Worst aircraft of WW2? (1 Viewer)

[Waynos]

The buffalo was actually quite a good aircraft.

In what way? It was very badly designed with a fat fuselage, narrow wing (of too small area), weak undercarriage and feeble engine. It was overweight (in all its versions) and very difficult to handle. The relative success of the Finns is not a vindication of the plane, but a testament to the skill and determination of the pilots it was foisted onto.

To quote Bill Yenne "Brewster was pioneering a new field, it is just that they didn't do a very good job"

To put its crapness into a kind of perspective, the prototype was ordered more than a month after the first flight of the Spitfire and it flew as the Spitfires were entering series production, now go compare. The Brewster Buffalo was a shameful little beast.

I was just imagining the commander who might have had to send out Blackburn Botha's on a bombing run escorted by Buffaloes, eeeeuuuwww, not a happy thought! Thank god it never came to pass.

 

[Soundbreaker Welch?]

The Brewster Buffalo was a shameful little beast.

 

[Colin1]

The Brewster Buffalo was a shameful little beast

Just one question for you Wayne

Brewster Buffalo vs Polikarpov I-16

who's your money on?

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I think you guys should read "Bloody Shambles." The Buffalo didn't do as bad as you might think in RAF and RAAF service in the South Pacific.

There were plenty of aircraft that were a lot worse.

 

[Marcel]

The Brewster Buffalo was a shameful little beast.

KNIL Buffalo's example:

Harry Simons, who as a pilot for the Kon. Ned. Ind. Luchtvaart Mij. (KNILM) [the NEI civilian airline] was called up as a fighter pilot on the Buffalo, reported that he found the Buffalo a good aircraft provided it was fitted with the 1200 hp engine. He stated: "Although it may sound strange, I still remember the agile maneuverability of the Buffalo and in principle it was a very good aircraft as long as it had 1200 hp. The armament with two light and two heavy machineguns, was on the light side.

Captain Piet Tideman, commander of 3-Vl.G.V: "Coming to an evaluation of the Brewster fighter, especially compared to the Zero by which it was opposed - I think that my views are not directly in line with what is generally said about the Brewster. Generally it is said that that it was far inferior to the Zero. (.....) On the contrary, the Brewster was a good, sturdy, fast fighter with two half-inch armour-plates behind the seat. She would take a hell of a beating. My view is that our drawback during the fighter actions was not an inferior aeroplane, but that we had too few of them and also our armament was too little and too light.

 

[Colin1]

I think you guys should read "Bloody Shambles." The Buffalo didn't do as bad as you might think in RAF and RAAF service in the South Pacific.

There were plenty of aircraft that were a lot worse.

lol I don't have any real problems with the Buffalo, Joe
it doesn't rank up there among my all-time favourites and it was certainly no electric performer; like most early or pre-war designs, fighter requirements got up and ran away from it but mostly, it was there when it was needed.

Just winding Wayne up...

 

[Juha]

Hello Waynos
have you source to the claim that Brewster Buffalo was very difficult to handle? First time when I heard that. Rather narrow undercarriage and fat body made it sometimes difficult to land with side wind, but otherwise?

Some comments on Buffalo >Brewster Buffalo: British flight tests

And if FAF considered Brewster B-239 as its best fighter from early 40 to early 43 (When we got Bf 109G-2s) so clearly there were worse fighters than B-239.

Juha

 

[Marcel]

And if FAF considered Brewster B-239 as its best fighter from early 40 to early 43 (When we got Bf 109G-2s) so clearly there were worse fighters than B-239.

Juha

Likewise the B339 with 1200 hp engine.

 

[Murray B]

The worst? I'd say it's the Polikarpov I-15. 2,200 were lost in the first week of German invasion of Russia in June 1941.

How can you say that about an aircraft that is the basis of the very first jet?
The story is at:I-15bis

They write, "In December 1939 test pilot P. Loginov started testing a I-15bis biplane fitted with two Merkulov DM-2 ramjets fitted under the lower wings."

