Brewster Buffalo - what is the verdict?

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This seem like a good place to discuss what a "kill" actually is.

People in general seem to think that all losses are accounted for in after-war inventory reports, but that is simply not always the case. Look at the Bf 109 as a start.

1) Nobody is sure exactly how many were built because the records were lost in the war.
2) Some people claim to know, and have the serial number list to prove it. But, in reality, these people have a serial number list assigned by the German RLM. There is no proof anywhere that actual production ever matched the serial number list, and considerable proof it didn't. So, we will never have an accurate production number for the Bf 109 and, logically extended, Bf 109 losses. But there WERE a lot of Bf109 losses.

Think about being a logistics reporting person in the USSR. Stalin was known to kill people who brought him bad news. Do we really think the losses of equipment were completely accurately recorded to be reported to Comrade Stalin? Do we really think victories weren't embellished a bit? It's not a knock on Soviet soldiers, it's an indictment of butcher Joseph Stalin.

Anyway, what is a "kill" or victory?
1) Is a kill an armed enemy aircraft that was completely destroyed so that no part of it was ever used again? Who determined it was destroyed?
2) Is a "kill" an armed enemy aircraft that was shot out of a fight and seen to crash? Seen by whom?
3) Is a "kill" an armed aircraft from which the pilot was seen to parachute or at least jump out of? Why do we believe the airplane was a total loss just because the pilot jumped out?
4) Is a "kill" an armed enemy aircraft that was last seen going down in flames?
5) Is a "kill" an armed enemy aircraft that was last seen going down after having lost major parts in the air, like a wing or a tail or an engine, particularly if it is a single-engine?

What is a claim?
1) Is a claim an armed enemy aircraft that was completely destroyed so that no part of it was ever used again?
2) Is a claim an armed enemy aircraft that was shot out of a fight and seen to crash?
3) Is a claim an armed aircraft from which the pilot was seen to parachute or at least jump out of?
4) Is a claim an armed enemy aircraft that was last seen going down in flames?
5) Is a claim an armed enemy aircraft that was last seen going down after having lost major parts in the air, like a wing or a tail or an engine, particularly if it is a single-engine?

More likely, a claim is an armed enemy aircraft that was shot out of a fight by someone on a mission or observed to crash or have a mid-air and be considered out of the fight and either crashed or force-landed.

To me, the job of the fighter pilot depends on the mission.
1) If his mission was escort, then his job was to protect the bombers from enemy fighters. To that end, if he is at 20,000 feet and chases an enemy fighter all the way down to the ground to verify a "kill," then he has abandoned his job. If he shoots an enemy fighter aircraft from the fight, in flames or otherwise, he has done his job and should be awarded a victory. The actual enemy aircraft may or may not have been totally destroyed, but he certainly was chased from the fight, was last seen going down, and the mission proceeded. He makes a good-faith claim.
2) if his mission was fighter sweep and he shoots an enemy fighter down in flames and then chases him down to the ground to verify destruction, he stands a good chance of losing his unit since they likely didn't descend with him. So, he makes a good-faith claim of seeing an enemy fighter go down in flames or otherwise.

There are other missions, but the gist is obvious here.

There are any number of ways a pilot can make a good-faith claim and yet the "victim" managed to get away and force-land, and the aircraft was either recovered or partially recovered.

There is a modern case (1970) where an F-106 was in some difficulty and the pilot ejected (The Cornfield Bomber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber ), and the F-106 landed itself in a cornfield with little damage and was soon returned to service. The F-106 was not a difficult airplane to fly, but was also not a good candidate to be able to land itself with little damage after the pilot ejected. Yet, it did exactly that. I bet it COULD have been recorded as a claim had it been in combat, but actually was flying again a month later.

I am inclined to believe that most, not all, claims were submitted in good faith. Yes, I'm sure there were some outright lies ... glory hunting. But not very many. And there will ALWAYS be differences between good-faith claims submitted and aircraft acknowledged as destroyed by the combatants some time after the conflict. And, the difference may very likely not from overclaiming.

