"Brewster Buffalo" Topic

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Best aircraft of WWII!

warbirdforum.com/buff.htm

Guffaw!

Hey, the Finns liked them and used them to good effect.

Dave

The Finns' success with the Buffalo was a combination of factors:

• Temperate vs. tropical clime
• Home-built Buffalos lacked a lot of the weightier components (including armor) and had wood replacing metal in places
• Superior pilots vs. poorly trained enemy – the reverse of the Pacific situation at the time.

Wyatt

Still, in the Pacific the Buff scored a 2:1 kill ratio.
Anyway, the above just shows the versatility of the airframe and engine.

Superior pilots in any aircraft will win out against crappy pilots in great aircraft anyday in WWII.

Mr Boyington was very complimentary (as much as Mr Boyington could be – apart from the added armor) of the Buffalo.

With the Buffalo it's the old joke about scooters and members of the opposite sex who may have a higher body mass index than most – Fun to ride until someone sees you.

I personally think the Buffalo has an enormously high personality to looks ratio and did good service in many airforces and served, or were slated to serve, in even more. Few airplanes served in all theaters, climates, off carriers, (and were liked by their crews) as the Buffalo.

All hail the mighty Buffalo; and if the above website and entrenched, blind but fun opinions such as mine remain around – revisionist history will have the Buffalo as the greatest aircraft of WWII when history is taught 300 years from now! Gnash your teeth now, the Buffalo will rule the skies of future imaginations!

If you want to build a bigger version than pictured here, there is an article about detailing the Tamiya 1/48 Brewster Buffalo in the November FineScale Modeler.

Waytt the Odd,

otherwise sound comments but qith some problems:

-The local version (VL Humu) didn't see operational use. Then again, since only ONE (1) was ever built I really don't think it's performance would've made MUCH of difference (even if it had performed, say, like me262) ;)

More on Humu at Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VL_Humu

and on Buffalo as well link

Also VL Humu was actually HEAVIER than Brewster so the comment regarding the heavier components is kinda strange.

AFAIK the reason wooden components were used was that Finns simply didn't have suitable metal available so wood was used instead. As you might know, wood can be found, erm, in abundance around here and it was a raw material local aeronautical designers and mechanics were quite familiar with…

From Warbirdalley warbirdalley.com/buffalo.htm
"The project soon fell behind schedule and the Humu proved to be inferior to the F2A-1 due to a higher aircraft weight, among other factors."

-I don't know how much the climate affected the performance of Brewster. Would the difference between performance in Finland and in Pacific been REALLY big? (would it have performed a fraction of percentage or some percents better in Finland ?) Besides most foreigners tend to think that Finland is an arctic wasteland where it always snows and it is minus gazillion degrees outside. I'd say that the climate is pretty similar to Michigan. What is the optimum temperature and humidity for Brewster's use? Was it used in different altitudes between the theatres?

You are totally right about the pilot quality, but not all Russian pilots were abysmally bad. Then again, their possible lack of expertise was nearly always compensated by them being equipped with better aircraft (the early stages of Continaution War being the exception -in 1941 Brewster more or less reigned supreme).

By the by, in my younger days some nitpickers at local IPMS told me that we didn't have any Buffaloes in Finland. The aircraft was Brewster B.239.

Cheers,
Lönkka
Finland

One of my favourite reads was a book called, "Mohawks Over Burma".

All depends how the Brewsters were used I suppose. Couldn't be worse than the P400s over New Guinea.

[The Humu also had a Russian radial engine].

Yes, B239 is the proper name for the export version – or F2A1 for the home-brew; however Buffalo (thanks to the British) just sound more.. what's the word.. anthropomorphic. Gives the plane character, and yes kinda looks like one.

And my wife, Russian, thinks Wisconsin is worse than Siberia! So wouldn't be too quick to use the Michigan analogy for examples of temperancy- course she's from the South!

NZ pilots did have much chance to get used to the aircraft before they arrived in Singapore. Lack of familiarity doesn't help matters much. Good pilots are good pilots no matter what crate they ride.

Please don't judge my paintbrushed effort against/by Fine Scale Modeler standards! I'm usually too impatient to get my models onto a stand and game with them. Not to mention I'm not as gifted as many of my fellow TMP modelers.

This is the first time I've ever built a Buffalo. It's also the first time I've ever built a model with RAAF markings. It's also the first time I like the underside view of an aircraft as much or more than the topside.

I've enjoyed the links that have given me a better appreciation for the pilots who flew this often maligned aircraft.

Armaments in Miniature is getting ready to release a 1/100 scale Buffalo…I'm going to get a whole herd of them.

A 2:1 kill:loss ratio does not make a fighter good. After all, most of the planes that a fighter fights against are bombers, scouts, floatplanes, etc.

It's better than 1:2!

In Finland around 26:1.

Thanks for the clarification, Lönkka. Squadron's "Finnish Air Force 1939-1945 seemed to imply that the State Aircraft Factory cranked out more than a few of the Humus. They really didn't go into depth on any one aircraft type in that book although it does say that the Buffalos were very successful against Soviet Hurricanes with 40 being shot down in 2 months. I suspect that I would've gotten better info from their book on the Buffalo, but I was only after paint schemes for the Fokker C.X.

Wyatt

The Finnish engineers reversed the piston rings on the B-239 Brewsters they got. The result was a huge increase in engine reliability. Navy took out the armor, tail hooks, and self sealing tanks when the sold them to the Finns. So they weighed less. Finns I believe put the armor back in. The four HMG's on board were revelations.
Boyington said the Buffalo could roll and turn inside a phone booth. Kill-loss ratio on the Finnish fronts is astonishing. This information has refocused me on the Sky Pearl as the Finns called it. I'm sure they never heard of a buffalo.