jpatrick62
Airman
- 19
- Feb 9, 2007
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and performed abysmally...
Doesn't matter what the reasons were, the record speaks for itself. It did what it did and all the what-ifs in the world won't change the numbers.
It was a lousy aircraft which the Fins employed quite well. I wonder what they'd have accomplished with better planes.
Almost ANY plane would have been better ...
I consider the Skua better than the Buffalo, as well as the Avia B.35 and B.135 are better, as is the Romanian IAR.80 series. None of the alternates were bad aircraft ... and the Buffalo was. Ask anyone except a Finn! Heck, I'd probabluy have taken a Dewoitine D.510 over a Buffalo.
The Brewster Buffalo is sort of like a blender. It might be nice to have one, but nobody knows quite why. Come to think of it, that is kind of like a chronically complaining girlfriend, too.
OK, we agree to disagree ... NO BUFFALO!
If the Finns could make the Buffalo do so well inspite of it's shortcomings, just imagine what would have happened to the Russians if the Finns had Hellcats!!
The Buffalo did NOT have a good kill-to-loss ratio at all. It had a good one in Finish service alone. The British and the Dutch lost 150 in the first months of the ar for almost no victories in return. So the type had an abysmal kill-to-loss ratio, and performed abysmally ... except in Finland. We should have shipped ALL of them to Finland.
Finns would have been eternally grateful for the 500+ F2A's.
As it was, Finn's bought 44 F2A-1 airframes with a unit price of $54,000 (not cheap at the time), paid upfront. That did not include engine, guns, instruments, etc.Those had to bought separately, for example, engines were from the DC-3 airliners.
Big difference from the Lend-Lease "Pay back when you want" - terms with the Soviets, for arms against (also) the Finns..