Just look at it:

See the low upper wing and the sleek design? This aircraft is the first jet and the first jet to exceed 300 milliMach. Notice how the cross sectional area is reduced at the cockpit near the waist. Is this the first example of the area rule? If so, then isn't this aircraft at least 40 years ahead of its time?

 

[Waynos]

Hello Juha. You have me with the 'difficult to handle' remark. When I rechecked my source on this it does not say that, I misquoted.

It actually says it was underpowered with a painfully inadequate wing area and sluggish to handle, not difficult. Sorry about that one. I stand by my 'shameful little beast' comment though. even the link you provided gives enough material to support that comment.
As Marcel highlighted in his reply, 'in principle it was a very good aircraft'. Its just that in reality it was bloody awful. In principle the Westland Whirlwind was an absolute world beater well ahead of the P-38. But in reality it never had a chance.

To quote my source again (Bill Yenne) 'within three months every Buffalo in the far east had been lost, handing the Japanese air superiority on a silver platter'. And let us not forget the British Buffaloes were only in the Far East in the first place because we dare not fly it against the Germans. The only US Buffaloes to see action were those of VMF-221 at Midway in June 1942 and in a 30 minute battle 13 of the 19 aircraft launched were lost were ALL the British and American pilots hopeless? Or might their mount have had something to do with it?. If not, why was the Buffalo quickly discarded by both countries in favour of other types? It was not that technology had overtaken it, because that had happened before it even flew. And let us not forget that Brewster then repeated the trick with the Brewster Bermuda dive bomber, if anything an even more deserving candidate for the worst of the war.

 

[Juha]

Waynos
Hurricanes did not manage much better in Singapore or in Dutch East India, did they? If you read the report of S/L Harper, CO of 453 Sqn and later of 21/453 Sqn, you'll see that almost all pilots of 453 were straight from flying schools, the exceptions were the S/L, a BoB veteran, and the 2 F/Lts who had very little experience on operations. There was no workable early-warning system when they were deployed in Malaya, so rather hopeless situation. JAAF could always bounce them and time to time attack them while they were taking off or landing.
Dutch seemed to think that their B-339s were better than Hurricane Mk II Trops, And B-239s had one of the best kill-loss ration achieved during WWII and as I wrote Finns thought that Brewster B-239 was their best fighter from early 40 to early 43. Not so bad for 'shameful little beast' and remember Dec 1941 to May 42 Japanese did well everywhere, also against Hurricanes and P-40s.

III/JG 1 lost 12 out of 20 Bf 109G-5s/-6s to P-51s of 4th FG on 22 Apr 44 and III/JG 1 leaders were clearly experienced men like Grislawski, Burckhardt and Kaiser, 133, 58 and 68 kills respectively. One cannot draw too much from one fight. But I agree that F2A-3 was overburdened by its massive fuel load.

Juha

 

[Marcel]

It actually says it was underpowered with a painfully inadequate wing area and sluggish to handle, not difficult. Sorry about that one. I stand by my 'shameful little beast' comment though. even the link you provided gives enough material to support that comment.
As Marcel highlighted in his reply, 'in principle it was a very good aircraft'. Its just that in reality it was bloody awful.

I think you're still only talking about the British Buffalo's. A British pilot who tested the Dutch B339's marked them as much better aircraft than their own. In one of my quotes, a Dutch pilot even denies that the Buffalo was inferior to the Zero.
Mark the differences between the British and Dutch versions. Different engines (Dutch ones had more horsepower), and the Dutch fighters much lighter, so climbing performance and manoeuvrability was much better then the British and US versions. The B239 of the Finns was actually much lighter as well. According to Dutch sources the B339 was actually quite manoeuvrable.

The US version at Midway was even heavier than the British one. And still with the 1100 hp engine.

The Dutch just had too few....

In principle the Westland Whirlwind was an absolute world beater well ahead of the P-38. But in reality it never had a chance.

