Hurricane vs Buffalo

Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules

I tried to find out why it was called "Buffalo" but the webs drew a blank. Anyone know of a locale that has aircraft names? I know a lot of RAF bombers were city names and RN/FAA used fish etc.
 
fubar57 said:
I tried to find out why it was called "Buffalo" but the webs drew a blank. Anyone know of a locale that has aircraft names? I know a lot of RAF bombers were city names and RN/FAA used fish etc.
Click to expand...

Hi,
I have wondered that myself. One possible thing to keep in mind is that the British appear to have been the ones that initially called the P-51 the "Mustang" and also apparently initially called the P-400 the "Caribou". So maybe they were considering some sort of land animal theme for US supplied land based fighters, similar to how they initially used nautical animal names like the Martlet and Tarpon for carrier based US built planes.

Pat
PS. As a side note, there is also a type of fish sometimes called a "Buffalo" or "Buffalo fish", but my suspicion is that the Brewster plane is more likely named after a land animal than a sea animal since the British bought planes do not ever appear to have been intended to be operated from the sea.
 
fubar57 said:
I tried to find out why it was called "Buffalo" but the webs drew a blank. Anyone know of a locale that has aircraft names? I know a lot of RAF bombers were city names and RN/FAA used fish etc.
Click to expand...

Hi

Looking up in 'Names with Wings' by Gordon Wansbrough-White (Airlife 1995), page 37, gives the procedure for naming during 1939-1946 (modification of 1932 system):

The 'rules' went on to state:
"In the case of American aircraft allotted to Britain, and Canadian aircraft built for MAP, fullest consideration will be given to the wishes of the relevant authorities should they press for the adoption of names not within these categories. Endeavours should be made, however, to follow as closely as possible the basic rules, but names with an American or Canadian flavour will be very appropriate."

I hope that helps to understand the system.

Mike
 
fastmongrel said:
General words indicating speed, activity, or aggressiveness.

I wouldn't like to poke a Buffalo with a stick but otherwise it's a Cow. What next the Hawker Heifer, the Vought Charollais.
Click to expand...

It may be a cow...but it's a cow that can run at 40mph for 5 miles. Taking down a Buffalo was a rite of passage for native American hunter-gatherers for centuries.

They are also the most dangerous animals encountered by visitors to the various North American national parks and will attack humans if provoked. Between 1980 and 1999, more than three times as many people in Yellowstone National Park were injured by bison than by bears. During this period, bison charged and injured 79 people, with injuries ranging from goring puncture wounds and broken bones to bruises and abrasions. Bears injured 24 people during the same time.

Finally, they make mighty tasty burgers and meatloaf!!!



Thanks for sharing that, Mike. The "American flavour" comes through very strongly in the naming practices of US-procured aircraft: Mustang, Hudson, Chesapeake, Buffalo, Mohawk, Tomahawk, Kittyhawk, Dakota, Harvard, Baltimore, Maryland, Boston, Bermuda, Cleveland, Coronado, Cornell etc. The convention wasn't followed 100% but it's pretty consistent.

The other aspect that perhaps wasn't official, but which crops up quite frequently in the RAF, is alliterative naming. Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, Handley Page Halifax etc. Some of these also apply to a few American-sourced aircraft, including the Douglas Dakota and, of course, the Brewster Buffalo.
 
fastmongrel said:
General words indicating speed, activity, or aggressiveness.

I wouldn't like to poke a Buffalo with a stick but otherwise it's a Cow. What next the Hawker Heifer, the Vought Charollais.
Click to expand...
A former co-worker raised draft oxen as a sideline. He told two stories: one where a 3,000 lb ox decided not to wait for the gate at feeding time, and cleared a six foot fence, another where a harassing rottweiler was kicked and flew about fifty feet before hitting the ground.

Don't underestimate how dangerous bovines can be.
 


All you have to do is to read about the African Cape Buffalo, to know how tough a mean oxen can be. Asian guar(sp?) are also noted for having bad attitudes. Even a domestic Angus can put you into the hospital if it gets anxious.
Or, you can watch Professional Bull Riders getting hammered a time or two.
Nope, bovines can be danged dangerous indeed.
 
An American bison would crush a mustang horse. No contest, fortunately for the horse it would be very unlikely for them to wish to do so.
 
A couple of observations. The oft-repeated story about changing the .50's for '.30's' was partly about weight, but just as much about the fact that .50 caliber ammunition was nowhere as common among the British as among the Americans. .303 was available in abundance, and a heavy .50 is even more of a drag if there is no ammunition for it.

