Worst Aircraft of WW2

[AerialTorpedoDude69]

No Brewster Buccaneer?

Dear lord, I just read about Brewster's other aircraft, including its version of the Corsair. Brewster's planes were so bad they were falling apart in the air and pretty much none of their aircraft made their performance estimates.

The factory conditions were something out of a Russ Meyer film. Or perhaps Porky's or maybe Gung Ho is more accurate? Regardless, the article is a very sad read and summarizes how little the government thought about Brewster's aircraft.

People were having sex on the assembly floor inside the planes. Crews were notorious for forgetting tools in the aircraft after they were completed, leaving pilots to wonder what the rattling sound was. The Brewster plant was seized by the government at one point and it even had a worker strike in the middle of the war.

The Brewster XA-32 also deserves some discussion. It was a really bad airplane, particularly for the year it was released (and cancelled).

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Dear lord, I just read about Brewster's other aircraft, including its version of the Corsair. Brewster's planes were so bad they were falling apart in the air and pretty much none of their aircraft made their performance estimates.

The factory conditions were something out of a Russ Meyer film. Or perhaps Porky's or maybe Gung Ho is more accurate? Regardless, the article is a very sad read and summarizes how little the government thought about Brewster's aircraft.

People were having sex on the assembly floor inside the planes. Crews were notorious for forgetting tools in the aircraft after they were completed, leaving pilots to wonder what the rattling sound was. The Brewster plant was seized by the government at one point and it even had a worker strike in the middle of the war.

The Brewster XA-32 also deserves some discussion. It was a really bad airplane, particularly for the year it was released (and cancelled).

I can't speak to sexin' on the work-floor, but I'm pretty sure their Corsairs carried a bad rep, and of course the Brits rejected the Buccaneer outright.

You've got to be pretty crummy to be a defense contractor going out of business during a world war, essentially.

 

[SaparotRob]

My bit of "what-iffery" regarding the Buffalo is what if had just been built to spec? What if it was built with new engines, including all the little parts I always have leftover?

 

[GrauGeist]

Several things about Brewster.
First of all, their manufacturing plant was an antiquated, multi-storey building designed for coach and hand-built automibiles. The aircraft had to be mived about in a partially assembled state.
There was also the issue of poor management.
The union initiated strikes and the aircraft were found to be sabotaged in many instances to the point that the government stepped in and seized the company.
The Brewster built Corsair (F3A) never saw combat, most that were found to be air worthy were relegated to training service only.

The SB2A was such a failure, many were scrapped without ever having been flown.

 

[pb43]

Dear lord, I just read about Brewster's other aircraft, including its version of the Corsair. Brewster's planes were so bad they were falling apart in the air and pretty much none of their aircraft made their performance estimates.

The factory conditions were something out of a Russ Meyer film. Or perhaps Porky's or maybe Gung Ho is more accurate? Regardless, the article is a very sad read and summarizes how little the government thought about Brewster's aircraft.

People were having sex on the assembly floor inside the planes. Crews were notorious for forgetting tools in the aircraft after they were completed, leaving pilots to wonder what the rattling sound was. The Brewster plant was seized by the government at one point and it even had a worker strike in the middle of the war.

The Brewster XA-32 also deserves some discussion. It was a really bad airplane, particularly for the year it was released (and cancelled).

I was about to vote for ANYTHING produced by Brewster. They were dreadful. The USN knew this, so foisted all the F3A Corsairs onto the Fleet Air Arm!

 

[EwenS]

And in the last few posts there seems to be a bit of the usual anecdotal stuff about Brewster & the Corsair. But is it in fact true?

Dana Bell who has written several books on the "Bent Winged Bastard" has this to say about the Brewster Corsairs:-

"Though Brewster Corsairs are often cited as inferior, Navy records do not agree. By January 1944, BuAer considered production of the first F3A-1Ds (beginning with BuNo 11467) or F3A-4s when the first Corsair III order finished. Brewster engineers had handled special projetcs, such as the shorter British wingtips, the centerline bomb rack, and a (poorly documented) high-lift Corsair wing. Brewster, however, had management and labor problems - raising the costs and delaying the F3A deliveries. By early 1944, the Navy was pleased with Brewster production, but in April a new board of directors was elected. Unhappy with several of the members, the Navy terminated Brewster contracts 22 May, allowing completion of up to 150 more aircraft by 1 July. lawsuits followed, and most of BuAer's Brewster files were pulled by legal offices - leaving little documentation in today's archives."

