Worst aircraft of WW2?

[vikingBerserker]

I've wondered if the prime cause of the "worst fighter" label had more to due with the Navy's/Other's opinion of the Brewster Co itself then the plane.

[buffnut453]

That's a very valid point. Brewster had no real reputation as an aircraft manufacturer of note, despite some innovative designs. However, it's also worth remembering that the Buffalo dated back to 1936 when Grumman was still up-engining biplanes. For its time, it was quite advanced, particularly for a naval aircraft-- retractable undercarriage, enclosed cockpit, single-seat, 4x50cal MGs (most naval fighters of the time had, at most, 2 small-calibre MGs), and flaps--but the company's lack of experience was witnessed by the landing gear problems associated with heavy deck landings and the design's general lack of growth potential. By the time it entered combat with the US and Brit militaries, its performance had been surpassed and aircraft manufacturers were building aircraft based on a couple of years of combat experience. Even the Zero resulted from IJNAF combat experience in China with the A5M.

The points about the single-piece wing are valid, more so because the lack of any wing folding mechanism limited the potential wing area of the design. One much-publicised commentary by Sqn Ldr Churchill of 71 Sqn RAF famously claimed that a single bullet hole in the wing fuel tanks would necessitate replacing the entire wing, although operational maintenance procedures were put in place (at least by the RAF) to repair battle damage to the wing tanks. I also believe the RAF aircraft had a form of self-sealing based on, if memory serves, a horsehair liner. That said. replacing a wing was a major activity involving numerous bolts that had to be undone and then re-fastened although RAF Stations in the Far East appear to have been equipped with the necessary equipment to do the job (and is wing replacement really an activity that maintenance crews would do quickly...all things are relative, I suppose).

[Elvis]

buffnut,

You wrote: "...However, it's also worth remembering that the Buffalo dated back to 1936...it was quite advanced...retractable undercarriage, enclosed cockpit, single-seat, 4x50cal MGs..."
I read that as you quoting the original design, so it would then be 3-50's and 1-30....and why one 30? What's the point? I never got that about the later pre-war fighters.

You also wrote: "...Brewster had no real reputation as an aircraft manufacturer of note..."
Its my understanding that Brewster was actually a fairly new company at the time they vied for the Naval Fighter contract.
I seem to recall an inception date for the company being 1930, possibly 1932?
In fact, that appears to have been a glaring problem with them, during the stormy relationship they had with the US Government - They were so new, they hadn't had time to "develop" the production facilities needed to successfully satisfy the Naval order in a timely fashion.
Is that how you understand the story, as well?

As for wing replacement, I have some video on a P-40 being restored and they showed the crew putting the wing on that plane.
Appeared to have taken 10 guys and a LOT of time to get the wing on.
Lots of , "a smidge this way" and "I see a hole!". A bunch of rollin head bars seemed to help, as well.
Once squared up and a few bolts started, the procedure seemed to have gone fairly quickly....so it seems a majority of the time was spent just fiting the wing to the plane and lining up all those bolt holes.
Of course, "apples-2-oranges", it could've been a completely different procedure in the Buffalo.


Elvis

[Shortround6]

I think that Navy, while not real pleased with Brewster's Performance while building Buffaloes didn't really get P.O.d until later with the lack of progress on both the Bermuda and the Corsair.

See:Brewster Aeronautical Corporation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Navy may have been willing to cut them some slack in 1939-40 because they finished a $10 million order for PBY parts in May of 1940. For comparison the 43 planes supplied to the Finns was valued at $3 million. It was also in May 1940 that Brewster leased a 217,000sq ft hanger at Newwark airport for final assembly and in June of 1940 they got an eight story building of 482000sq ft across from original factory.

Some production figures for the Buffalo and the Wildcat from 1941.

month...............Buff............Wildcat
Feb...................22................25
March................35................25
April..................35................47
May..................35................37
Aug..................26................31
Sept.................39................18

Some of the Brewster figures include Foreign deliverys. April was the only month that Grumman exceeded 40 Wildcats for the year. Brewster might have only got the contract for 103 F2A-3s becasue Grumman couldn't build Wildcats fast enough and to keep Brewster going and expanding for later production. Work starting at the end of March for a new factory on a 400 acre site in Johnsville , PA.