It much more likely comes about because aircraft classified as completely destroyed by combat by an armchair quarterback who wasn't in the combat and aircraft shot from an actual aerial combat fight have different definitions. In most cases, the claims are all we have to go by as records from the war itself. Reports of destroyed aircraft are usually completed well after the war and are of questionable accuracy in some cases, particularly when the data are not publically available ... and that turns out to be a lot of the time.
 
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thats strange in the eto fi156 and what not were gunned down and counted.
Yes, and as far as I know trainers were claimed in the ETO. Capt Brown related an experience where he an another student were flying Harts and a BF-110 pulled up alongside and the rear gunner blew his wingman out of the air. And WC J.E. Johnson described how one of his pilots wanted to get at least one kill of each type of Luftwaffe aircraft and stooged around at low altitude until he could claim a Storch. I recall reading of a mission in which two RAF Mustang Mk I flew all the way to a Luftwaffe training field one night and shot down some the students as well as a BF-109E that apparently was being used for training in the same way that older P-40's were used in the USA - but that still had working guns.

A USAF C-123 claimed a NVA helicopter, apparently a Hormone, as a kill, by dropping tie down chains one night over Laos. They did not get the kill credit because the standard USAF form had no place for a C-123 to score air to air victories and so it was credited to an A-1.
 
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We can know a subset numerousness also if we don't know the set numerousness
example the computer in this room are 7, but i don't know how many are in the world or just in the street
 
A few comments on some of the conversation here:

There is no rule of thumb that says the air forces of all sides in WW2 overclaimed by a factor of 2 or 3. For example, during the Winter War of 30 November 1939-13 March 1940, the Finnish Air Force (FAF) was credited with having destroyed 207 Soviet Air Force (VVS) aircraft. Post-war discoveries of Russian wrecks later lifted the number to 218, but for the purposes of estimating the reliability of FAF claims I will go with the 207 figure. Finnish AA claimed another total of 414 VVS aircraft shot down, naval AA included. We know that the Russians lost about 600 aircraft in combat against the Finns in the Winter War. That's 621 claims against about 600 genuine kills, and the latter may well be in excess of 600. A brief mention here that the VVS also lost another about 400 aircraft to non-combat-related causes, bringing the total loss count to about 1,000 aircraft, along with a total of 1,200-1,300 airmen in the 105 days that constituted the Winter War. In the case of individual kills there may have been some double-claiming with both the FAF and Finnish AA shooting at the same targets, but as far as the total tally is concerned, there was virtually no overclaiming by the Finns in the Winter War. This is something to keep in mind when looking at Finnish claims in the subsequent Continuation War. Now, Finnish claim verification was very strict in the Winter War: you needed an eye witness that saw the aircraft go down or the claim was null and void. At least this was the case in the Air Force. Unofficially the FAF claimed to have destroyed around 280 Russian aircraft in that war, but the remaining 70+ claims were never credited, save for those 11 post-Winter War, whose wrecks were discovered, bringing the total credited kill count to 218.

As for the Russian side in the Winter War, the VVS RKKA (Army Air Force) claimed 427 Finnish aircraft shot down* and the VVS VMF (Naval Air Force) another 65 FAF aircraft destroyed, for a total of 492. In reality the entire VVS destroyed 35 FAF aircraft. An overclaiming percentage of 1,306%, in other words by a factor of 14. I don't have documentation on what the Russian AA claimed in the war, but I've been told around 300-400 aircraft, which would bring the total Russian claims to the ballpark of 800-900 Finnish aircraft, but take this with a grain of salt. In reality only 8 Finnish aircraft were shot down by AA in the Winter War. At this point it's worth mentioning that the Finns never had 427, nevermind 900 aircraft in frontline squadrons in the Winter War: they began the war with about 116 and ended it with about 160 aircraft in frontline squadrons. In total, losses included, they fielded some 230-260 aircraft in frontline squadrons during the war. The Russians would habitually go on to massively overclaiming the amount of casualties they inflicted upon their enemies, lightyears ahead of any other belligerent power's overclaiming in WW2, throughout 1939-45, not just in the air, but also on the land and at sea.