Brewster built 735 Corsairs. Only 430 (60%) of those came to Britain. The others were used by the USN. Only in the months of Feb-April 1944 was all Brewster production allocated to Britain. About the last 130 off the line to Jul 1944 went to the USN.

6 FAA squadrons received them fresh from the factory when working up in the USA but swapped them out for Corsair II & IV (built by Vought and Goodyear respectively) before becoming operational.

Neither navy used the Brewster built Corsairs in their front line carrier air groups. But both navies were content to see them used in second line roles or as part of air groups working up all the way through to the end of the war. So for example in Aug 1945 in the USN VBF-5, then working up had 5 F3A-1 alongside 11 FG-1A and 22 F4U. VBF-15, 19, 84, all had some amongst their aircraft complement. All these units were at bases in the USA.

So why not use them on the front line? I suspect that, like other US aircraft types, there were manufacturing differences (and I don't mean shoddy build quality) between factories making them less compatible with Vought and Goodyear aircraft. The formed only 22% of Corsair deliveries to Britain and an even smaller proportion of USN deliveries.

 

[EwenS]

Dear lord, I just read about Brewster's other aircraft, including its version of the Corsair. Brewster's planes were so bad they were falling apart in the air and pretty much none of their aircraft made their performance estimates.

The factory conditions were something out of a Russ Meyer film. Or perhaps Porky's or maybe Gung Ho is more accurate? Regardless, the article is a very sad read and summarizes how little the government thought about Brewster's aircraft.

People were having sex on the assembly floor inside the planes. Crews were notorious for forgetting tools in the aircraft after they were completed, leaving pilots to wonder what the rattling sound was. The Brewster plant was seized by the government at one point and it even had a worker strike in the middle of the war.

The Brewster XA-32 also deserves some discussion. It was a really bad airplane, particularly for the year it was released (and cancelled).

Unfortunately the article you link is not available to us in the UK (GDPR restrictions)

There were 3 Brewster plants.
Brewster Building, Long Island, New York - the main pre-war factory and company headquarters.
Newark, New Jersey - where aircraft from New York were assembled and flown
Warminster Township, Pennsylvania - acquired in 1941 and where the SB2A Buccaneer/Bermuda was built.

F2A Buffalo production came to an end at New York in April 1942 with only 20 aircraft produced that year.
SB2A production of completed airframes acceptable to the customer began in the Pennsylvania factory in July 1942 and continued until May 1944. That was despite there being contracts in place with Britain & the Dutch since mid-1940 and the USN since Dec 1940.
F3A Corsair production contract was awarded 1 Nov 1941 and the first production aircraft was produced in June 1943 at Long Island. It peaked in May 1944 at 122 aircraft and continued until July 1944.

By way of comparison Goodyear was awarded a Corsair production contract in Dec 1941 and was able to start production in April 1943. By May 1944 its production was 220 aircraft. I don't know how the size of the workforces compared in the two plants.

The USN took over all the Brewster plants by Presidential Order in April 1942 due not to the quality of the product, but because there was no product at all emerging from the factories. And many of the problems with the Buccaneer/Bermuda, which had already started rolling off the line, were design problems, in particular related to aileron flutter in the dive, as well as quality issues. But those problems in the company couldn't be sorted due to various management problems, including the main shareholders being in jail! Add to that labour issues and rumours of sabotage. A lot of this is laid out in the Congressional enquiry that took place. transcripts of that can be accessed for free via Google Books. This is a good place to start.

Investigation of the Progress of the War Effort: Brewster investigation

books.google.co.uk

As for the strikes, Brewster was not the only company affected. I've found one occasion reported in the NY Times that there had been a strike by both Ford and Brewster workers at NY plants at the same time, with the Ford plant affecting about 3 times the number of employees as Brewster. Sadly WW2 did not somehow miraculously make strikes go away. In Britain 1944 was the peak year for strikes with over 2000 occurring with an estimated loss of 3.7m days production. And this article about strikes in the USA in 1942.

US military steps in to halt strikes

As strikes across the U.S. slow down the economy, President Roosevelt has chosen to intervene: four times he has ordered the Army or Navy to take over striking factories. In the six months between …

blogs.shu.edu

And before being too critical of Brewster employees in WW2 leaving tools etc in wartime built aircraft, there is an example in the recent past concerning the quality of various Boeing products coming out of their factories with tools and other materials left in airliner fuel tanks etc.