As to the wing, I think, but could be wrong that the P-36/P-40 wing could be seperated into halves. Wiether the only one half could be fitted to the plane at a time I don't know but even if it couldn't the ablity to ship and store the wings as "halves" would have been an advantage.
The Idea of using the space between the front and rear spars as the fuel tank ( using heavy gauge metal to cover the top, bottom and ends) was quite inovative for the time and offered about a 200lb weight savings over the seperate tanks used in the Wildcat. While quite acceptable for peacetime use or for civilian planes the idea does kind of loose it's appeal for combat when it proved difficult to rig the the intergral tanks with selfsealing material or repair combat damage to the tanks. Replace the whole wing rather than pull damaged tank from wing/ fuselage and replace tank.
The one piece wing might not have been as big an issue if repairs could have been done to the wing and systems without replacement of the entire unit.

[buffnut453]

Elvis, mea culpa! You're right - the 4x50cals didn't come in until the F2A-2. The only reason I can think of for having a different weapon would be lack of space - perhaps the internal reconfiguration of the -2 provided sufficient latitude to put in the larger calibre weapon.

Brewster had a long history as a carriage works building first horse-drawn vehicles and later automotive bodies. However, their aviation expertise was far less extensive - if memory serves, they started out as a subcontractor building wingtip floats for seaplanes. As for the production facilities, the Brewster factory was quite reasonable for the low-rate production of the inter-war period but it operated on multple floors of a factory building and hence was totally unsuited to mass production requirements of total war (although they still did quite well compared to Grumman in 1941 as observed by Shortround6). I believe the key problems were lack of quality control (the RAF encountered a number of faults with delivered airframes that were just down to shoddy manufacturing processes) and disharmony between the union-led workforce and the management. At one point, delivery of RAF Buffalos was totally disrupted due to a union strike - imagine how that was received by the UK which was at war at the time and needed every aircraft it could get.

Finally, the F2A-3 is a fascinating subject. As far as I know, the design was driven by the USN to extend the range/endurance of the -2. It certainly was not a Brewster-led proposal to "improve" the aircraft.

Yours aye,
Mark H (LKBS)

[Elvis]

Shortround,

AFAIK, no USN pilot was ever "dissatified" with the performance of the Buffalo.
Upon reflection, some may have lamented the want for a different airplane, when recalling a certain situation, but I've never read any reports that ever said anything to the extent of "The Brewster Buffalo is a lousy fighter plane".
So I'm not sure where your line of thinking came from, as far as the USN being dissatisfied with the Buffalo's performance.
What happened was the advent of the F6F.
Once the Hellcat hit the scene, it made just about everything else in the USN's inventory obsolete, except maybe for the Corsair, and they'd already given those to the Marines.
The reason for the strife between Brewster and the US Government was that Brewster never fully delivered on their orders.
As Buffnut mentioned, there was some internal strife and the main plant used an antiquated format for contructing their planes.
Even though you showed several months in 1941 where production was at least in step with Grumman, you have to remember those are (for us) pre-war figures.
Once we got mixed up in brawl, we needed much more significant productioin numbers and even though there were various plants, they were "stages" rather than full production facilities, so if anything, even the added floor space was used ineffciently.
What gets me, is how Brewster was able to keep the goverment enticed for so long.
Shows ya' just how slick those salesmen were and should also serve as insight into the governments perception of the lethality of the Buffalo.
----------------------------------------------------

Buffnut,

I didin't know Brewster's history went back that far. Maybe I was just thinking of their Aeronautical division.
Thanks for the insight.
My question about the single .30 caliber gun, is why have it, when 3/4 of your armorment is the superior .50 cal machine gun.
It would've made better sense to simply have 3-50's and use the extra space for more ammo, or some other purpose.
I guess another case of "coulda, shoulda, woulda".
BTW, its my understanding that the advent of the "-3" was generated by pilot input. It seems USN pilots preferred "flying tanks" to something that could actually dogfight with the Zero.





Elvis

[Juha]

Hello
IMHO the .30mg in F2A-1 wasn’t there because of space restrictions. At least Finns were able to put a .5 hmg in its place in 42-43 when weapon situation allowed that. On the other hand at least USAAC had in 30s policy to arm its fighters with one .5 and one .30 cowling mg.

on Brewster, IIRC there were labour disputes at the new factory even in 1942 or 43 when USA was in war. IIRC the shop steward of the factory gave some radical statements.
Juha

[gepp]

Breda Ba.88 would be a shot for number 1 spot i read the maximum horizontal speed of 250 km/h (155 mph) and in some cases and several units were even unable to take off at all ,they had to strip it down of its rear machine gun,observer,bombs and some fuel,lessening the weight so it could fly or perform better but aircraft's performance didn't achieve good results so it ended up being stripped of useful equipment, and scattered around operational airfields as decoys for attacking aircraft.

