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First, the Finns never got a 1200 hp Cyclone, and couldn't use them if they did. They had no 100 octane avgas.
Here is a file with figures from original Brewster documentation. The data on the 339-23 is sketchy, sorry about that Hopefully this file will help with the Brewster discussion. BTW, I'm unaware of 'two Brewster CEO's' being arrested. Perhaps the poster was thinking about Miranda and Zelcer, arms dealers who were jailed on charges relating to Curtiss Wright which dated well before they formed the Brewster Export Company (which was not legally part of Brewster Aeronautical Corporation).
The publication is based on myths, all the numbers are far from reality. Absolutely unreliable source.Here is an article about the Buffalo in Finnish service.
It is baaad!
Nordic Buffalos — How An Obsolete U.S. Navy Fighter Found a New Lease on Life in Finland's War with the Soviets - MilitaryHistoryNow.com
“Despite their superiority in numbers and their losses, the Soviet’s never gained air superiority. That belonged to the Finns.” By Marc Liebman BY THE END of the Russo-Finnish War in March 1940, military planners in...militaryhistorynow.com
Out of curiosity, I am curious what specifically in this article you feel is based on "myths" and "far from reality".The publication is based on myths, all the numbers are far from reality. Absolutely unreliable source.
Out of curiosity, I am curious what specifically in this article you feel is based on "myths" and "far from reality".
I can't answer all of FulmentheFinn's questions, but this one I can:
"Granted, I'm not entirely sure now whether the additional two .50 cals were installed during the Interim Peace after the B-239s had already arrived. At any rate they certainly all sported four MGs by the time they saw action in 1941."
The 239 [second Brewster product offered for export in 1939] was based on the F2A-1. 43 were not new builds, but reworked F2A-1's. As such they were equipped for two wing .50's - after the first F2A-1 appeared at the New York World's Fair, it and the rest of the order were modified in several respect including the wing armament. That late addition is why the wing gun round counter (dial visible from the cockpit) was scabed onto the wing in the little bump next to the larger gun cover. I have some notes that suggest Brewster expected to build 66 239's for Finland but the end of the Winter War ended that at 44.
No, it's not my belief, it's knowledge drawn from reliable sources. Do you really believe that the Finnish overclaim rate was surprisingly lower than for anybody else? Have you tried to validate the Finnish claims by Soviet data? Or ever compare Finnish numbers with the total Soviet losses in Karelia/Kola Peninsula? I have no doubt that the brave Finnish pilots demonstrated high efficiency, scoring many victories over the Soviets - Buffalo was absolutely adequate and even superior to the most Soviet fighters in Karelia. They were well trained and highly motivated, outperforming their Soviet opponents on almost all counts. But you have to be realistic - the number 477 is simply an overclaim (I guess, factor 2 or 3, may be more). My estimation of the overclame rate is based on several episodes in 1941 and 1942. And I have absolutely no interest to discuss even more absurd loss ratios.Is it your belief that the "combat loss" claims are based on myth?
Partially. The situation with the training of Soviet Air Force pilots was changing. The Karelian front was almost stable with low intensity of air battles. Soviet rookie pilots even with miserable flight hours had a chance to gain experience.Do you feel the comments on "training and culture" are basd on myth?
Air superiority belonged to Luftwaffe until 1943. Moreover, it was not absolute - the Soviets were able to carry out ground attack operations all the period. Any talks about _Finnish_ air superiority are not serious - despite of very high efficiency of Finnish pilots.Despite their superiority in numbers and their losses, the Soviet's never gained air superiority. That belonged to the Fin
I guess, Hurricanes could be on the second place. And just for information: Yak-3 arrived at the front in August-September, 1944 (and I am not sure if they were even used in Karelia), when the most Buffalo's were already either in a non-flying condition or barely used as fighters (and yes - I know about the last Buffalo's victory over Ju.88 in January, 1945). I would be very skeptical of reports about a super ace in a Buffalo scoring a victory over even a novice in a Yak-3. But I am curious to hear such a story with an indication of the source.mostly I-16s and then Lavochkin LaGG-3s, MiG-3s, Yak-3s
Yes, abslolutely. We are talking about the typical overclame rate of factor 2 or 3.but even then we're probably not talking of anything in excess of perhaps 15% overclaiming over the water.
