Brewster Buffalo Series Pt 3: In Finnish Service Part 1 

Anything Winter and Continuation War is cool!

A hundred Soviet I15s and I16s also fought for the Nationalist Chinese forces from early '38 to the summer of '41 with Soviet pilots and maintenance crews using similar energy focused tactics against the maneuverable Japanese fighters. That's separate from the Soviet Air Groups in Manchuria. Finnish Air groups made the most of their F2As and those made several Aces among the Finns. Training, Tactics and ability to think independent of the kind of tight ground control that the Purge decimated Soviet forces were restricted to in that war were, no doubt, responsible for much of their success.

Great series so far but....only folks to call the Brewster F2A a Buffalo was the British. Their version of the export B-339 was officially named Buffalo Mk 1. American's were F2A's, Finns mostly called them "Brewsters" Dutch also used B-339 (and 439).

Finns also fitted domestic Väisälä optic sights in most of the BW:s which helped. In the early years many were fitted with looted russian 12,7mm machine guns to replace the 7,6mm. There is a lot of history on this aircraft, and there is a lot of documentation. :) The ironically funny thing is that perhaps the demilitarization by the US propably made the B-239 so great. :)

We see the beginnings of the dive and zoom tactics used by the Allied air forces for day fighting. Thanks!

Great research, always enjoy your work. Another possible subject could be the Bell P-63 King Cobra. Not much info on it but if it weren't for the P-51 who knows what could have happened with the P-63.

You have a lot of people spouting nonsense here who know nothing about what they are talking about. All discussions about the F2A and the Japanese should be based on the fact that the Japanese aviators not only had several years of combat experience against the Chinese - but - also severely out numbered the Buffaloes. That - and most other air forces had not figured out how to fight the A6M's. Yes. The Brewster's did badly but then so did almost all the other aircraft that went against the early war Japanese - including Spitfires piloted by men with Battle of Britain flight experience. The one exception was the AVG. Here - Chennault had been fighting the Japanese on the part of China for several years and understood how to fight them. Because of the experience they attained in losing to the Japanese and with Chennaults reports on how to fight them - THEN - allied air forces did better - and began whittling way the numbers of those highly experienced aviators Japan started the war with. The Brewster's and the Devastators have both gotten very poor reputations because of Midway but were not as bad as they are made out to be. The Devastators were slaughtered because they mostly had no fighter escorts - and the ones from Torpedo 3 only had like 4 Wildcats as escorts. Here - they fared not much worse than most of the other aircraft that faced the Japanese at Midway. The thing is - that the F4F - was a _better_ aircraft than the Brewster and the Avenger a better torpedo bomber than the Devastator. So - the Americans correctly moved the older aircraft to training units once they had enough of the better aircraft to replace them. They were using them at Midway - because that was what they had. When they got the better planes - they moved on. There were a lot of air forces in the world that were employing less than top of the line aircraft at the beginning of the war. These air forces, like the Americans, moved the less capable aircraft to less demanding duties when they had better aircraft to replace them. There were tremendous strides made in aircraft development from the mid '30's on so that you had a lot of aircraft that had been good aircraft when they came out - but - were superseded in their jobs by better aircraft. The Finns were using these aircraft because - that was what they had. They did as well as they did because they had well trained aircrew, their aircraft were "good enough" to take on what the Russians were using and in opposition to the Russian Air Force - which for the most part, didn't do well against anybody. .

I was really looking forward for this vid! Great work!

Thank you!

I read that Sweden was offered the Mitsubishi Zero but transport over the distance involved and physically taking ownership proved insurmountable. Would it have been too ironic if Swedish volunteers flew Zeroes over Finland alongside the Brewsters!?

Enjoyable and informative. Are you perchance related to Gary Seven....? Live long and prosper!

Awesome video, was making the pictures small an artistic choice?

Christopher Shores Book, "Bloody Shambles" Vol. 1 describes the Buffalo favorably even against the ZERO, not well used by the brits, due to hubris, and sent on fool's errands searching the the Japanese, which lead to accidents. Cheers

The Finns were co-belligerents with Nazi Germany vs the Soviets similar to the Soviets and the Nazis in their joint attack on Poland '39.

I didn't know Jorma from Jefferson Airplane was a Finnish fighter ace. ;) (Oh, Joel Savonen. totally different name).

Hilarious the way everyone suddenly leaps to the defence of the Buffalo as soon as anyone says it was shit. Yeah, the Finns were successful with it. Why wouldn't they be? The Soviet pilots were flying out-of-date Polikarpovs and they weren't as well trained as the Finns. On top of that, the Buffalo had a radio, which the Soviet types didn't.

Finland has to pay full price for plane what anybody didn't want. Thanks for kommunist USA. Roosevelt was biggest kommunist who has ever lived, he give power for Stalin (Stalins banker, no payback). In Winter War Sovjets plane got USA fuel. Sovjets has problems to make enough good standard cerosine. Roosevelt help his camrade Stalin.