[Shortround6]

Originally Posted by Elvis

Shortround,

AFAIK, no USN pilot was ever "dissatified" with the performance of the Buffalo.
Upon reflection, some may have lamented the want for a different airplane, when recalling a certain situation, but I've never read any reports that ever said anything to the extent of "The Brewster Buffalo is a lousy fighter plane".
So I'm not sure where your line of thinking came from, as far as the USN being dissatisfied with the Buffalo's performance.
What happened was the advent of the F6F.
Once the Hellcat hit the scene, it made just about everything else in the USN's inventory obsolete, except maybe for the Corsair, and they'd already given those to the Marines.
The reason for the strife between Brewster and the US Government was that Brewster never fully delivered on their orders.
As Buffnut mentioned, there was some internal strife and the main plant used an antiquated format for contructing their planes.
Even though you showed several months in 1941 where production was at least in step with Grumman, you have to remember those are (for us) pre-war figures.
Once we got mixed up in brawl, we needed much more significant productioin numbers and even though there were various plants, they were "stages" rather than full production facilities, so if anything, even the added floor space was used ineffciently.
What gets me, is how Brewster was able to keep the goverment enticed for so long.
Shows ya' just how slick those salesmen were and should also serve as insight into the governments perception of the lethality of the Buffalo.
-------------------------------------------------

Elvis

I think we have a bit of mis-understading here, I was not refering to the "performance" of the 'Brewster airplane ' but the "performance" of the "Brewster company".

Yes those numbers are for "pre-war' production but then very few Buffaloes were delivered after Pearl Harbor.
Production by year for the Buffalo and some other US fighters

year........1938.....1939......1940.........1941.. ....1942
Navy.........1..........11.........42...........10 8.........1
Export.......0...........0.........124..........20 1.........21
P-38..........0..........1...........1............20 7......1479
P-39..........0..........1...........13...........92 6......1932
P-40.........1...........0..........778..........224 8.....3854
P-47.........0...........0...........0.............. 1.........532
P-51.........0...........0...........0............13 8........634
F4F..........0...........1...........106.........3 24.......1447(by G)
F4U..........0...........0............1........... .0..........178
F6F..........0...........0............0........... .0............0 edit>10<

All the other companies were doing a mad scramble for factory space, tools, and workers. THis is where Brewster fell down. But not until the Buffalo had past the scene (at least production wise).
Brewster by mid 1941 held contracts for 1052 SB2A dive bombers with the US Navy order for 140 having been placed on Dec, 24 1940. And Brewster was named as the second source for Corsairs on Nov 1 1941.
Good salesmanship or was the Navy not yet upset enough with Brewster? Or that desperate?
I think that we can also see that the advent of the F6F had nothing to do with the Buffalo's lack of further orders.
Now maybe Brewster was delivering Buffaloes late according to contract dates, but it sure didn't stop the Navy from giving them more contracts in 1940-41-42 for other types of of aircraft did it?

As to the .30cal MG. I beleive it was a hold over from earlier requirements. Many US fighters from the late 20s to mid 30s carried either twin .30s or replaced one .30 with a .50 for one of each. with engines of 450-700hp there might not have been enough power to to carry the weight of two .50s without too big an impact on performance.

[Marcel]

Originally Posted by Elvis

Shortround,

AFAIK, no USN pilot was ever "dissatified" with the performance of the Buffalo.
Upon reflection, some may have lamented the want for a different airplane, when recalling a certain situation, but I've never read any reports that ever said anything to the extent of "The Brewster Buffalo is a lousy fighter plane".

Well, there sure were some complains about the A-3. I have some accounts somewhere from US pilots saying they liked the A-2 but thought the worst of the A-3.
The British weren't all too pleased with their B339E's either, noting their lack of performance. On the other hand, there were British pilots praising the B339D's for their superior performance over the B339E. It comes down to the fact that customisation of the customer was often the cause of the bad performance. The second reason was the lack of suitable engines, so having to use lower rated ones. For instance the B339-23 had a 1000hp G5B while being heavier while the D had a 1200 hp and was lighter.