I won't try to defend the Bucanneer/Bermuda. It was an aircraft with problems which Brewster never got on top of, probably due to all its internal corporate problems. But there were other aircraft in WW2 which also had major gestational problems before reaching front line service. Take a look at the problems that befell the SB2A competitor from Curtiss, the SB2C Helldiver. Prototypes of both had been ordered by the USN in April / May 1939. Production contracts awarded by the USN in Nov/Dec 1940. First flights were in Jun 1941 & Dec 1940 respectively. But it took until Sept 1942 for the first production SB2C to be accepted (2 months after the SB2A). The first squadron formed in Dec 1942 but it took another 11 months before it entered combat, much of it sorting out teething problems. It too came out of a brand new factory.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Unfortunately the article you link is not available to us in the UK (GDPR restrictions)

There were 3 Brewster plants.
Brewster Building, Long Island, New York - the main pre-war factory and company headquarters.
Newark, New Jersey - where aircraft from New York were assembled and flown
Warminster Township, Pennsylvania - acquired in 1941 and where the SB2A Buccaneer/Bermuda was built.

Brewster DID NOT have a plant on Long Island! The facility you are referring to was located at "Long Island City" which is in the borough of Queens. I had an uncle who worked there. Brewster Building (Queens) - Wikipedia

 

[FLYBOYJ]

So why not use them on the front line? I suspect that, like other US aircraft types, there were manufacturing differences (and I don't mean shoddy build quality) between factories making them less compatible with Vought and Goodyear aircraft. The formed only 22% of Corsair deliveries to Britain and an even smaller proportion of USN deliveries.

From what I was told by people who worked for Brewster, the Corsairs produced by them had many manufacturing errors (that were corrected by approved repairs) and it was decided that these aircraft would never see fleet service. There were major workmanship issues at Brewster

 

[Shortround6]

Actually Queens is on Long Island.

Granted Long Island City borders on the East River about where Roosevelt Island is and perhaps the residents of Queens consider the rest of Long Island to be a separate land mass..........

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Actually Queens is on Long Island.

View attachment 681183
Granted Long Island City borders on the East River about where Roosevelt Island is and perhaps the residents of Queens consider the rest of Long Island to be a separate land mass..........

NOPE! All part of the same land mass but two different cities/ counties!!!!! You're talking to someone who grew up there!!!

 

[SaparotRob]

Brewster DID NOT have a plant on Long Island! The facility you are referring to was located at "Long Island City" which is in the borough of Queens. I had an uncle who worked there. Brewster Building (Queens) - Wikipedia

All those times I drove by there and never knew it was the Brewster factory.

 

[SaparotRob]

NOPE! All part of the same land mass but two different cities/ counties!!!!! You're talking to someone who grew up there!!!

Truly, the man doth speak! FWIW the pizza in Brooklyn (my home county) is better than the pizza in Queens (my home county).

 

[special ed]

Elsewhere, somewhere, on the forum is a discussion of the Bucanneer/Bermuda problems one of which was the tailwheel design. Apparently taxiing was a problem and getting the tailwheel aligned for take off was a problem. Also somewhere on the forum is a video of the SB2A taxiing and it shows a definite tailwheel problem. As with anything slightly usable, give it to the Marines.

 

[Capt. Vick]

Speaking as a Nassau native, the stereotypical "Long Guy-land" accent is actually a Queens accent. No one I have ever met that is native to Nassau or Suffolk counties (in Long Island) spoke that way. Yet another "border" between them and us. But I have always considered Long Island to have 4 counties...

 

[nuuumannn]

Define success, Shooting down 1 or 2 aircraft a month out of 5-6000 aircraft penetrating British airspace is not a success.

The problem is what it is that you're choosing as your measure of success. According to you, shooting down 42 aeroplanes between the end of September 1940 and May 1941 is not successful. Using an aircraft's total kills as a standalone measure is not rewarding and doesn't illustrate the entire picture. Again, you're missing vital context, as you so often do, SR. Here's why you can't use kills alone as a measure of success, or the lack of it.

The aircraft type that shot down the highest number of German airships during the Great War was the Royal Aircraft Factory BE.2c. It was more successful at this than the Sopwith Pup and Camel, both of which recorded airship kills but not as many as the good ole Bee Eee. Does this mean the Bee Eee is more successful than these two types? Based on your metric it is.

