Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military From: fiddler@Sun.COM (Steve Hix) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: German claims in WW2 Message-ID: <7391@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 13 Jun 89 03:23:20 GMT References: <7285@cbnews.ATT.COM> Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Lines: 40 Approved: military@att.att.com From: fiddler@Sun.COM (Steve Hix) > From: Amos Shapira > > The German "victories" did count aircraft ON the ground, but also marked > those as such. > [...various top scores in WW2...] > Finland > E. I. Juutilainen 92 > H. H. Wind 78 > E. A. Luukkanen 53.5 > > [mod.note: I understand that at least one Finnish "high ace", perhaps > one of these three, got the bulk of his kills flying an F2A Brewster > Buffalo. Can anyone comfirm ? - Bill ] James Gilbert's "World's Worst Aircraft" has a chapter on the Brewster Buffalo (appropriately). It was *really* an inferior aircraft. It was heavily armored, underpowered, and lightly armed. Some were based at Singapore (for a while you could sell just about any fighter aircraft at all to various European air forces), and the first notice that people there had that a Japanese air raid was on the way was that the last two Buffalos had taken off and were flying in the *opposite* direction. (Eventually only one was left, and it was taken to Japan for testing...) All 154 RAF Buffalos in Malaya in 1941 were destroyed within three months. Everyone else hated them...but the Finns. They got an earlier version, nearly a ton lighter than what the rest got, with a better engine. Also, the Brewster's main...well, one of its main...failing, overheating, was not so much of a problem in Finland. E.A. Luukkanen's book "Fighter over Finland" covers his experience flying the Buffalo against Russian air force opponents. (Fighter over Finland, Macdonald, 1963)