But you have to be realistic - the number 477 is simply an overclaim (I guess, factor 2 or 3, may be more).
Air superiority belonged to Luftwaffe until 1943. Moreover, it was not absolute - the Soviets were able to carry out ground attack operations all the period. Any talks about _Finnish_ air superiority are not serious - despite of very high efficiency of Finnish pilots.
Nope. This overclaiming rate is rather typical.So you're replacing one myth with your own myth of 2-3 times overclaiming
To whom? Have you tried to compare overclaim rates for different airforces? Ok, I would say, 2.5 time is a rough estimation of the mean value. But the overclaim rate varies not so significantly if you consider representative statistics.it's clear that different forces overclaimed to different extents
This is exactly the task that some (I am not sure, whether "many" can be used) aviation historians are engaged in at the moment.Trying to identify the exact cause of loss for every single aircraft is an impossible task
You may not believe me, but these cases also can be analyzed and categorized.aircraft that's heavily damaged in air combat, manages to make it back to base but is subsequently written off, or an aircraft that simply disappears with no known cause
Yes, of course. As auxiliary forces for the Luftwaffe. But not alone.Therefore, it was entirely possible for the Finns to achieve air superiority so they could complete their missions.
I wondered the same thing. Granted, I only skimmed through the article myself, and while it seemed mostly correct, a few things did stick out to me:
1. It claims the Finns suffered 221,200 military dead in the Continuation War. This is over three times the actual count of 65,581. The claimed figure is even higher than the total Finnish military killed, wounded and captured of both the Continuation and Lapland Wars 1941-45 combined, 208,007 men in all, of which over 2k returned from captivity after the wars. Finnish civilian dead from the 1941-45 period amounted to in excess of 1k, so their inclusion can't inflate the figure by over 3 x the actual count of military dead either. What I'm guessing happened, is that the author of the page took a high-end estimate of all Finnish military casualties, perhaps not just from the Continuation War, but the Lapland War as well, and confused them to be a figure for the military dead alone. Winter War casualties from 1939-40 I don't think are included in his numbers. I have a table on Finnish military casualties 1939-45 here, if the reader would like to glance at some of the numbers himself:
View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cDeSE4KBxZsYGuYSiEMrlOQNQzYkKsD2x9Ndiga1ubI/edit?usp=drivesdk
2. The engine is called a 950 hp engine. This always bothers me because the engine's actual max. rating was 1000 hp. This was the engine's equivalent of WEP and could be maintained for 5 minutes at a time. From what I understand this means it should be called a 1000 hp engine. Sometimes you also see it being called a 850 hp or in some sources even a 940 hp engine. I'm not sure where the latter figure comes from as it doesn't appear in any of the documentation related to the engine that arrived with the 44 B-239s or in any of the Curtiss-Wright papers I've seen.
3. The site claims all .50 cals had 400 rounds each. However the two fitted in the nose had half that, 200 rounds each. Additionally not all, probably not even most, B-239s entered the Continuation War with 4 x .50 cals, but 1 x .30 cal + 3 x .50 cals. The single .30 cal was mounted in the nose and had 600 rounds. By 20 July 1943 all B-239s had had the .30 cal swapped out for another .50 cal with 200 rounds, bringing the total .50 cal count to four guns. The ones in the wings had 400 rounds each.
