Brewster-built Corsairs

[phylo_roadking]

During WWII, Brewster built F4U Corsairs. Were these Corsirs by any chance marked by the same...mechanical unreliability as the Brewster Buffalo had been earlier?

[Sewer King]

I suspect not, and that they were as reliable as those of the other manufacturers. The Brewster-built F4U-1 models were designated F3A-1, 430 of which went to the Royal Navy as Corsair IIIs. If they had had problems their British pilots would have made them known, as they certainly had with the Buffalo. Have you heard of any such things reported?

Brewster's problem was that of production output, low and late compared to those of Goodyear and Chance-Vought. Enzo Angelucci and Peter Bowers state in their book The American Fighter (Orion Books, 1985; pages 437 and 444) that Brewster built only 735 F3As in all, for one year, from July 1943 to July 1944. Afterwards the US Navy cancelled orders for 700 more because the firm had not meet its contractual delivery dates.

I understand the physical layout of its New York City plant was partly to blame, as a hindrance to large-scale production, whether with the Buffalo or the Corsair. At any rate, the Brewster Aeronautical Company went out of business for good after its F3A production ended. It might have been depending on further Corsair orders at the time, though the end of the war would probably have closed it down just the same.

Angelucci and Bowers called it "a sad reflection when one remembers that Brewster supplied the Navy with its first modern fighter." Brewster and its stigma with the F2A Buffalo sound distantly like that for Curtiss and its P-40, before it too was eclipsed by superior wartime makes of other firms (and those of the enemy of course). Despite many attempted improvements, when the P-40 line finally went out of production in 1944 it was the end of fighter production for Curtiss, which had built the leading ones for the Army for so many years.

-- Alan

[phylo_roadking]

Strangely enough, since posting this I've come across a comment that the FAA squadrons equiped with Corsair IIIs were restricted to training duties....hmm...

[maxs75]

The F3A had manufacturing problems, and this is one of the reason the prductions was cut. The USN ones were used only for training stateside, and AFAIk also the FAA ones weren't used on operational carriers. Only the Vought and Goddyear were used in combat.

Max

[phylo_roadking]

Hmmmm - BOTH nations' Brewster-built corsairs weren't used in combat? I smell an issue with them....

[Sewer King]

But what were these manufacturing problems? Were they actual mechanical unreliabilities, or those of an inefficient production run? What I seem to remember was that Brewster's New York plant had limitations on space or other things, such that required the use of elevators rather than the horizontal production lines of their more modern competitors. A comparatively smaller and older aero firm like Brewster may have done well enough this way in peacetime, and the spike of orders early in the war may have given it enough of a place at first. But rising production demands from 1943 onwards were bound to leave it at a disadvantage, at least in output.

I can't be sure where I had seen the above mentioned -- possibly in Ray Wagner's book American Combat Planes, or Squadron/Signal's volume on the F2A Buffalo.

Although it is certainly possible, I wouldn't be too quick to suspect the Brewster-built Corsairs of unreliability unless something definite is found on record for it. The powerful Corsair was a fairly demanding plane to fly, and it could be debated how well (or safely) successions of its novice pilots could train in less-than-reliable ones.

At that, it could depend on just what the problem was with these license-built Corsairs. If there had been, it seems that it would be known by now. Also, wouldn't a plane built or assembled under license have to submit to various quality controls of jigs, tooling, and inspection by the parent manufacturer Chance-Vought? Brewster also worked on assembly for Catalina PBYs, but I haven't heard of problems with those planes as a result.

[Michael Emrys]

It also may have been the result of acquisition protocols. That is, since Brewster's production run was so small, it was bureaucratically simpler just to assign all of them to training commands. If we assume that the ones provided to the UK were Lend-Lease, then the same policy would have carried over. IIRC, a lot of L-L matériel got handled this way.

Michael

[phylo_roadking]

Aha!

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

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... i_n8846892

...well, I suppose the wings dropping off DOES constitute a "defect"....!

Getting closer.

[phylo_roadking]

ooooh! found this on a Google group..rec.aviation.military

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.

[phylo_roadking]

Looks like things were VERY rotten in the state of Brewster, right across the board...

http://www.warbirdforum.com/inquirer.htm

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.

...I think I'D be worried in one too.....

[IrregularMedic]

Hmmmm - BOTH nations' Brewster-built corsairs weren't used in combat? I smell an issue with them....

IIRC the USN segregrated out their Brewster Corsairs so as to not have problems with any differences in spare parts.


IIRC eventually the government directly took over control of the factory due to all the problems.

I'm well aware of the Buffalos bad reputation in combat in the Pacific, but I don't remember anything about "mechanical unreliabilty". Can someone enlighten me or point me in the right direction?

[phylo_roadking]

http://www.warbirdforum.com/buff.htm

Page down, pick a link and start reading! Its a nice compendium in one place.

I've also come across the fact that some major alloy castings on the Corsair were different between the three factories. This, plus actual events, could account for the wingspar-failing legend.