[Elvis]

Originally Posted by Shortround6

I think we have a bit of mis-understading here, I was not refering to the "performance" of the 'Brewster airplane ' but the "performance" of the "Brewster company".

oops, sorry about that


Elvis

[Shortround6]

I think part of the problem in evaluating the Buffalo is that it changed so much from the first models to the last. And that many of these different models were in combat all within 2 years.

The Early models (the F2A-1 and the B239) were much lighter than the later ones and might have actually been able to maneuver with a Zero. However that Ugly weight problem rears it's it's head and reality starts to intrude. At 5040lbs Gross weight for an early model Buffalo you are not only missing the armour and what ever crude form of fuel tank protection that could be put on the tanks (although there was a CO2 purge system.) you are also without the wing .50cal guns. Leaving the Plane armed with just a single .50 with a 200 rounds and a single .30 with 500 rounds. It also measn filling the tanks with only 110gals of fuel. While this might represent combat weight after burning off fuel you would have to give the same consideration to it's opponents. Maybe the Finns with their shorter flight distances never filled the tanks all the way?
Adding the two wing .50cal guns increases the weight by about 263lbs including ammo. you now have a 5300lb fighter against the Zero and what is the Zeros weight with 2/3 fuel on board?
Structual weights climbed as did engine and propeller weights. The Dutch, British and Belgian planes had power plant weights (engine, accessoreis, propeller, controls, oil systems,etc) around 300lbs heavier than the First planes. Switching to a full .50cal armament with increased ammo capacity sky rocketed the armament weight. From around 240lbs for the original two gun armament to 547lbs for the four .50s with full ammo load for another 300lbs.
Leaving out armour and self sealing ful tansk might have helped a bit but (as would flying with half ammo) but with the wing somehow picking up an extra 100lbs on it's own whatever later model Buffalo is chosen is going to be over 800lbs heavier than the early versions even without protection. Granted the Buffalo picked up 150-250hp but the extra weight almost exactly cancels out the extra power and the wing loading goes up by about 17%. Heavily loaded F2A-3s are even worse.

Does this mean the Buffalo is the worst airplane of WW II? No, far from it. But it was a dead end design and was recongnized as such. No amount of wishing or hoping or what if'ing are going to transform it into a first rate fighter (or even middle of the pack) at the end of 1941, begining of 1942.

[Juha]

Hello Shortround
FAF B-239s were armed in summer 41 with 3 .5 hmgs and one .300 mg and alsohad back and head armour for the pilot but no self-sealing. So IMHO B-239 was not a top class fighter but middle class yes, Finns thought that it definitely was better than Hurricane at low and middle altitudes which were the height bands that were important when fighting against Soviets.

Juha

[Shortround6]

THe weight charts in the book "America's Hundred Thousand" show Gross weights for a 2 gun fighter with 110gal, a 2 gun bomber with 110gals, a 2 gun fighter with 160gal, and a 4 gun fighter with 110 gal. THese are more than likely American "factory" weights and do not actual show Finnish service weights. THe Gross weights (dropping decimals) are 5014, 5276, 5314 and 5276. Some source claim that the American F2A-1 grossed 5040 and lump the 239 in with it and then don't add in the weight of the extra wing guns.

Considering most of the planes the Finns fought against did not have the manueverability of the Japanese aircraft a little more weight in the form of back protection for the pilot probably didn't hurt things much

The comparison with the Hurricane makes sense if you consider the engines. Since I doubt that the Finns had much access to 100 octane fuel that means the Merlin is limited to 880hp at sea level rising to 1030hp at just over 16,000ft. The figures for the Cyclone in the 239 seem to be 950hp for take off, 1000hp military power at sea level and a military rating of 800hp at 16,000ft. Normal ratings (max continous power) are given as 850hp at 6000ft and 750hp at 15,200. Given that the Hurricanes were over 1000lbs heavier I can see why the Brewster might have been a bit more spritely at the lower altitudes

[Juha]

hello Shortround
Quote:"Considering most of the planes the Finns fought against did not have the manueverability of the Japanese aircraft a little more weight in the form of back protection for the pilot probably didn't hurt things much"

Yes, but some had, for ex I-153 was very maneuverable a/c and climbed well.

Juha