#1 ...Brewster was the proverbial one-hit wonder, and that's being generous with the term. The F2A (aka Buffalo)was a screamer in prototype form and the USN's first monoplane fighter, but when little details like radio, armor, etc. were added, it turned into a slug. One commander of a unit equipped with Buffalos stated in an official report that any pilot assigned to one should be considered lost as soon as he left the ground. OTOH, the Finns(!) got some amazing results out of theirs and managed to build a wooden-winged homegrown version that had impressive performance but never got into service.
Brewster also built a variant of the Vought F4U Corsair called the F3A Battler...which was so bad that the USN redlined it from the most basic combat maneuvers (wings kept falling off)and only used it as a limited trainer, and the ones delivered to the Royal Navy apparently went straight to storage and may never have been flown in ANY capacity. It was also notable for a horrifying run of foreign object problems during construction, bad enough that in desperation the Brewster management built a jig that flipped each completed F3A upside down to pop out any potential FOD.
Their last plane was the XA-32 (possibly to have been nicknamed Bear) a single engine attack ship that - had it met its most basic specs - might have been nice to have around had it gotten into service in time. It too was a complete and utter flop, and in 1944 - with the US still needing every single aircraft it could turn out - Brewster ceased aircraft production. They held on until '46 until being quietly dissolved.
Mike |