Tag Archives: finn Buffalo

Odd Buffalo

Brewster F2A-1 fighter of Fighting Squadron Three (VF-3) At Naval Air Station, North Island, California, 9 September 1940.

The plane is painted in McClelland Barclay experimental camouflage design Number 2. Note gun-camera mounted on the starboard side of the fuselage, forward. Grumman F2F-1 fighters of Fighting Squadron Two (VF-2) are in the background.

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command. Photograph. Catalog #: NH 96146

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command. Photograph. Catalog #: NH 96146

Design number 1 is in the below, NH 96143

Of course the U.S. Navy and Marines had legit issue with the Brewster F2A Buffalo, dubbing it “the flying coffin” when flying against highly trained Japanese pilots with arguably better aircraft but the Finns, who used 44 Model B-239 (export) F2As nicknamed Pylly-Valtteri (“Butt-Walter”) and Lentävä kaljapullo (“flying beer-bottle”) among others, made mincemeat out of Red Air Force planes for a time.

Such mean things about the humble Buffalo

With concerns voiced this month in an April 14 Government Accountability Office report that the F-35’s Autonomic Logistics Information System, which Department of Defense officials have described as the “brains” of the fifth-generation fighter, that a failure “could take the entire fleet offline,” in part, due to the lack of a backup system, and “if required funding levels are not reached, the program’s procurement plan may not be affordable…” problems continue to mount for the ole F-35 which make off-the-shelf competitors such as Gripen, Typhoon and even the domestic F/A-18E/F look good in comparison.

Which brought the below editorial cartoon from SOFREP.com

f35 brewster buffalo

Which I think is just mean.

Of course the U.S. Navy and Marines had legit issue with the Brewster F2A Buffalo, dubbing it “the flying coffin” when flying against highly trained Japanese pilots with argueably better aircraft but the Finns, who used 44 Model B-239 (export) F2As nicknamed Pylly-Valtteri (“Butt-Walter”) and Lentävä kaljapullo (“flying beer-bottle”) among others, made mincemeat out of Red Air Force planes for a time.

Buffaloes of Lentolaivue 24 (Fighter Squadron 24) claimed a staggering 477 Soviet Air Force warplanes destroyed, with the combat loss of just 19 Buffaloes, an impressive kill/loss ratio of 26:1, while the top scoring Finnish ace, Ilmari Juutilainen, scored 34 of his 94½ kills in B-239s.

Finnish Brewster-239 BW-354 over Lake Tikshozero 1942

Finnish Brewster-239 BW-354 over Lake Tikshozero 1942

So maybe we just need  to export the F-35 to Finland and call it a day?