Here are some images of Special Hobby's 1/32 scale F2A-1 Brewster Buffalo in McClelland Barclay's No. 2 Dazzle Paint scheme.
I wanted to do the more fancy McClelland Barcly's No.1 Dazzle Scheme, but it had been done a few times already. So I decided to do the No. 2 scheme. From Wikipedia"
The Brewster F2A Buffalo was an American fighter aircraft which saw service early in World War II. Designed and built by the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation, it was one of the first U.S. monoplanes with an arrestor hook and other modifications for aircraft carriers. The Buffalo won a competition against the Grumman F4F Wildcat in 1939 to become the U.S. Navy's first monoplane fighter aircraft. Although superior to the Grumman F3F biplane it replaced and the early F4Fs,
the Buffalo was largely obsolete when the United States entered the
war, being unstable and overweight, especially when compared to the
Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero.
Several nations, including Finland, Belgium, Britain and the
Netherlands, ordered the Buffalo. The Finns were the most successful
with their Buffalos, flying them in combat against early Soviet fighters
with excellent results. During the Continuation War of 1941–1944, the B-239s (a de-navalized F2A-1) operated by the Finnish Air Force
proved capable of engaging and destroying most types of Soviet fighter
aircraft operating against Finland at that time and achieving in the
first phase of that conflict 32 Soviet aircraft shot down for every
B-239 lost, and producing 36 Buffalo "aces".
In December 1941, Buffalos operated by both British Commonwealth (B-339E) and Dutch (B-339D) air forces in South East Asia suffered severe losses in combat against the Japanese Navy's Mitsubishi A6M Zero and the Japanese Army's Nakajima Ki-43
"Oscar". The British attempted to lighten their Buffalos by removing
ammunition and fuel and installing lighter guns to improve performance,
but it made little difference.
After the first few engagements, the Dutch halved the fuel and
ammunition load in the wing, which allowed their Buffalos (and their Hurricanes) to stay with the Oscars in turns.
The Buffalo was built in three variants for the U.S. Navy: the F2A-1,
F2A-2 and F2A-3. (In foreign service, with lower horsepower engines,
these types were designated B-239, B-339, and B-339-23 respectively.)
The F2A-3 variant saw action with United States Marine Corps (USMC) squadrons at the Battle of Midway. Shown by the experience of Midway to be no match for the Zero, the F2A-3 was derided by USMC pilots as a "flying coffin." However, the F2A-3s performance was substantially inferior to the F2A-2 variant used by the Navy before the outbreak of the war despite detail improvements.
There is currently one extant complete Finnish B-239 (BW-372), a
restored B-239 fuselage mated to wooden wings with a Soviet engine, a
rebuilt variant VL-HUMU, and two static replicas- one in ML-KNIL markings and the other in U.S. Navy markings.
Finnish B-239 (serial no. BW-372) flown by Lt. Lauri Pekuri was damaged by a Soviet Hawker Hurricane and crashed in 1942 on Lake Big Kolejärvi, about 31 mi (50 km) from Segezha, Russia and was rediscovered in 1998.
The aircraft was transported to the National Naval Aviation Museum at NAS Pensacola,
Florida, USA on 18 August 2004. In early 2008 the aircraft was sent to
the Aviation Museum of Central Finland for the 90th anniversary of the
Finnish Air Force.
In addition to BW-372, the hood and fin of FAF BW-393 (credited with
41 kills) survive in a Finnish museum; FAF BW-372 is on display at the
Keski-Suomen Ilmailumuseo (Aviation Museum of Central Finland).
In July 2008, a static full-scale replica B-339C was completed by the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Long Island, New York. The aircraft carries the markings of an ML-KNIL fighter flown by Lt. Gerard Bruggink (two kills). It was built for the Militaire-Luchtvaartmuseum (Military Aviation Museum) at Soesterberg, the Netherlands.
The Cradle of Aviation Museum houses a static full-scale replica/model
F2A-2, carrying the markings of unit "201-S-13" from VS-201, aboard USS Long Island.
In June 2012, divers discovered the partial wreckage of a Buffalo in
shallow water just off Midway Atoll. The aircraft had been ditched
during February 1942, after an aborted landing attempt in bad weather by
1stLt Charles W. Somers, Jr., USMC (later Colonel, USMC Ret). Officials at the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, where the wreckage was found, have not decided whether to recover any of the parts or leave them in place.
2 comments:
That is a great scheme. Not many airforces thought the aircraft was good but the Finns had success with it.
dave
Thanks Dave! I tried to get that scheme as accurate as I could.
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