There may have been occasional Zeros in the air over Malaya, but they weren't the normal opposition. Malaya was an Imperial Army operation, so the fighter types employed were the Nakajima Ki-27 and (in lesser quantities) the Nakajima ki-43, which vaguely resembled the Mitsubishi A6M2 - and Allied servicemen referred to every Japanese fighter as a "Zero'.

The point about Brewster's rush to expand n 1940-41 is very good. I spoke with a gentleman who applied at Brewster's Long Island City plant. During the interview process, he shyly admitted having had a plan for a model airplane published in Model Airplane News. "Hired, and assigned to the drafting office!'

The squib on company designations dates from 1985, and is a little outdated. Some may find the updated information here of interest:

First, there was a Brewster Type Number. These are listed below, and the ones which apply to different Buffalo variants are in bold print. These type numbers don't often show up (except for the Model 339-23) but they are important, since they are the first number on blueprints. If you have a Brewster blueprint of technical drawing that starts with '5', you know it was drawn up for the first production batch of the U.S. Navy's F2A series, the F2A-1. Of course, if a part or drawing didn't need to be changed on subsequent versions (the horizontal tailplane comes to mind), it kept the '5' prefix. So in the handbook for the Dutch 339D, which had the Brewster Type Number of '16', many of the drawings have a '5' prefix because that component wasn't changed from the F2A-1.

1 XSBA-1 Scout Bomber
2 XSBA-2 Scout Bomber [never built]
3 XF2A-1 Navy Fighter
4 XT3D-2 Douglas Torpedo [subcontract work?]
5 F2A-1 Navy Fighter
6 XF2A-2 Navy Fighter
7 XSB2A-1 Scout Bomber
8 XNR-1 Target Plane
9 Fleet B-1 Fleet Trainer
10 339-10 Belgian Fighter
11 239-11 Finnish Fighter
12 F2A-2 Navy Fighter
13 339-13 English Fighter (339E)
14 340-14 English Dive Bomber
15 no entry this line
16 339-16 Dutch Fighter (339D)
17 340-17 Dutch Dive Bomber
18 339-18 Dutch Fighter (339C)
19 no entry this line
20 SB2A-1 Navy Dive Bomber
21 339-21 English Fighter
22 F2A-3 Navy Fighter
23 339-23 Dutch Fighter
24 RESERVED FOR NEW DESIGN
25 XA-32 Army Bomber

(Export) Model Numbers

The prototype Buffalo was not the 139, and the Navy F2A's never carried the 239, 339 or 339-23 type designations. In every Brewster document I have, the Navy types are only identified by their Navy designations like XF2A-1 etc.

The x39 type Export Model Numbers only are used for export models and may have been assigned by Brewster Export, a company set up separately from Brewster Aeronautical Corp. While Brewster Aeronautical used the Export Model Numbers, no Brewster document explaining this Export Model Number system appears to have survived, so we can only infer its structure from the way it was used.

Apparently, the Export Model Number consisted of the last two numbers of the year, with a prefix number that identified the specific product being offered for sale (NOT when the Navy equivalent first flew). For example, Brewster had built a two-seat scout-bomber for the Navy, the XSBA-1. The Navy allowed Brewster to solicit export orders for this aircraft in 1938 (even though the XSBA-1 had been flying since 1936). The Export Model Number used by the sales force was Brewster Model 138, the first type offered for sale during 1938 (read '1-38'). A revised design of the two-seater, now described as a scout fighter, was first offered in 1939, as the Model 139. Neither model was ever built.

Brewster sought export orders for an F2A-1 equivalent, the Export Model 239 (second export Model offered in 1939) and it was under this designation that 44 were sold to Finland. The next 1939 Export Model Number, 339, was used to identify export versions of the re-engined Navy fighter, the F2A-2, even though only the XF2A-2 had flown at that point.

As we all know, the 339 quickly grew suffix letters which many (me included) once assumed related to the country involved - B for Belgium, D for Dutch, E for England. However, the suffix letters were simply in series, since some of the Dutch aircraft were specifically identified as 339Cs. The missing 339A designation was the initial offering to Belgium; a Brewster document indicates changes incorporated to the 339A, resulting in the 339B configuration, which "supersedes [sic] Model 339A of 12-11-39". The one outlier is the last Export Model Number, the 339-23, built for the Dutch as a lower powered (read cheaper engine!) fighter trainer, but which ended up serving in Australia with the RAAF. As you can see from the listing of Type Numbers, this was Type 23. The change in the way it was identified may have coincided with the U.S. directing companies to use 'block numbers' to identify subtypes. No Brewster document I've seen mentions a Model 439 (which many older sources used to describe the 339-23).