Actually I think the Whirlwind is one of the more overrated a/c of WWII. I don't see it as a "worldwinner" anymore then other a/c.

 

[parsifal]

there is no doubt the Buffalo used by the allies in the tropical climates of the far East were an heroic failure. The RAAF using the type in Malaya did fight very valiantly but it was a hopeless fight by any measure. The training of the pilots and their general pre-conception of the Japanese did not help. The Allied air forces applied their "dogfight" tactics to the Japanese, and learnt the hard way that dogfighting an Oscar, Nate, Claude or Zero was something you just could not do.

The lions share of the aerial victories achieved by the Japanese were done by the very few Oscars and Zeroes that participated. Against these aircraft, the Buffalo was hopelessly outclassed in nearly every performance category.....handling, top speed, climb, service ceiling, to name just a few. The poor old Buffalo was a "manouvre" fighter, but against a zero, or an Oscar, in this type of fight it was heavily outclassed.


This is a quote from a book of mine about the RAAFs experience with the type

"Due to the rapid wastage of aircraft, Nos 21 and 453 were temporarily merged as No 21/453 sqn. The unit had 16 Bufaloes on strength. Lessons learnt in the combat were now applied to the Buffalo in an attempt to give it a more competitive performance Since nothing could be done about the defective fuel pressure systems, combats at altitudes above 6000 metres required the pilo6t to maintain a continous hand pump in order to keep flying. It was nearly impossible to operate the hand pump, and engage in combat at the same timeArmament was reduced in an effort to save weight and the R/T sets removed. Subsequent combats proved the inadequacy o these measures , as the Zero continued to outmatch the Buffalo in nearly every respect

I dont consider the buffalo to be the worst in war, but is was not a shining example of American engineering either. The pilots did their best with it, but by 1942 it simply was not competitive against the Japanese

Six Bufflaoes survived the Asian debacle, and continued to provide the AD component for Perth until well into 1943

 

[Marcel]

I dont consider the buffalo to be the worst in war, but is was not a shining example of American engineering either. The pilots did their best with it, but by 1942 it simply was not competitive against the Japanese

Well, Parsifal, in fact any fighter that the Allies had in 1941-42 in the PTO had a hard time against the Zero. Not the Hurricane, P40, P39, Wildcat, you name it did very well these first months. The Buffalo was no exception. Still this a/c got a worse reputation than the rest, only because of Midway. I don't believe the a/c deserved such a judgement if the others don't. I still don't believe the Buffalo was that bad. They were with too few and bad tactics did the rest. There is a reason why the Finns had soo much success with them. They couldn't have had that if the a/c was bad.

 

[parsifal]

I think this over-simplifies the issue. There were three main issues that enabled the Japanese to post such one sided victories over all opponents at this time, the first was the excellent standard of their pilots, who were the masters of dogfighting. The second was the superior performance of their spearhead fighters compared to most of their allied opponents, and the third was the superior mobility of their ground support echelons, that enabled the Japanese air formation to relocate far more efficiently than their opponents.

There were several types that displayed superior performance to the zero/oscar threat, principally the P-40, F4F and to a lesser extent the Hurricane (incidentally the brits were shipping out clapped out MkI at the end of 1941, not the more modern Mk IIs). However, at best these aircraft were only approaching the performance of the Japanese aircraft and not exceeding them. When used or placed in situations where the Japanese could still outnumber them, and/or faulty tactics were still used, the results were still in favour of the Japanese. However, where the defenders could be deplyed into situations where they could not be bushwhacked by numbers, and where proper tactical handling of the fighters was employed, the results were more promising.

With this in mind, the British Hurricane defence of Singapore should come as no surprise as a failure....the pilots were too few to man all the aircraft, the Japanese already had the airbases supressed, and the wrong tactics were used (again)

In Burm and China, however, the AVG, flying P-40s displayed a remarkable ability to outfly the Japanese. The group was the only allied formation that knew not to dogfight with the Japanese, and the distances separating the Japanese from their targets was such that the AVG could, and did react to the Japanese in good time.