What I'm guessingbf109xxl is on about, and apologies if this is the wrong assumption, is that the Finnish kill count with the aircraft against the Russians, which by the way should be 478, not 477 as cited in the article, is inflated. From what I've gathered from research over the decades, including reading what military aviation historians have to say about this, Finnish kill claims are reliable to be in the ballpark of reality. That is, they may not be the exact real count, but they are close to it. The biggest source of "air" in the claims for the B-239 are the battles over water over the Gulf of Finland during 1942-43, but even then we're probably not talking of anything in excess of perhaps 15% overclaiming over the water. What is also of note that conversely if a B-239 shot down a Russian aircraft and no friendlies besides the shooter himself, often not even him, was around to see it go down, and it went down behind Russian lines, often (or as I've understood, most of the time), it didn't get credited. And this happened quite often, which also has the effect of counteracting what little overclaiming there was when it comes to the total kill count. If we do not know the identity or even unit of a shot down Russian plane, that does not mean it was not shot down. From just now glancing at the B-239's kill list, I'd say about half remain unidentified (by unit, at least). It used to be almost all of them. So while there's still work to be done on that front, we've come a long way. Unfortunately since 1997 Russia has restricted (or forbidden?) access to military historical archives for non-Russian historians, and with how things are now, it is difficult to have even intermediary access through Russian historians. Point being, that work will have to wait.
Oh, and I spotted another mistake in the article: the author claims the Finns lost 19 B-239s against the Russians. This figure dates back to before the 1990s and is problematic in many ways. Firstly it doesn't include losses whose cause of loss was unknown. Secondly it includes planes lost against Russian AA (one of which has since been revised to having been shot down by the VVS), which is fine if talking about total losses but not when comparing to how many aircraft the B-239 shot down (which is where that famous, and wrong, 26:1 kill-to-loss ratio comes from), which is what the author of the article is doing here. Here's the final tally on the Brewster B-239 fates based on post-1991 research:
Continuation War, 25 June 1941-19 September 1944:
-16 shot down by the VVS
-2 by Russian AA
-5 destroyed in VVS air raids or hangar fires caused by them
-5 lost in accidents
Lapland War, 15 September 1944-27 April 1945:
-4 shot down by German AA
-2 lost in accidents
Total including the entire time B-239s flew in the FAF, 1 March 1940-14 September 1948:
-16 shot down in aerial combat
-12 lost in accidents
-6 lost to AA
-5 to air raids or their causes
5 survived to be scrapped, and sadly all were. Before that some were installed at childrens' playgrounds for the children to marvel at and play with! I am something of a "B-239 enthusiast", and you can imagine how annoyed I am that they didn't preserve even one of these aircraft that were so significant to Finland's aerial defence during the first couple of years of the Continuation War.
At any rate, that's 21 B-239s lost against enemy aerial action, air raids and the fires caused by them included. Against the 478* kill count that's a KLR of 23:1. Still extraordinary, but lower than 26:1 (sometimes you also see "32:1" being claimed for the "first half of the Continuation War", but this is also wrong and includes B-239 losses to all causes, even accidents!). In 1941 the B-239s were credited with 140 Russian aircraft shot down for no losses against enemy aircraft, meaning an astounding KLR of 140:0 for 1941!
*In the Lapland War Finnish B-239s claimed two Ju 87s, bringing the total kill count for the model to 480. But it is my opinion, and that of many professionals far more knowledgeable on the topic than me, that these were bogus claims, made to keep the Russian Control Commission off the Finns' backs. No wrecks have ever been found and German records show no losses. Evidently a flight of 6 Finnish B-239s did meet with a flight of 12 unescorted German Ju 87s above the Kemijoki. The Finns circled them a bit, the Germans dropped their bombs without them exploding and turned tail back home, after which the Finns also turned back without engaging the Germans, and that was the end of that. This is also the German record of the events that day. It is not unexpected that there was no fight, as being old brothers in arms the Finns and Germans were reluctant to engage oneanother, especially at the beginning of the Lapland War, when this occurred (3 October 1944). The Finnish record differs in that it claims that one of the Ju 87 gunners got nervous and opened fire, after which the Finns gave chase to the now-bombless Ju 87s and shot two of them down. What's curious is that the Finnish pilots who made those kill claims maintained for the rest of their lives that they shot down those Stukas. Of course I can't say with 100% certainty what the truth is, but the evidence, or more accurately lackthereof, supports the German version.
