Engineering a better / worse airplane

Early on America had terrible fighter aircraft such as the Brewster Buffalo which stood no chance against the Zero. Another aircraft was the P-26 Peashooter. This aircraft saw little combat in early WWII in the Philippines simply because America could not afford to send bigger and better planes to the Philipines before the war. The P-26 was a terrible aircraft seeing much of its combat with Chinese airman in the Sino-Japanese war.

 

That Boeing fighter was definely an "obsolete", not just outdated fighter by the beginning of the war. But the Brewster isn't really as "bad" as some people remember, it was rather bad, but not a total wash.

The Brewster B-239 in Finnish service was credited with 496 aircraft destroyed for the loss of 19 Brewsters - a kill ratio of over 26-to-1. The Finns of course received the much lighter, closer to the original design than the USMC/USN did. When it (Brewster) was being flown in comparo tests no less a "pilot" than Greg Boyington (this is from memory, and paraphrased), said; "The Brewster is a sports car, the Grumann (Wildcat) is a truck."

The later, heavier production F2A-3 had a mediocre record in allied service, but did not perform as poorly for others that it appeared to in US records.

Brewster Buffalo

........victories...........losses

Finns......496................19 (flying the B-239)
Dutch..... 55................30
Brits....... 80............…..70
Americans..1............…..13 (flying the F2A-3)*
----------------------------------------------------------
Total....…632..............132

Finnish aces : (B-239)
Hans Wind 39 victories out of 75 where in the Brewster
Illu Juutilainen 34 out of 94 where in the Brewster.

* The official Naval Aviation Combat Statistics World War Two lists the F2A as destroying 10 enemy aircraft for the loss of 14 in USN/USMC service.

It was the loading up on pilot armor, self-sealing fuel tanks and such which produced such a "loser" in the Buffalo. At the time of its design and first production it was fast, and reliable. It would appear to me that the weak landing gear was its biggest problem for carrier service, with the specified "extra weight", the struts and stuff just couldn't take the load.

Just my memory of an article in the "Smithsonian Air & Space Magazine" called the "Sorry Saga of the Buffalo" (or something).

Some of this was from a fellow poster on the THC board, username "robert", some is from my own files, and some is (I think) from a fellow rogue here, "mcoffee" who also posted/posts on the THC board. I don’t recall whom I "stole" it all from , but my thanks to them.

 

Great analysis. Yes it had a tremendous flight record with the Finns. I was referring to the heavier version issued to the Marine Corps in the Pacific.

 

All too true.

Another factor in the sorry performance of the Brewster Buffalo in combat against the Japanese, was pilot training, or rather lack thereof. in "Buffaloes Over Singapore", Brian Cull relates that some Buffalo pilots were thrown into combat with Japanese fighters without ever having gone through basic air combat training, others didn't know how to operate the landing gear or even fire the guns. Maintenance was also woefully inadequate and often the .50 caliber Browning MG's, because the armorers had no maintenance manuals, would jam as soon as they were fired. Finally, the British air staff and commanders at Singapore were, for the most part, incompetent. There was no effective air attack warning system, so when the Buffalo's went aloft to counter Japanese air raids, they were almost always at a lower altitude. Of course, after the defeat, the British blamed the planes and pilots.

The morale of the RAF and the RAAF pilots was naturally poor, but some of them liked the Buffalo, if only because it was possible to survive being shot down in the plane. One British pilot is quoted as saying he definitely preferred the Buffalo to the Hurricane, and believed it was the better fighter.

 

Great information guys. I learned some things I might have never known. Thanks especially to T.A. Garner for the thread idea and the post on "critical aircraft characteristics". Good list. In everything I've read management of energy, transition and visibility are almost always mentioned.
To Tony Williams for the excellent information on gun synchronization.
To brndirt1 for the excellent info on the Buffalo.

 

I am sure that the unpredictibility of the war in the philippines also contributed to the buffaloes performance. Plus Japanese pilots had already experienced combat in China.

 

Not sure what you are getting at?

As far as I know, there were no Buffaloes deployed to the Philippines in 1941. They were in Singapore because the British had diverted a shipment contracted for by the British purchasing commission, to Singapore. The USAAF did not purchase any Buffaloes. The USN had some and used them as carrier-based aircraft. They proved unsuitable for use aboard carriers, primarily because of the weak landing gear. These were later given to the Marines, when the F4F became available. That's why they were at Midway in June, 1942.

 

There were no Buffaloes in the PI. The USAAF did not use the type. The two primary USAAF fighters in the PI were the P 35 and P 40.

Also of note is that only a bit more than half the Buffaloes in Malaysia were acutally in use by the Commonwealth due to a severe pilot shortage. While the type's performance was sub par, having nearly double the number in service would have certainly helped the Commonwealth.

 

As you mentioned by the time the Philippines were attacked, MacArthur also still had P-26s and P-35s in service. in November 1940, a full year after the start of World War II, the US Army's entire fighter strength in the Philippines consisted of 28 Boeing "Peashooter" P-26s, which while "innovative" for their time were inferior to even the Soviet I-16.

