Brewster-built Corsairs

[phylo_roadking]

During the war, Brewster built F4U Corsairs under licence; did these Brewster-built aircraft display the same degree of mechanical unreliability as the Buffalo did earlier?

[Liam]

Apparently, the troublesome Brewster factory was taken over by the US Navy in 1942 - prior to Corsair F3A-1 production starting, but it seems the problems didn't end there as the contract was cancelled in 1944 - after less than one year of production and in the middle of the war!

Whether the aircraft produced by Brewster were any less reliable than those produced by Vought or Goodyear, I'm afraid I don't know. They only made about 700+ aircraft and if they were making them under the supervision of Naval management itself, one might assume they would be of the required quality.

It would appear that the majority of the aircraft (about 400+) went to the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm as Corsair IIIs. From all the accounts I've read, the FAA were very happy with their Corsairs but after flying the rubbish that they were equipped with beforehand that's no surprise!

A complex aircraft to manufacture whatever your factory's abilities I would think, but does someone have more information about the Brewster Corsair?

[phylo_roadking]

Have found out since posting this, that all the Brewster-built Corsair III-equiped squadrons in FAA service were relegated to training status. Strange, that.....!

[Liam]

Looks like you're right - can't find any mention of operational MKIIIs. Oh dearie me...looks like Brewster deserved all the bad things said about them.

[phylo_roadking]

I had to laugh recently. I came across a LONG thread on AHF from a couple of Finnish posters defending the Bewster Buffalo from criticism. Which to be fair - in FINNISH service it did prove itself...just NOWHERE else. And I learned something about it that I hadn't known before - although I knew thew Finns loved theirs...

The Finnish Air War favoured the Buffalo greatly - at medium and high altitude, the pilot had to hand-pump fuel! There was no mechanical fuel pump. But at low altitudes the system did scavenge well enough on a syphon basis...and like the Eastern front air war generally, most combats were under 3000 metres. They had a LOT of kills - but when you read carefully they're against bombers and observation aircraft, or recent arrivals in-theatre. Also, after the first winter's operations, the Buffaloes' airframes were nearly worn out...so the Finns made almost wholly NEW aircraft out of engine spares cobbled into full engines, rebuilt fuselages, and COMPLETE locally-made wings! leaving out radios, half the armament etc, also helped to drastically reduce weight...

BUT the one thing I didn't know before was how they had resolved the absolutely CHRONIC oil pressure problems of the Buffalo, that grounded SO many in RAF service - dozens were out of service when they were most needed....at Singapore in late 1941 and early 1942, the Middle East, and particularly Crete in May 1941. Brewster never sorted the problem, and the USAAF and USN had the same marginal oiling and heavy wear issues...

The throwaway comment I hadn't expected to find, hardly given another thought by the poster was....the Finns turned one of the oil control rings on every piston in each engine the other way up! Meaning the engines ran intentionally oily and over-lubed compared to what the manufacturer ever intended. Now THAT is bodging that I can admire...

[phylo_roadking]

Doing a bit more searching I came across THIS.....

When Brewster, which had produced some of the least successful military aircraft, including the Buffalo and Bermuda, began rolling out F3As, they became the subject of a government investigation owing to their many production defects. One USMC pilot remembers trying to avoid flying the Brewsterbuilt Corsairs because it was rumored in the squadron that the planes were prone to shedding their wings. The government solved the problem by terminating Brewster production and assigning most of the already built F3As to training squadrons or shipping them to the British as part of Lend-Lease

and THIS

Brewster built relativly few F4Us mainly due to poor management and poorer
labor/management relations. USN pilots did not care for the Brewster built
birds as some had been delivered with apparent sabotage and mosst had very low
quality of construction.

....but best of all THIS

On Aug.23, 1943, despite having taken a wartime 'no-strike pledge' United Auto Workers Local 365 struck the plant for four days, at a cost of 240,000 man-hours, the time it would have taken to build 20 planes.

Worse, the Johnsville action seemed trivial: Guards had not been allowed to choose their posts - front gate or bathrooms - by seniority. Even a pro-Brewster newspaper dubbed it "the most disgusting strike in the history of this country."

The union local's flamboyant president, Thomas V. DeLorenzo, fanned the fire. "If I had brothers at the front line who needed the 10 or 12 planes that were sacrificed [in the strike], I'd let them die, if necessary, to preserve our way of life or rights or whatever you want to call it," he told a Washington Post reporter.

To readers - including many in Congress - the Brewster plant was a portrait of trade-unionism gone insane.

For three months in 1943, the House held hearings, and what lawmakers learned about the factory astounded them:

-Apparent sabotage by workers led to Buccaneers that would lose rudder control, or with engines that could not be turned off.

-Workers spent hours loafing in the factory known as the "Bucks County Playhouse" and some allegedly had sex in the planes. Rival shifts hid parts from each other.

-(?) $50,000 worth of tools and materials were stolen.

But the chaos was not limited to the workforce. Strange tales of inept management abounded.

When supervisors discovered tools left in finished planes, for instance, they ordered disbelieving engineers to build a giant device to flip planes and shake out loose bolts and tools.

Before the hearings even ended, the Navy canned the Buccaneer, hauling more than 300 of them out of the plant as scrap.

By then, the Buccaneer already was a joke among U.S. pilots. Though some of the bombers were in Navy combat units, not one saw battle. Most were used for training; others were launched into the sea to test catapults on aircraft carriers.

Production at Johnsville switched to the Corsair fighter, designed by Vaught. But by early 1944, the Navy canceled that contract, too, and closed the plant.

Ooer!

[Carl Schwamberger]

Farrago in his book 'Game of the Foxes' has a chapter on the Brewster aircraft company. Specificly he identified a engineer and a plant manager as in German pay. He claims both were arrested & indicted under various Federal laws.

Farrago drew extensively from German records, including Abwehr documents possesed by the US postwar, and claims to have found confirmation of the USN/FBI investigation and charges in the Abwehr records. I'm curious if any others here can idependatly confirm or refute Farragos claims?

[phylo_roadking]

Carl, that's more than interesting...and shows the advantages of sneaking up on a subject at a tangent!

[Carl Schwamberger]

Were there time I'd dig out the details & specific citations. Perhaps later.

If anyone goes looking for this book (Game of the Foxes) I'd recomend finding a early hardback edition. The paperback volumes seem to have had the bibliography & footntes excluded.

[phylo_roadking]

So many don't nowadays!!! Went to see if Kahn said anything....no index!!!

[Carl Schwamberger]

Guess leaving those pages out saves trees. I try to find the older complete editions in the used book stores.