AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 116 / 329

Plate 116 of 329 · Second World War · Fighter

Brewster Buffalo Mk I

Buffalo Mk I AN185 ‘TD-V’, painted as Brewster 339E Buffalo Mk I AN185 ‘TD-V’ of No. 453 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, at Sembawang, Singapore, in November 1941, usually flown by Sergeant Doug Vanderfield: a stubby single-seat fighter with a barrel-shaped fuselage, a Wright Cyclone nine-cylinder radial in an open-mouthed cowling with a three-blade Hamilton Standard propeller, a long framed greenhouse canopy, a mid-set wing with rounded tips and a rounded fin and rudder, shown tail down on inward-leaning main legs and a fixed tail wheel: Dark Earth and Dark Green upper surfaces and fuselage sides over Sky undersides, a Sky spinner and Sky band round the rear fuselage, a yellow-ringed fuselage roundel between Sky codes ‘V’ and ‘TD’, the serial AN185 in black aft of the band, a red, white and blue fin flash, blue and red roundels above the wings and blue, white and red roundels below, and black propeller blades, as photographed in the squadron line-up at Sembawang (IWM CF 766) (no Buffalo is in a UK museum; shape from a Brewster F2A-1 three-view, which shares the 339’s fuselage, wing and tail, scaled to the Buffalo Mk I’s published dimensions and checked against photographs; the camouflage pattern cannot be read from black-and-white photographs and is approximated, the starboard codes and the wing roundels follow the standard practice of the period, and the sliding hood, open in the photograph, is shown closed).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Brewster 339E Buffalo Mk I AN185 ‘TD-V’ of No. 453 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, at Sembawang, Singapore, in November 1941, usually flown by Sergeant Doug Vanderfield: a stubby single-seat fighter with a barrel-shaped fuselage, a Wright Cyclone nine-cylinder radial in an open-mouthed cowling with a three-blade Hamilton Standard propeller, a long framed greenhouse canopy, a mid-set wing with rounded tips and a rounded fin and rudder, shown tail down on inward-leaning main legs and a fixed tail wheel: Dark Earth and Dark Green upper surfaces and fuselage sides over Sky undersides, a Sky spinner and Sky band round the rear fuselage, a yellow-ringed fuselage roundel between Sky codes ‘V’ and ‘TD’, the serial AN185 in black aft of the band, a red, white and blue fin flash, blue and red roundels above the wings and blue, white and red roundels below, and black propeller blades, as photographed in the squadron line-up at Sembawang (IWM CF 766) (no Buffalo is in a UK museum; shape from a Brewster F2A-1 three-view, which shares the 339’s fuselage, wing and tail, scaled to the Buffalo Mk I’s published dimensions and checked against photographs; the camouflage pattern cannot be read from black-and-white photographs and is approximated, the starboard codes and the wing roundels follow the standard practice of the period, and the sliding hood, open in the photograph, is shown closed). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.2 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (F2A-3 & Buffalo I (B-239 for Finland)); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Buffalo Mk I AN185 ‘TD-V’ modelled here.

History

The Buffalo

The Buffalo was the US Navy’s first monoplane fighter. In 1936 the navy asked for a carrier fighter, and the Brewster company, until then a maker of floats and parts, offered the XF2A-1, a portly mid-wing monoplane with a Wright Cyclone radial, an enclosed cockpit and retractable undercarriage. It first flew in December 1937 and beat Grumman’s biplane entry, and the navy ordered it as the F2A in 1938. Brewster’s small factory in Long Island City struggled to build it, deliveries were slow, and each new version, the F2A-2 and then the heavier, better-armoured F2A-3, gained weight without gaining power.

Export orders followed. Finland bought 44 of the simpler B-239 in December 1939, Belgium ordered the B-339B, the Netherlands East Indies the B-339C and D, and Britain 170 of the B-339E, which the RAF named the Buffalo Mk I. Found too slow and too poorly protected for Europe, the RAF’s Buffaloes went to the Far East, where they equipped Nos 21 and 453 Squadrons RAAF, 243 Squadron RAF and 488 Squadron RNZAF in Malaya and Singapore. When Japan attacked in December 1941 their mostly inexperienced pilots met the Nakajima Ki-43 and the Mitsubishi Zero, which could outclimb and outturn them, and by February 1942 the survivors had been withdrawn or destroyed. At Midway in June 1942 the US Marine Corps lost most of the Buffaloes it sent up, and the type was taken off front-line duty.

In Finland it was a different story. Flying from 1941 against Soviet fighters of earlier designs, and well suited to the cold, the Finnish ‘Brewsters’ were flown by some of the country’s best pilots, who claimed several hundred Soviet aircraft for few losses, and the type stayed in Finnish service until 1948. Brewster built 509 Buffaloes. The only near-complete survivor is a Finnish B-239, BW-372, which was shot down in 1942, lay in a lake in Russian Karelia until it was raised in 1998, and is now displayed at the Aviation Museum of Central Finland near Jyväskylä; none is in a UK museum.

This airframe

Buffalo Mk I AN185 ‘TD-V’

AN185The airframe modelled

AN185 was one of the Buffalo Mk Is shipped to Singapore for the RAF’s Far East squadrons. It served with No. 453 Squadron RAAF, which formed at Bankstown, New South Wales, in May 1941 and took up its Buffaloes at Sembawang, Singapore, and it was usually flown by Sergeant Doug Vanderfield, one of the few pilots to become an ace on the Buffalo. The model shows it as it appears at the front of the squadron’s line-up at Sembawang in late 1941, photographed for an inspection by Air Vice Marshal C. W. H. Pulford, the RAF’s commander in the Far East (IWM CF 766): Dark Earth and Dark Green upper surfaces and fuselage sides over Sky undersides, a Sky spinner and a Sky band round the rear fuselage, a yellow-ringed roundel between the Sky codes ‘V’ and ‘TD’, the serial in black aft of the band, a red, white and blue fin flash and black propeller blades. Its shape comes from a Brewster F2A-1 three-view, which shares the 339’s fuselage, wing and tail, scaled to the Buffalo Mk I’s published dimensions and checked against photographs. The camouflage pattern cannot be read from black-and-white photographs and is approximated; the starboard codes and the wing roundels follow standard practice of the period, and the sliding hood, open in the photograph, is shown closed.

Where to see one

Not on charge

The only near-complete survivor, Finnish BW-372, was raised from a Russian lake in 1998 and is displayed at the Aviation Museum of Central Finland. None is in a UK museum.

All 329 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.