Now let's add that vitally important context. The reality was that the BE.2c was slow, had next to no endurance and airships could easily evade it by climbing higher out of its reach. Its success comes from the introduction of incendiary ammunition, which changed the game and saw airships being shot down more frequently than before, in one case, two in one night. The Camel and Pup began appearing as airship activity declined. This all illustrates that there is always more to it than just kills and losses.

So, back to the Defiant. It shot down 42 enemy aircraft in that time period, that's more than three squadrons. That's more than 200 Germans that are not going to come back and fight again. Given the Defiant was available in numbers to equip the OTUs for training night fighter pilots within a structured system, its availability is crucial, especially since you keep banging on about how useless everyone was at shooting down enemy aircraft at that time.

As I mentioned, the Defiant WAS a success as a night fighter. It held the line at a time when it was very thin indeed and became available in numbers to provide vital training and to equip 13 squadrons as a frontline interceptor before better types became available in sufficient numbers so it could be retired. What's not successful about that?

 

[Shortround6]

The problem is what it is that you're choosing as your measure of success. According to you, shooting down 42 aeroplanes between the end of September 1940 and May 1941 is not successful. Using an aircraft's total kills as a standalone measure is not rewarding and doesn't illustrate the entire picture. Again, you're missing vital context, as you so often do, SR. Here's why you can't use kills alone as a measure of success, or the lack of it.

OK, my definition of success is different than yours.
I seldom, if ever, judge solely on "box scores". Like plane X shot down XX planes without taking into account the number of planes involved.
I judge the Skua as successful, in fact very successful.
This is based, not on total number of aircraft shot down but on the number of enemy aircraft shot down in relation to the number of Skuas either deployed or manufactured. Take your pick. That is part of the "context". In other Threads I have said the Skua was much more successful as a fighter than the SBD for example.

The Defiant gave a poor return on investment.

It is also a poor argument to say that if there had been NO Defiants that the 42 German planes would have been saved.

An equal number of other airplanes would probably have shot down something. Maybe just a few or perhaps beating the Defiant total, I don't know since we don't know what the British could have/would have substituted.

So lets look at the Defiant from that "context".

Lets even say that around 400 Defiants did valuable work at target tugs.

42 kills out of 600 fighters?

Or for the MK II, 1 kill out of 150 or so fighters? (trying to factor in that some of the MK IIs were converted after being built in addition to the ones built as tugs on the production line)

Now we do have to add other elements of context, like operating conditions (poor for everybody/all types in the Fall and Winter) and target density (went way down after the middle of May, you can't shoot down what isn't there, much like the Camels of WW I).

But we also have to apply context to some of the other planes involved also. Like the number of missions/sorties done by Blenheim's and Havocs. Fewer months in combat with different numbers of squadrons. Some squadrons had mixed equipment.

Not all 13 squadrons may have been operating at the same time which makes things a bit better for the Defiant.

 

[wuzak]

NOPE! All part of the same land mass but two different cities/ counties!!!!! You're talking to someone who grew up there!!!

Is not the island named long Island?

The island comprises four counties; Kings and Queens counties (the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, respectively) and Nassau County share the western third of the island, while Suffolk County occupies the eastern two thirds.

Long Island - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[nuuumannn]

The Defiant gave a poor return on investment.

Again, according to whom? A jaded Aamerican who rubbishes anything British until pulled up on it?

It is also a poor argument to say that if there had been NO Defiants that the 42 German planes would have been saved.

Whose saying that except you? What is being said, quite obviously that the Defiant's contribution by shooting down those aircraft was valuable. You're taking their losses individually instead of collectively. What I am saying is that the Defiant gave the RAF aircraft that it would not have had, had it not been available. That adds value. No Defiants, far fewer night fighters at a time when the RAF needed night fighters. No Defiant, no basis of creating OTUs, of which the Defiant provided numbers for. No Defiant, no stop gap night fighter available in numbers and you can't prove those 42 aircraft wouldn't have been shot down, simply because they were shot down by Defiants.

Your fatalistic metric for measuring these things simply doesn't take circumstances or the value that having those Defiants available meant. So, only target tug Defiants were of value? Never mind the several hundred RAF aircrew that learnt their night fighter and gunnery trade on Defiants? Nope. not buying it.

 

[SaparotRob]

Is not the island named long Island?

Long Island - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ugh, out of towners.