I used to have the story on the Buff (
Aviation History, Nov.1996).
The Finns got the Buff because the salesmen at Brewster convinced the US Navy to invest in the new upgrade to the Buffalo, the F2A-2, just after they had bought the F2A-1.
So all the planes were pulled and replaced with the "latest and greatest" version.
Just so happened Finland needed to upgrade their air force due to a skirmish they were having with Russia over 50 acres of land each said belonged to them.
Brewster not only gave them the planes that had been in service with the US Navy, they also boxed up all B-239's that had been under construction and various parts that had yet to be assembled.
The only change Brewster made to that version was that they equipped them with an older style antenna, an older style gunsight and an
international version of the R-1820 the plane used while in US Navy service (I wanna say it was the "G-205", but don't quote me).
That is not quite how it is laid out in AHT but the truth maybe somewhere between the two accounts?
The Navy had placed an order for 54 F2A-1s on June 11
1938.
On march 22 19
39 the Navy orders the conversion of the XF2A-1 prototype to XF2A-2 standard (maybe the Brewster salesmen were wining and dining the Navy brass?)
June 20th 1939 sees the first production F2A-1 rolled out and delivered.
July 1939 sees the work done on converting the XF2A-1 to XF2A-2 standard and fight tests start.
August 1939 sees the British stick their oar in the water.
August 1939 also sees the Poland order 250 F2A type fighters.
Dec
1939 sees 11 F2A-1s having been accepted by the US Navy (Brewster delivering late as would become usual)
the remainder of the 54 plane order (43 aircraft) are released to Finland using commercial engines. 9of the Navy planes are put into service with VF-3 aboard the Saratoga.
Dec 1939 sees the Dutch place their first order and Jan sees the British reverse course and order 120 panes (later increased to 170)
Brewster delivers 17 aircraft in jan 1940 and 27 in Feb and they are shipped to to Sweden where they are assembled and test flown by SAAB at Trollhatten.
It took until April for all the 239s to reach Finland.
Dutch and British aircraft take precedence over US Navy deliveries and it is not until
Sept of 1940 that deliveries of the replacement aircraft to the US Navy began.
After 43/44 F2A-2 aircraft are built production changes back to the British 339E.
The US Navy orders 108 F2A-3 in Jan
1941 because Grumman is slow delivering F4Fs,
BUT Brewster does manage to rework eight of the Navies F2A-1s to F2A-2 standard (they did not go to Finland?) in May of 1941. Production of the F2A-3s starts in June with first aircraft accepted in July 1941. Production will run into Dec 1941/Jan
1942 at which point it switches to the Dutch 439 model but none are delivered before the Dutch East Indies fall.
I have no idea which account in more correct (Germans guarded Swedish port? or planes where unloaded and assembled somewhere else?)
I don't really want to play the 'my source is better than your source' game.
however.
Caption (from wiki) says "LT John S. Thach tipped this F2A-1 onto its nose on Saratoga, March 1940. "
The engines used in the F2A-1 and the Finish planes were R-1820G series engines. Which are quite different than G-100s or G-200s (changed from aluminium crankcase to steel crankcase, etc) the last number (as in G5 or G 205) designates things like supercharger gear ratio or some other difference. And this is where it gets more than a little difficult to figure out who got what.
Wright would put the letter "G" in front of the engine designation if the engine was fitted with a reduction gear as in GR-1820G2 and leave if off if the engine was direct drive, R-1820G2 for example. The Military didn't make that distinction in the basic designation but had more model numbers at the end as in R-1820-40, which is actually (I think?) a GR-1820-205A.
For the R-1820 (at least the early ones) it seems the last digit of "2" signifies a 7 : 1 ratio is used in the supercharger drive. the digit "3" signifies an 8.31 : 1 ratio and the digit "5" signifies a two speed supercharger with a low ratio of 7.14 : 1 and a high ratio of 10.0 : 1
again please note that this is for the civil designation, no such simple code exists for the military engines.
