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Corsair???

Isn't this the Brewster "Buffalo"?

As I recall, this was an obsolete POS even before the war broke out and most of them were shot down by the Nips early on.

If memory serves me correctly, though, I think the Dutch bought some of these and did quite well with them.

The Finns also bought many Brewster Buffaloes (Navy designation F2A). They took them, removed the Navy-mandated pilot armor and other heavy items, and actually turned what the Navy thought was a POS into a fairly capable (if still slow and obsolete) little fighter. They took it up against the Red Air Force in the 1939-40 Winter War and the 1941-44 "Continuation War." (There were Finnish aces that scored over 40 kills with the Buffalo!) The Dutch also got some decent service out of them. The Navy versions were slaughtered very early in the war around Java and quickly retired; they were slow, underpowered, and overweight, and quickly dumped in favor of the Grumman F4F Wildcat.

I'd never even heard of an F3A before this, didn't even know that Brewster license-built the Corsair. But it makes sense; Goodyear also license-built versions of the Corsair, which were designated F2G. Lots of manufacturers built each others' aircraft in WWII; Lockheed built many Boeing B-17s, Ford built Consolidated B-24s.

}:-)4

Isn't this the Brewster "Buffalo"?

No, this is the Corsair. The Buffalo was an earlier plane. Chance-Vought was the primary manufacturer for the Corsair, with Brewster and Goodyear providing additional assembly lines to produce them.

Actually, they were famous (or infamous) for the Brewster Buffalo. It is generally agreed that the Buffalo was the worst fighter in WWII. You may be thinking of the Finns who were reasonably successful with the Buffalo against the Russians. Considering they had nothing else, there was not a whole lot to measure it against.

However, the Brewster plant did try to build Corsairs under license since Vought could not produce them fast enough. Unfortunately, neither could Brewster. They built a total of 735 of them before the Navy closed the plant by yanking the contract (this episode is usually described as "closed the badly managed Brewster plant" in most histories). Interestingly, the workforce at Brewster held a strike after the plant was closed down. I don't know exactly what they were striking for, but production did not start up afterward, so I think they lost.

430 of the Brewster Corsairs were given to the British. The remainder were used for training in the US. None were used in combat. That tells me a whole lot about the quality of the workmanship. It also tells me that complaints from the British that we only gave them junk during WWII have some basis in truth.