Warbird Information Exchange

Severe criticism of certain WWII aircraft is just as often blamed on poor design/engineering, as it is "build quality." The SB2C Helldivers had an extremely poor assesment in both areas. It should be noted that the gov't subsidized a new factory in Columbus Ohio, just to build the amount of Helldivers, they believed would be expected. So THAT particular factory may have had a lot of "new" and inexperienced factory workers, adding to the problems. The Helldivers coming off the line were so poor, that the Navy considered cancelling the whole project and order, after early testing. There is some mention of those problems in an upcoming feature article on the Helldivers, in the next?) Flight Journal

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hundreds of images of aero art, memorabilia, photos and artifacts at;
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And then there is Brewster.....

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.

Interesting you should mention that. I recently attended a little talk by aviation researcher Dana Bell on early Corsairs. He said that contrary to popular belief, the Navy had no problem with the actual build quality of Brewster F3As. The real reason the Navy cancelled Brewster's Contract was because the company's poor management and organization made their Corsairs much more expensive than Vought or Goodyear machines, as well as taking too long to deliver.

SN

I had always thought that the trouble began with the Buffaloes (Finland not withstanding) and Buccaneers, with the F3A being a gamble that they could build someone else's design by just "following orders"

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.

A little off topic but nobody else I know other than you guys would care; a couple of years ago a guy was selling bucking bars on Ebay that he claimed were originally from the Brewster company. Maybe they were and maybe they weren't, but he had a couple of interesting shaped ones and the prices were pretty good so I picked up two. They needed a good polishing when I got them but I often look at them when I go to use one now and wonder what it helped build.

Dan

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Defending Stearmans on WIX since Jeff started badmouthing them back in 2005.

I don't know, it was well documented that the quality of Corsair's coming out of Brewster was lower than the other production facilities. Units were refusing the aircraft. Poor management is typically a given with poor quality controls.