*EDIT: I'm unsure if this is supposed to include VVS RKKA claims of FAF aircraft destroyed on the ground. The source only speaks of aerial victories.



Sources for the above:
-Carl-Fredrik Geust (2020): Red Wings in the Winter War 1939-1940
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Carl-Fredrik Geust (2004): Red Stars Vol. 5: Baltic Fleet Air Force in the Winter War

To get back to Finnish claims, during the Continuation War the requirements for claims to be credited was loosened up a bit, and some claims were credited even if when they were logged they did not meet the witness requirement standards of the Winter War (however wrecks may have later been discovered, or reported VVS losses overheard by eavesdropping on Russian comms traffic, after the claims were already logged and credited to be without witness). I mentioned the FAF having 70+ uncredited kills during the Winter War, of which 11 were later credited, and perhaps during the Continuation War some or even many of them would have been accepted, but we're still not talking of any sort of substantial overclaiming. Even if every single one of them, barring the aforementioned 11, turned out to be false claims, we're still talking of only 28% overclaiming. I've never seen any evidence to suggest why FAF kill claims in the Continuation War would radically differ in reliability from FAF kill claims in the Winter War, especially to the suggested extent of overclaiming to a factor of 2-3, or 2.5 as I believe was the latest suggestion in this thread.

I went ahead and wrote up the kills the B-239s were credited with. My sources are:
-Kari Stenman (2018): Brewster Model 239 Suomen Ilmavoimissa [Brewster Model 239 in the Finnish Air Force]
-Kalevi Keskinen, Kari Stenman (2006): Suomen Ilmavoimien Historia 26: Ilmavoitot, osa 1 [The History of the Finnish Air Force vol. 26: Aerial Victories, part 1)
-Kalevi Keskinen, Kari Stenman (2006): Suomen Ilmavoimien Historia 27: Ilmavoitot, osa 2 [The History of the Finnish Air Force vol. 27: Aerial Victories, part 2)
-Lentolaivue 24 war diaries (for cross-referencing and correcting some oddities in the above sources, mainly relating to mission times)

Ideally I want to count the exact amount of kills as well as counting them by type of credited kill and add colour coding to them, and make a pie chart of the figures as well. However manually digitising the whole kill list, meaning writing everything by hand (well, keyboard), and checking things associated with it, was already quite the task. So further work on it will have to wait for now. Anyway, here's the list:


View: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_tG5uHQkLmfAPIBZJ1r0_UHUlZW-7IVqD3qWsMrhsHQ/edit?usp=sharing

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.

They did indeed. In the spring of 1944 five B-239s were installed with Finnish LKk/42 wing machineguns (Timo Heinonen, Hannu Valtonen (2010): Albatrosista Pilatukseen: Suomen sotilaslentokoneet 1918-2010 [From the Albatros to the Pilatus: Finland's Military Aircraft 1918-2010]).

Strictly speaking the American guns weren't M2s, or rather AN-M2s, which differed from their M2 counterparts in that they were designed specifically for aircraft and had a higher rate of fire. The .30 cals were Colt MG 40s, and the .50 cals were Colt MG 53-2s. These were export versions of the domestic US AN-M2 .30 cal and AN-M2 .50 cal Browning machineguns. I think they may have had some minor differences to the domestic US versions. I looked into the MG 40 and MG 53-2 over a year ago and it was very difficult to find information on the exact models of those guns used on the B-239s. Actually I'm pretty sure I ended up finding none. There was also scarcely anything on the MG 40 and MG 53-2 in general. There's probably something in the Finnish archives, but I'm yet to dig that deep.
 
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Here's an example of the problems trying to tie down the fate of every single aircraft. This Spitfire MkXII shown in the 2 images below looks to be a complete write-off and yet it was repaired and put back into service with its original serial number. There is no easy way to categorize a "loss" like this. (Source: "Spitfire: a Complete Fighting History" by Alfred Price)

 

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