Right, makes sense. I actually just earlier asked a Finnish professional aviation historian whether or not the wing guns were installed in Finland or before they arrived there. He said before, which is in line with what you said. Also, interesting; what you wrote gives me an answer on my question relating to the armament of the XF2A-1 and early F2A-2; if the reworked F2A-1 had the .50 cal wing guns, then those later versions probably did too. Though I still wonder what the "F2A-2A" mentioned in the Curtiss-Wright engine list was.
Another question: Did the reworked F2A-1 have a specific designation that differed from the base version of the F2A-1 without the wing guns, e.g. "F2A-1A"?
EDIT: Thank you for the attached fileSimon Thomas . Some interesting information there. Am I correct in understanding that like the B-239's R-1820G5, both the XF2A-1's R-1820-22 and the F2A-1's R-1820-34 engine had a military rating of 1000 hp/2200 RPM for 5 minutes?
If you like the Buffalo, and are open to some fictional whatifs, may I suggest this slight diversion: Sentinel EmpressesI like the Buffalo too!
Ok, I would say, 2.5 time is a rough estimation of the mean value. But the overclaim rate varies not so significantly if you consider representative statistics.
This is exactly the task that some (I am not sure, whether "many" can be used) aviation historians are engaged in at the moment.
You may not believe me, but these cases also can be analyzed and categorized.
Episodes of overclaiming by Buffalo pilots are known. You can find some of them even in Wikipedia. 44 planes in 3 years - it is quite enough for conclusions.But there are dangers in applying representative statistics to a small sample set.
Oh, really? You just opened my eyes.The problem is you will still come up with a bunch of situations where the exact details simply aren't known.
I haven't made any assumption about you personally.I love it that you make the assumption that I'm not a historian myself.
I read articles by those who still tries to find out the truth by this method. I just agree, that now it became more challenging.I've actually tried to do what you've suggested.
I know the difficulties. But there is no other way to find the truth. Fairy tales about 477, sorry, 478 shot down by Buffalo pilots are for propaganda purposes only.Errors in record keeping are commonplace. Mis-reporting of airframe serial numbers is commonplace. Then you have losses for which no claims were made.
Fairy tales about 477, sorry, 478 shot down by Buffalo pilots are for propaganda purposes only.
You opened my eyes again. The reasons why claims cannot be a reliable criterion for the efficiency evaluation are obvious.They were legitimate claims made by the pilots based on what they perceived at the time, in the heat of battle, where they had perhaps a fraction of a second to make a judgment call on what they were seeing.
Yes, of course. And now we have to interpret these _CLAIMS_ correctly to derive a REALISTIC number of kills. Сlaims are uninformative and misleading to the mass audience.There is nothing mythical or factually correct in stating that Finnish pilots claimed 477 kills in Brewster B239s.
I am suggesting that many authors use claims for propaganda purposes.Or are you suggesting that the pilots were deliberately making up claims purely to support a propaganda campaign?
You opened my eyes again. The reasons why claims cannot be a reliable criterion for the efficiency evaluation are obvious.
Yes, of course. And now we have to interpret these _CLAIMS_ correctly to derive a REALISTIC number of kills. Сlaims are uninformative and misleading to the mass audience.
I am suggesting that many authors use claims for propaganda purposes.
Did they ever use the LKk/42 guns on the Buffaloes, or where they all the American M2's? I've seen conflicting information on this.Right, makes sense. I actually just earlier asked a Finnish professional aviation historian whether or not the wing guns were installed in Finland or before they arrived there. He said before, which is in line with what you said. Also, interesting; what you wrote gives me an answer on my question relating to the armament of the XF2A-1 and early F2A-2; if the reworked F2A-1 had the .50 cal wing guns, then those later versions probably did too.