These "Peashooters" were supplemented by the P-35s in 1941, but a major problem with that "new" plane became apparent in combat. When the aircraft came under fire, it (like the Zero), had no armor protection for the pilot, and no self sealing tanks. Thus in much the same way the P-35 "Guardsman" aircraft stood little chance against enemy fighters especially the nimble A6M. By December 12th ,1941 of the forty P-35s sent to the Philippines, only eight remained air worthy.

The P-40s, in service in the Philippines, even though better than the p-26 and 35s, were NOT flown in the Claire Chennault (AVG) manner of attack, and a great many of them were also lost to the nimble Japanese fighters.

The first "ace" of the new USAAF happened on 16th, December 1941 when 1st Lieutenant Boyd D. Wagner of the 17th Pursuit Squadron (Interceptor), 24th Pursuit Group, lead a dive-bombing raid on the airfield at Vigan and shoots down his fifth aircraft, thereby becoming the first Army Air Forces "Ace" in World War II."

From: 5th AAF, December 1941.

The "Peashooters" I believe had been relegated to "secondary" status before the Japanese invaded the Philippines.

 

The biggest problem in the PI for the USAAF was indeed doctrine. Although there were three SCR 270 radar sets there no secure reliable communications system was set up to use them. Sutherland (and MacAuthur as his boss) also failed to put a reliable system of visual ground spotters and other early warning methods into service.
There was no overall system like the British were using even though this system was known to the US well before the war in the Pacific started.

If there had been such a system in place and the USAAF had used tactics similar to those the RAF used in the BoB (ie, two waves of attacking aircraft; the P-40's first to take on the escort and then P-35's to take on the bombers) using slashing dive and zoom tactics it would have helped some. Why some? Because the USAAF pilots would still be at a severe disadvantage having to fly at 20 to 25,000 feet where the Japanese raids were coming in at. That is about 5 to 10,000 above the useful service ceiling of either type due to their lack of proper turbo or supercharging.

By December 1941 the P-26's had all been transfered to the fledgling Philippines Air Force for training use and were no longer in service with the USAAF. In that capacity they still managed a couple of kills as I recall....

 

Unless I'm mistaken, weren't there a couple P-26's involved in the defense against the Pearl Harbor Attack? And didn't they get at least one kill?

Yes, a Filipino pilot flying a P-26, even managed to shot down an A6M2 over the Philippines. The P-26 first flew in 1932, and was, in reality, the transitional aircraft (in the US inventory) between the very nimble WW I era bi-planes, and modern, high powered monoplanes. The P-26 remained in service until about 1956, I believe, with the Guatemalan Air Force. Most pilots who flew them seem to have liked them.

 

I mean if it was used during the First World War it would have been a great innovation. But it stood no chance against the A6M2's.

 

The P-26's in the Philippines had all been turned over to the Philippine Army Air Corps by the time of Pearl Harbor. Two of the P-26's flown by Philippine pilots managed to scored victories over Japanese aircraft: Capt. Jesus Villamor claimed a G3M2 "Nell" on 12 December, and Lt. Jose Kare bagged an A6M2 on 23 December.

Since Clint brought up the "Sorry Saga of the Brewster Buffalo", here is a link to the article at the author's website.
The Sorry Saga of the Brewster Buffalo

Also, a link to Pappy Boyington's thought on the Buffalo (beware the expletives).
Pappy Boyington and the Buffalo

 

One great aircraft in the beginning of WWII was the P-40. It performed quite well with the Flying Tigers in the earlier chapter of the war. The Tigers lost 14 pilots and shot down 294 Japanese aircraft.

 

Recent scholarship has thrown these claims into question. But without a doubt, a good, well trained pilot in a P-40, could hold his own against the A6M and other Japanese fighters. The P-40 stayed in production until quite late in the war and was a very useful plane, although approaching obsolescence by 1942.

 

Very true. Here's an account to add to that.
George Welch - Biography of Pearl Harbor Hero

 

You betcha D.A., the P-40 was an extensively built and used US fighter design in all its variants, with almost 14,000 units being delivered before production ended in 1944.

The last production Warhawk was a P-40N-40-CU which left the assembly line on November 30, 1944, being the 13,739th P-40 built.

See:

Curtiss P-40N Warhawk

They must have served a purpose, "outdated" by 1944 or not. I believe it was only the shortage of the Packard built R/R Merilin engines that kept it from being "upengined" with that lovely engine. Now that might have changed everything for the Curtiss design as it did for the North American airframe. Probably not to the same extent, but without doubt an improvement at altitude.

 

Still a great aircraft nonetheless.

 

While I agree it wasn't a bad plane, I've always been puzzled why they continued to produce so many, when there were better aircraft available ?

 

There are two major reasons:

1. It used the Allison engine. By mid war virtually nothing else in the US inventory was still running on that plant (the P-38 is the other exception). Therefore it was using available capacity in engine production.

2. Curtiss was tooled up for it and retooling their facilities for other aircraft would have taken alot of time and disrupted deliveries. Better a marginal aircraft than no aircraft at all.