The USN Wildcats also fared quite well, even from the very beginning because they could choose the moment and location of their targets, and strike in overwhelming local superiority of numbers. The Zero was never able to completely best the Wildcat at theis time in quite the same way as it did the Buffalo.

The Dutch did enjoy better success with the Buffalo than either the brits ofr the Americans, but more in the sense that the type was able to survive a little longer.....ther is little or no evidence to support any claim that the loss rates for the Japanese were much higher in the NEI than they were in any of the other campaigns....in other words, the Dutch got more time to shoot at the Japs, but faioled to make any appreciable difference. I believe this stems from the poor quality of the Buffalo, since it was impossible for the Japanese to "outflank" the Dutch, and the Dutch were able to generally dive on the Japanese (due to the better performance at altitude).

But while the Dutch Buffalo was "less bad" than the British version, it could not escape its fate as an outclassed and obsolete aircraft. The Dutch may have done better than anyone in the Far East, but this does not demonstrate the superiority of their equipment....

 

[Marcel]

The Dutch did enjoy better success with the Buffalo than either the brits ofr the Americans, but more in the sense that the type was able to survive a little longer.....ther is little or no evidence to support any claim that the loss rates for the Japanese were much higher in the NEI than they were in any of the other campaigns....in other words, the Dutch got more time to shoot at the Japs, but faioled to make any appreciable difference. I believe this stems from the poor quality of the Buffalo, since it was impossible for the Japanese to "outflank" the Dutch, and the Dutch were able to generally dive on the Japanese (due to the better performance at altitude).

But while the Dutch Buffalo was "less bad" than the British version, it could not escape its fate as an outclassed and obsolete aircraft. The Dutch may have done better than anyone in the Far East, but this does not demonstrate the superiority of their equipment....

The Dutch only had 72 Brewsters ordered and less were on strength when the Japanese attacked. That is a very small number considering the huge land they had to defend. I would say that's the reason why they didn't make an impact, not the performance of the a/c. Furthermore, early-warning systems were non-existent in the Dutch EI, so the Dutch had very little warning and had no time to get altitude. I don't understand where you get the idea that they usually could dive on their opponent. This was no BoB with Radar posts.

As for the equipment being superior to the British version, British Brewsters were all fitted with the 1100 hp Cyclone G-105A. the majority of the ML-KNIL aircraft had 1200 hp and the British had also been fitted with additional equipment bringing the weight of the aircraft to 2955 kg, about 265 kg (10%) more than the Dutch aircraft. Because of this for instance the rate of climb (at sea level) of the British version was just 3000 ft/min, very poor compared to the 4700 ft/min of the Dutch aircraft.

 

[Juha]

Hello Parsifal
my points are
a) Hurricanes, which according to Shore's et al's Bloody Shambles were Mk IIBs, which can be checked from serials, BE-BM range which means sixth Hawker production group, produced from late 41 to early 42, and powered by RR Merlin XXs, so Mk IIs and new ones, did mot better than Buffalos. In fact if we take along the Ceylon debacle, Hurricanes did it worse than Buffalos against newer Japanese fighters, see Joe B's message in this thread on 12 Sept 08, even if as later comer Hurri pilots at least have some truthful info on the capabilies of Japanese fighters and had not to rely on completely false beliefs of clear inferiority of Japanese equipment which were the base of early tactics of Commonwealth pilots in FE.
b) USN F4Fs clearly did better than Buffalos against Japanese fighters, but their pilots had lot more experience and they had the big advantage of proper early warning. IIRC Wake was the exception, it had not radar.
c) Buffalo Mk I and F2A-3 were probably the worst models of the Brewster fighter, being clearly overweight. F2A-1, B-239, F2A-2 and Dutch B339 were better and has to take in consideration when trying to value Buffalo.

Juha

 

[JoeB]

I agree with much of what's been said lately. In general Buffalo's did poorly against the Japanese air arms in 1941-1942. But, most Allied fighter types and units were doing poorly v the Japanese.

