Buffaloed …

In 1935, the U.S. Navy issued a requirement for a new carrier-based Navy fighter aircraft and considered three designs: the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation XFA2 monoplane, the Grumman XF4F-1 biplane and (briefly) a naval version of the Seversky P-35.

It was clear that the monoplane was the wave of the future, and the stubby Brewster monoplane looked the part of an advanced fighter. It was all metal, had hydraulically retractable main landing gear, split flaps, a streamlined framed canopy that gave it excellent visibility, and its 950 horsepower engine gave it performance far superior to the Grumman biplane. It also handled beautifully.

Still, the Brewster was not perfect. The 950 horsepower Wright Cyclone engine had a one-stage supercharger, and the takeoff horsepower fell to 750 horsepower at 15,000 feet. It only carried 160 gallons of fuel, all in the fuselage, and it lacked armor and self sealing fuel tanks.

The Navy wanted these guns, armor and self sealing fuel tanks, and the added weight reduced the performance. Meanwhile, Grumman reworked the F4F-1 biplane and turned it into the F4F-2 monoplane, with a Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp engine that had a two-stage supercharger for good high altitude performance.

This was much more competitive with the Brewster, but the lighter F2A was more maneuverable and the Brewster’s simple Cyclone seemed safer than the Grumman’s complicated Twin Wasp. In June 1938, Brewster got a contract for 54 F2As. But once production began, Brewster demonstrated a raft of troubles that were invisible when the Navy tested the prototypes. The Brewster factory was an old four story automobile plant in urban Queens, N.Y., across the East River from Manhattan. Parts were manufactured on different stories, brought together by freight elevator, assembled to check fit, then taken apart and trucked out to Long Island’s Roosevelt Field to be reassembled for flight-testing.

The result was that production quickly fell behind schedule. The company only delivered one F2A in May 1939, another in July and a third in October. The rate slowly increased but by the end of 1939 the Navy still had only 11 Brewsters, not enough to equip its first monoplane fighter squadron, carrier Saratoga’s VF-3.

Meanwhile, in carrier service, a fatal design flaw had emerged. When the Brewster slammed down on the deck on a carrier landing, the main wheel strut sometimes bent, causing a part to be forced out of alignment and preventing the gear from retracting on the next takeoff. Filing off a bit of metal solved that problem, but ultimately weakened the gear. Soon the landing gear began to collapse, and the problem was exacerbated as more equipment and armament were added and the aircraft became heavier.

Meanwhile, Grumman had continued to improve its F4F and the latest model, the up-engined F4F-3, was a fine fighter. Given the Brewster’s problems, the Navy hedged its bets by ordering 54 of the new Wildcats in August 1939.

The production delays continued and, to the dismay of the Navy, two of Brewster’s top executives were sent to prison for arms deals to Bolivia.

The Navy installed a Naval Academy graduate as president, but by late 1940 it was apparent the F2A was obsolete. Its airframe could not take a more powerful engine, though the F4F-3 performed well and displayed sturdy landing gear. Additionally, Grumman also had a more powerful replacement on the drawing board, the superb F6F “Hellcat.”

The Navy decided to eliminate the Brewster altogether. Some were transferred to land-based U.S. Marine Corps squadrons while others went to Finland as the B-239E (export) where they performed well. Several hundred were sold to fighter hungry countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands East Indies that needed fighters immediately. The Royal Air Force’s Brewster B-339Es, which the British named the “Buffalo,” had smaller engines than the standard models and were substantially heavier due to RAF requirements. This resulted in limited maneuverability (it could not do a loop), so in mid-1941 the RAF sent them to where they would be least likely to see combat – the Pacific. There they equipped Royal Australian Air Force, RAF and Royal New Zealand Air Force fighter squadrons. By December 1941, there were approximately 150 Buffalos in Burma, Malaya and Singapore and 71 more had arrived in the Dutch East Indies where they formed the bulk of the Netherlands East Indies air defense force.

When the Japanese attacked after Pearl Harbor, the Buffaloes took to the air against some of the finest fighters and fighter pilots in the world. The more modern Japanese fighters took a heavy toll – more than 60 Commonwealth Buffaloes were shot down in combat and 40 destroyed on the ground, with more than 40 pilots killed. Thirty Dutch Buffaloes were shot down; 15 were destroyed on the ground and 17 Dutch pilots were killed.

Virtually the only Brewsters in service with the U.S. Navy were with Marine fighter squadron VMF-221 on a little known atoll called Midway. On June 4, 1942, when the Japanese attacked Midway, the atoll still had 20 in service. They rose to meet the Japanese attack, but 14 were shot down at the loss of four Japanese attackers.  Thus ended the career of an aircraft that has the unenviable distinction of being consistently listed as “one of the world’s worst fighters.”

(Dr. Michel is currently deployed downrange.)