Brewster F2A-4 Buffalo, the worst US fighter that fought in WW2?

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Juha, have you actually read of any Finnish pilot who felt the DB 605 was the more reliable engine? I have not. OTOH Heimo Lampi's comments on his absolute trust of the Cyclone.


Juha said:
but with some improvised mods Finns got them fairly reliable, at least some pilots thought they were after thr mods more reliable than DB 605As.
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Trilisser said:
Juha, have you actually read of any Finnish pilot who felt the DB 605 was the more reliable engine? I have not. OTOH Heimo Lampi's comments on his absolute trust of the Cyclone.
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No, but I don't know the opinion of vast majority of Finnish fighter pilots, so all I can say that at least some of them thought that Cyclone was more reliable after the mods. What others thought, I simply don't know.

Juha
 
The F13C was a biplane and so does not qualify. The F7BH was a B-24 Liberator and also does not qualify. The only FT-1 I know of is by Shenyang in China and is a jet trainer first flown in 1958 and, of course, does not qualify. I have full data on 1,019 WWII piston aircraft and ... no FT-1. Doesn't man I haven't missed one, so I'll keep looking for it for awhile.

The decision path leading to the selection of the Wildcat is not important. If Brewster could have fulfilled the contract, they WOULD HAVE. Since they didn't, the Wildcat went on to distinguish itself and the Buffalo lives on as the worst US Naval monoplane going into WWII. A production WIldcat was a LONG way from the XF4F-2, to say the least!

The only praise I have ever heard for teh Buffalo it is in here. None of the presenters at any WWII fighter symposiums I have attended have had one good thing to say about the Buiffalo. I decline to rewrite history's view of the Buffalo ... but, I must say, this discussion HAS been very interesting and gives me new things to look into, even if I still regard the Buffalo as a bit incompetent as a WWII fighter. As a "Between the wars fighter, " it was pretty good but, like the P-26 of 1933, wasn't up to WWII, even though pressed into service in the early part of the war.

Again, just my take on it. I see many of you in here are real Buffalo fans, and that is good to see since I have never run across another one!
 
Greg, hopefully an objective question: How many of the modern-day detractors may have been influenced by the reputation of the Buffalo and not at least by some facts?

I still don't think of it as the worst. A bad machine, yes but worst? I don't think you can be successful ( like the Finns) in an aircraft that has absolutely no redeeming value. There are a few others that would make the case for being worse than the beer-barrel Buffalo! I think thats the only point anyone here is trying to make.

Now does anybody know how to to get schmutz off my rose-colored glasses?
 
Juha said:
No, but I don't know the opinion of vast majority of Finnish fighter pilots, so all I can say that at least some of them thought that Cyclone was more reliable after the mods. What others thought, I simply don't know.

Juha
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It is quite safe to interpret that when 100 % of the commentary on engine A's reliability is negative and 100 % of the available commentary on engine B is neutral/positive that engine B is more reliable.
 
Really cool obscure aircraft! I love them and have over 100 catalogued. Thanks for the new entries.

1. The F13C: They made 13 of them. Not entirely an outstanding thing and certainly not in production or achieved production acceptance. I was thinking of the ORIGINAL Curtiss F13C, which was a biplane. Google "F13C aircraft" and see it.

2. Boeing F7B: This was s contemporary of the P-26, and not really a WWII aircraft. They DID build 4 and they were never accepted for production, a requirement if you will recall. Google the F-7B Liberator and see it, too.

3. Northrup FT-1: Only 1 built. Hardly qualifies for production and was another contemporay of the P-26. Oboselete at best when WWII started and since there was only 1, it would make no contribution except to convert some gasloine into noise. Google the Shenyang FT-1 and see it; a pretty neat little jet trainer.

Sorry, none of these qualify as fighters in use at the start of WWII and none were accepted for military service.

But ... I thank you for the new (to me) obscure aircraft you brought to my attention. I feel somehwat better since my timeframe for my favorite aircaft starts in 1936, and I have never researched earlier planes except for the occasional foray into those times.
 
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GregP said:
...the Buffalo lives on as the worst US Naval monoplane going into WWII...
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Worse than Curtiss SO3C Seamew for ex? Rather sweeping opinion but...
Now F2A-1 and -2 were not so bad but USN wanted to overload the plane with all those extra equipment and extra fuel and Brewster willingly complied so USN got F2A-3, noticing only afterwards that the plane had too small wing for all that weight. SO IMHO 2 main failings of F2A were that it had not much development potential because of its rather small wing and that its wing structure made installation of self sealing fuel tanks very difficult. Earlier versions were rather slow but nimble fighters without any major vices at their best at low and medium altitudes. They suited in Eastern Front enviroment but unfortunately in Pacific Japanese planes had also good high altitude capacity and were exceptional nimble, so F2A hadn't many aces there.