An exception to that is US experience where the Marine F2A's were badly defeated by Zeroes in their only air combat flying from Midway, where the F2A's stablemate in the US Naval air arms, the F4F, established the best record of any Allied fighter v the Zero in 1942. F4F's didn't consistently enjoy local numbers over Zeroes, that's not correct. Neither side enjoyed consistent numerical superiority. So it's understandable why the US Naval air arms' impression was of a big difference between those planes' combat effectivness, though the difference in result isn't provably all due to the planes, some of it was surely other factors.

In South East Asia theater the Buffalo generally did poorly against all Japanese opponents. Numbers posted earlier in this thread counting combat by combat showed that the Buffalo's record was actually worse v the Army Type 97 (later 'Nate') than v. the Zero and Type 1. The Buffalo did about as badly v Zero and Type 1 as the Hurricane did but worse than the Hurricane v the Type 97 (Hurricane v Type 97 was a little better than 1:1 in favor of Type 97, USAAF P-40's similarly, the Type 97's big problem was v. AVG P-40's where it went 1:3 in a pretty large sample of combats).

I don't agree that KNIL fighter-fighter results were noticeably better than British/CW or USAAF units in the same theater same time. Their Buffalo results alone, counting same way as usual (each side's losses, only in combats where both side's accounts are known, no reliance on claims) were 1 Type 0 Fighter and 1 Type 0 Observation Seaplane (later 'Pete') acting as fighter downed by Dutch Buffalo's for the loss of 10 Dutch Buffalo's to Zero's and 2 to the 'Petes', in 5 combats. And overall KNIL Buffalo/CW-21/Hawk/Hurricane results v Japanese fighters were poor also, but so were those of the other Allied fighter arms operating alongside them in the Dutch East Indies at the time.

I don't think you can absolutely nail down some special inferiority of the Buffalo from the combat results. But OTOH statements like 'it didn't do so badly' are not in line with reality, v the Japanese. It did quite badly v Japanese fighters, almost without exception. But it was in a period where other Alllied fighter types were generally doing poorly v Japanese fighters too, though there were exceptions to that rule.

Joe

 

[Marcel]

I don't think you can absolutely nail down some special inferiority of the Buffalo from the combat results. But OTOH statements like 'it didn't do so badly' are not in line with reality, v the Japanese. It did quite badly v Japanese fighters, almost without exception. But it was in a period where other Alllied fighter types were generally doing poorly v Japanese fighters too, though there were exceptions to that rule.

Joe

I agree with you Joe. I didn't say they didn't do so badly, but I said the a/c itself was not as bad as most people think. The reasons for the a/c doing badly against the Japanese is much more complicated:
A> inexperienced crew
B> Bad tactics
C> The Japanese were the attacking one, having the initiative while:
D> there was no early warning, thus allied fighter pilots were late to react (altitude dis-advantage)
E> There were far to few to make up a good defence, especially since there was no early warning

In this case any a/c would have done bad.

I'm not so sure about your numbers though. I thought I had others. I'll come back to that later.

 

[Valo300]

Actually the TBD wasn't as bad as it is made out to be. In fact it was better than most torpedo bombers of the era.
It just gets a bad rep due to Midway ,when in fact any torpedo bomber attacking, against the odds they were facing, would have suffered the same fate.

I suspect that fast torpedo armed fighters like the P38 would've fared much better at Midway than the TBD.

Slow and lumbering is no way to fight a war.

And the TBD was that bad. Consider that clean it's top speed was a mere 206mph. When carrying a torp it was hard pressed to make 125mph.

What ingress/egress speeds would a torpedo armed P38 manage in comparison in an operational approach?

Double? More? And probably a good deal longer range than the TBD on top of it?

I honestly never saw the USN's fascination with specialized torpedo and dive bombers. Multi-role single fighters just offer so much more.

So anyway, yeah, TBD is a good pick for worst plane IMO. Certainly among the worst of the US made planes anyway.