Worst aircraft of WW2?

This is an edited copy of a news article posted by Jyri-Pekka Järvinen (jyrtsi@vipunen.hut.fi) on the infamous subject of the worst fighter in WW2.

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Fair and well-deserved praise has been given to our fighter pilots in some (thanks to the posters ) of the articles dealing with this "the worst fighter" subject. But it seems that many people underestimate the opponent our Brewster pilots were facing or have some misunderstandings of the FAF at war. This may be due to the fact that our *three* separate wars in 1939-44 are not too well known outside Finland.

For example, FAF did *not* use Brewsters in the Winter War. The first four planes were flown to Finland on 1.3.-40. Before the end of the Winter War two more planes arrived, but none of these saw any action in the Winter War. True, some Soviet plane types were old - but there were so large numbers of them.

To clear up any possible misunderstandings and offer some all-round education, here is a list of all the planes that the Finnish aces (i.e. the list is not complete) shot down using Brewsters (Ref.1):

67.5 I-153's
60.5 I-16's

48 Hurricanes (of which 7 by Lauri Pekuri, 6 by Eino Peltola,
5.5 by Lauri Nissinen and 5 by Eero Kinnunen
- 23.5/48 by only four men)
41 LaGG-3's
40 MiG-3's
27.5 Yak-1's
24 SB-2bis's
18.5 Pe-2's
13 LaGG-5's (* see note at end)
13 Spitfires (* see note at end)
10 La-5's
9 Il-2's
7.5 DB-3's
7.5 R-5's
6.5 I-15bis's
5 DB-3F's
5 MiG-1's (* see note at end)
4 ARK-3's
4 Tomahawks
3 AR-2's
2 Yak-7's
2 He-111's
1 Ju-87
1 Li-2
1 SB-3
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421.5 kills by "the worst fighter of WWII"

I wonder what would have happened if our aces had encountered at least some modern fighters instead of those obsolete pieces of junk like Hurricanes and Spitfires...
Ref.2 gives gives the total of 472 kills with Brewsters. 83 FAF pilots gave their contribution to this number.

It was our luck that the Soviet pilots were not too skilled. But what can you do with a plane that may be considered inferior to those of the enemy?

If we concentrate on the non-Soviet enemy planes, the FAF pilots proved that the following predator-prey combinations were possible:

Predator: Prey:
--------- -----
Fokker Hurricane
Fiat Hurricane, Spitfire
Morane Airacobra, Hurricane, Tomahawk
Brewster Hurricane, Spitfire, Tomahawk

One popular belief is that the Brewsters were totally useless after 1941 or so. That is not true: our pilots scored kills with them during our whole Continuation War 1941-44. They had to: we had so few Me-109's.

Tha last aerial victory by a Brewster at the Karelian Isthmus was scored on 17.6.-44 and after that one of our pilots managed to shoot down a Ju-87 on 3.10.-44 in the Lapland War against the Germans.

Two FAF units used Brewsters: Lentolaivue 24 and Hävittäjälentolaivue 26.


Lentolaivue 24 (Flight squadron 24)
Between 25.6.-41 and 31.12.-41 LeLv 24 scored 135 kills with BW's with the cost of two BW's and two pilots. On 13.2.-42 5 Hurricanes were shot down and 8 more on 30.3. by the 2nd Flight. One week later they surprised a large Soviet formation and scored 11 Hurricanes and 1 DB-3.

On 14.8. 3rd Flight met 6 Hurricanes and got them all. Later during the day 4th Flight shot down three more. Two days later 3rd Flight destroyed 11 I-16's.

On 18.8. 60 Soviet fighters fought against 16 BW's. One BW was lost and 16 Soviets downed.

In April -43 Pe-2's, LaG-5's, Spitfire V's and Tomahawks arrived to the front.

On 21.4.-43 two BW's were lost for 4 LaGG-3's, 4 LaG-5's and 11 Yak-1's in a battle between 16 BW's and 35 Soviets.

Then La-5's and Yak-9's arrived. Despite of the high number of air combats against them, our BW's managed to shoot down only 4 of them.

Between 25.6.-41 and 21.5.-44 LeLv 24 scored 456 victories with BW's. 21 BW's were lost: 15 in combat, 4 in accidents and 2 in air raids. FAF pilot losses: 12 KIA, 2 POW.


Hävittäjälentolaivue 26 (Fighter squadron 26)
LeLv 24 gave its BW's to HaLLv 26 when they changed into Me-109's in -44.

Between May -44 and 4.9.-44 HaLLv 26 scored 17 victories against superior Soviet fighters. 7 BW's were lost: 4 in combat and 3 in air raids. Pilot losses: 2 KIA.


The Lapland War
In Lapland our BW-pilots learned the power of German AA-fire. 4 BW's were shot down by German AA and 2 more were lost in accidents. FAF successes: 2 Ju-87's shot down and one Ju-88 damaged (later crashed).


About individual BW's
*41* aerial victories were achieved with BW-393, 7 of them by Capt Luukkanen and 26 by Lt Hans Wind.

36 aerial victories achieved with BW-364, 28 of them by Eino Juutilainen.

Capt Jorma Karhunen scored 7 kills in 4 days with BW-388.

BW-373 flew its last flight on 30.6.-48 after 955 hours 45 minutes of flight time. The last BW-flight in FAF was performed by BW-377 and BW-382 on 14.9.-48.

References
1. Keskinen - Stenman - Niska: Hävittäjä-ässät/Finnish Fighter Aces. Suomen Ilmavoimien historia 11. Tietoteos 1978, Espoo.

2. Keskinen - Stenman - Niska: Brewster B-239 ja Humu. Suomen Ilmavoimien historia 1. Tietoteos 1977, Espoo.

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Notes:
LaGG-5 should propably be LaG-5.
"Spitfires" were most likely Yaks (Yak-1 and Yak-7 had tapered wing with rounded wingtips and high back similar to Spitfire).
MiG-1's were propably MiG-3's as there was no MiG-1 produced. Anyway the wartime flight reports mention those aircraft, propably due to either misidentification during air combat or erroneus intelligence information about new enemy aircraft types encountered.
John "Shady" Lane of 35FG 39FS, sums up the problem of assessing air combat in his combat report pretty well: "One definite, one probable, one damaged, one possible, twenty impossible and hell knows how many I didn't see."

Another story of the identification problem: this is about a RAF pilot who was telling a story about being attacked by a "Fokker". When he was told that there were no Fokkers present in the action, he said "You don't understand, this 'F**ker' was flying a Messerschmitt."

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the lancaster kicks ass said:

he's right though, the komet did suck some seriously big... well i'm sure you can imagine what i wanna put here.....

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the lancaster kicks ass said:

if you made it that far.........

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