Juha
 
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In Tim Vigors' book " Life's too short to cry", he describes flying the Brewster Buffalo with the RAF in Singapore-he indicated it had a lot of problems in the hot, humid conditions and the pilots resorted to buying ladies feminine hygiene products to stuff into the air intake to help regulate the moisture!
 
I would agree that the F2A-3 was the "worst" monoplane fighter in the US Navy inventory in late 1941. Of course that basically means it was in either 2nd place if you count the F4F's all as one or maybe it's in 5th or 6th place if you count each variation of the F2A and F4F. But being the "worst" US Navy fighter doesn't quite mean the F2A 'series' deserves the reputation it has. There were a number of other fighters around the world in 1939-41 that weren't any better. The already mentioned Caudron C.714 being a prime example.

leaving out the word 'fighter' opens a whole new can of 'worms' or better, a whole case of turkeys
 
"Still the worst US-produced Naval monoplane fighter of the time" It seems that your statments/questions shift to suit your claims. The fact is the F2A was the first monoplane the Navy felt was worthy of production.

"SO IMHO 2 main failings of F2A were that it had not much development potential because of its rather small wing and that its wing structure made installation of self sealing fuel tanks very difficult." The latter F2A-2s had self sealing tanks and as Juha states, along with the wings the engine selection mandated by the US Navy made development difficult.

The F2A-2 was faster with a better climb rate, dive speed, better turn rate and acceleration then the F4F-3 as well as longer range. The F2A also maintained their maneuverability at higher speeds better than most contemporary aircraft.
 
The wing structure of the F2A meant that for self sealing tanks of the US type to be installed new tanks had to be added to the plane. the old ones were left unprotected and for the most part, one of them left unused.
 

Remember - there's plenty of blame for the operators too. An outnumbered squadron of green pilots going into battle with obsolete tactics. VMF-211 could have been in Wildcats, I doubt the outcome would have been much better. Did the presenters at the WW2 fighter symposiums ever discuss pilot experience, tactics and training with regards to the Buffalo? Again I think a lot of the Buffalo's bad press is based on aircraft performance and little or no consideration is given to the quality of the guy behind the stick.
 
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Well guys, so far I have a lot of Buffalo defenders, but no list of possible US naval monoplane fighters worse than the Buffalo. The Seamew isn't a fighter and prototypes listed a few pages above were just that; prototypes not selected for production. So, again, O'm wondering if tehre is another candidate ... and I see the answer is most probably no. Becasue it is the worst doesn't mean it was useless; it means the others were better, that's all.

Therefore I nominate the Brewster Buffalo as the worst US naval monoplane fighter at the start of WWII that was designed from 1936 forward.

I picked 1936 because the Messerschmitt Me 109, which is a very strong candidate for the best piston fighter ever by virtue of its combat record alone, hails from that time. If Willy could do it, then who ELSE could do it? I chose US just for the heck of it, but this opens the plate for the worst 1936 and forward monplane fighter of WWII regardless of nationality.
 
as far as personal anecdotes go, a lot depends on the person telling the story frame of reference. As in personnel knowledge or hearing other stories at the time. Also personnel experience counts.
As an example I once asked my father, who served in the 6th Marine division on Okinawa, about how good the Colt .45 automatic was. I had read several accounts by combat veterans of how it was so inaccurate that you might as well throw it at an enemy as shoot it. He said he never had any trouble with it and left it at that. It wasn't until a number of years later that I found a picture of him as a teenager, he was posing with a number of middle aged men. They were the local gun club pistol team, My father had owned several rather specialized target pistols and fired thousands of rounds of .22 ammo through pistols ( and more through rifles) before he ever went in the Marine Corp. His experience with a .45 was rather different than most recruits. Take an 18-19 year old kid who had never fired a gun a before basic training and give him a .45 and 30-50 rounds of ammo and what do you think his experience/recollection of it would be? But would it be an accurate account of the capabilities of the gun?
 
Hello Greg
I'm well aware that Seamew wasn't fighter, I mentioned SO3C as an answer to your message #124 .

As an answer to the question in the heading of this thread I'd say that F2A was better than P-35/P-35A and most of the Finns thought that F2A-1 was better than Hawk-75A (P-36 family), there seems to have been a few exceptions who thought that Hawk 75A-4 might have been better but they were a minority. But I'd not be surprised if majority of RAF pilots who flew both types thought the opposite. I remember too little of the operational histories of P-43, P-66 and CW-21 to form a firm opinion on their relative merits, P-70 wasn't a great success either same goes to fixed landing gear Hawk 75Ms and Ns

Juha
 
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