected their production of the F3A Corsair. Lack of logistics and early air warning systems doomed efforts in the SW Pacific theatre.
Chanault's tactics weren't used, until later.
You make some good points.
It had 33:1 kill ratio.Wasn't so much the plane but training,experience were the big factors
The Finns loved this bird...
Good evaluation
The Buffalo was the face the Allies kept pummeling the Japanese fists with.
The buffalo, a name giving by the British, was a good enough plane for 1935 but not 1940. It had fuel pressure problems at altitude over 15000 feet and adding armor made it over weight and unbalanced, also the Brewster factory was highly inefficient making the plane expensive to build. The Finn's made good use of the buffalo but they faced poor Russian I15 and 16 fighters.
Even in later years when Soviet planes and their pilots became better the Finnish had good scores with the Brewster F2A.
Sometimes you have to shake what you're momma gave you and you have to remember that the allies were all responsible for the many balls up"s at the beginning of the war which gave the Germans and Japanese a considerable leg up . That said I think the buffalo was a basically good design that was let down by lack of development.
I with understand why people hate it so much. the Finnish used it to great success against the Russians.
When the Brewster Buffalo Road off the drawing board, she was very Advanced for her day. Unfortunately, ( for a lot of different aircraft types ) it's day and that era saw Aviation advancements on a monthly scale. By the time the Buffalo was in the fleet she was mediocre by comparison to some German and Japanese aircraft. You mentioned the fact of the training and experience, but we must remember that as soon as an aircraft in that timeframe rolled out..
No matter the aircraft..
She was obsolete..
The aircraft that reigned Supreme for the longest time ( and that time frame was only a couple of years ).. were the Bf109, Fw190, P47, P51 and F4F.. Not much different for attack aircraft.. in fact a lot of fighter aircraft ended up primarily doing ground support.. ( Some of that was mission priority because the war was evolving ).., and they made great ground support weapons platforms.
Then the jet age happened and it was one jet after another..
With basically the same thing happening to them.
For example the shooting star was a great aircraft, ( after the bugs were worked out ), but by then she was overshadowed by the mig-15, her workload also turning to ground support..
And on and on we go right up to today
You presented good points.
It's pretty
Telling us the Wildcat was rugged and great doesnt add to the Brewster as i can see. Cheers.
Good defense. Stick to your guns. The Bewster's legacy is in the (contextual) details.
We have to cut it some slack for being the 1st monoplane for the US Navy
Sometimes it sucks being the First.
To call the Buffalo a 'bad aircraft' is to grossly over simplify the situation the Buffalo found itself in. It was a time of great acceleration in development in the industry and the Buffalo's only real sin is that it had a less-than-stellar variant in the F2A-3 while also being perhaps outmoded.
Combine that with green pilots and a gross underestimation of how good the Japanese really were and you have a recipe for a clickbait youtube video where you laugh at an aircraft that was thrown into an unfair situation.
Context matters and this is a more of a case of the tech advancing faster than the Dept. of the Navy realized and hubris than it is of the Buffalo being "bad."
That's a great way to explain it. Thanks!