I haven't found any description of a Export Model 140, though there must have been one. There is a spec sheet for a proposed Export Model 240, a dive bomber version of the Buffalo with a rear gunner. Although the fuselage was stretched to the length of the F2A-3, that would still have been a tight fit. The 240 was evidently offered to France and Turkey but never built. No drawings are known. The 340, of course, was the export version of the SB2A, for the British and Netherlands East Indies.
 
Last edited:

Hi Jim. Great to hear from you. Hope you're keeping well.

Agree the ammunition supply may have been a more significant factor, although I would have expected more than just one squadron to make the same modification. I also wonder if the problems the Aussie squadrons encountered with the wing .50s may have influenced the decision.


SaparotRob said:
I'm a fan of the Buffalo but reading jimmaas's post amazes me that Brewster had such grandiose plans.
Click to expand...

The list Jim provided doesn't even include the attempted sale of Brewster airframes to Poland. The company certainly had eyes that were bigger than their stomach.
 
While I agree that the naming the Brewster fighter the Buffalo seems a bit odd, my curiosity got the better of me and I have to admit to spending a couple hours researching the 'deadliness' of various North American animals. While venomous animals such such as the Black Widow and Brown Recluse spiders, the Rattler and the Water Moccasin snakes, etc, could be considered among the deadliest if they manage to bite you, the frequency of attacks and the state of modern medicine's response keeps the number of deaths very low. In actuality, the venomous insects such as the Bee, Wasp, Hornet, etc, result in far more deaths each year than spiders - due to the frequency of human allergies to their bites.

Any way, these are the top 10 most deadly animals in North America, ranked by average number of deaths per year:

Deer & Moose__________200 (If you do not count Deer & Moose running/leaping in front of cars, their rating goes from #1 to #10,)
Venomous Insects_______58* (about 90% due to allergic reaction)
Dogs___________________28
Cattle__________________20 (it is hard to say what % is intentional - it nearly always seems to be accidental - but is it really?)
Non-Venomous Insects___ 9 (usually due to swarming and sheer number of stings/bites)
Spiders_________________ 7 (Black Widow, Brown Widows, Brown Recluse only)
Snakes_________________ 6 (various-Rattlesnakes, Cotton Mouth, Copperhead, Water Moccasin, Eastern Coral Snake, and others)
Bears___________________1
Sharks__________________1**
Crocodiles/Alligators_____ 1**
*The Yellow Jacket wasp sends ~500,000 people to a hospital ER each year in North America.
**Sharks, and Crocodiles each average less than 1 death per year in North America, unlike in Australia where they seem to be the leading cause of death and dismemberment!

When I tried to think of suitable names for various military aircraft types, based on number of deaths cased by animal type, I admit to laughing a lot. P-39 White Tail? P-47 Moose? P-51 Long Horn? The only suitable deadly sounding names seemed to be in the insect & spider categories, ie P-61 Black Widow, F6F Yellow Jacket, etc. Maybe naming after types of dogs would work?
 
Last edited:
Bison (frequently called buffalo) are the largest modern, native North American type of megafauna. Size has a fearsomeness all its own.

Leaving aside mythical or legendary creatures, like the oniare (Oniare, the Iroquois horned serpent (Onyare, Oniont)), there aren't that many obviously fearsome land creatures in North America: one big cat (which does have several names), bears, wolves, alligators, and crocodiles. Expanding it to include less dangerous (to humans) predators adds raptors (eagles, falcons, hawks, kestrels), owls, shrikes (which aren't raptors; they're passerines, that is songbirds), coyotes, lynx and bobcats, mustelids (martens, fishers, etc), and a ton of insects, spiders, and other arthropods. Moving into the water adds quite a few fish, like the muskie, sharks, bluefish, ....

The myths and legends of the native peoples of North America are a badly underused source of names.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)

Similar threads

S
Spitfire vs. Dora mass battle
2
Replies
31
Views
2K
spicmart
S
Vickers Wellington vs. Warwick
Replies
5
Views
405
Aeroweanie
Sakai Saburo Vs Sugita Sho-ichi
2 3 4
Replies
70
Views
4K
GrauGeist
Supercharging & stuff - losses, improvements, good vs. bad. vs. excellent etc
2 3
Replies
44
Views
4K
Bretoal2
B
D
Is it a Hawker Hurricane?
Replies
12
Views
610
pb43
P
Menu
Log in
Register