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AIRFIX 1/72 BREWSTER BUFFALO F2A-2 |
Reviewer:
Kevin Ronayne (kevin.ronayne@nuigalway.ie)
Kit Review submitted:
27 June 2003
Above: Early 1980's Boxart for the kit. The upper wings are depicted as being painted in a somewhat garish shade of yellow-orange.
In November 1935, the U.S. Navy issued a specification for a new carrier fighter. The specification was for a monoplane configuration with retractable undercarriage and an enclosed cockpit, which represented a considerable advance over the existing U.S. Navy fighters. Both Brewster and Grumman were awarded contracts to build prototypes. The Grumman design, originally a biplane (the XF4F-1), was converted to a monoplane layout. This was the XF4F-2, which later became the famous Wildcat. The Brewster B-339 was given the designation of XF2A-1, with the prototype first flying in December 1937.
Unlike Grumman, Brewster had very little experience in the aviation industry. For some years, a division of the company had been a subcontractor for other aviation companies. The first true Brewster design was the XBA-1 scout bomber. An order for 30 aircraft was received, but Brewster lacked the proper production capacity. As a result, the aircraft was built by the Naval Aircraft Factory as the SBN-1. The B-339 incorporated many of the design and construction features of the scout aircraft, and was quite an advanced design. However, it did not have folding wings. Initial armament was just two .5-inch machine guns in the upper engine cowling, although two more .5-inch guns could be carried in the wings.
In the international climate of the late 1930's, the B-339 attracted a considerable amount of interest from foreign air forces. By far the biggest customer was the RAF, who ordered over 200 machines. It was the RAF who gave the B-339 the name Buffalo, and this name became widely associated with the type. Deemed unsuitable for combat in Europe, most RAF aircraft were diverted to the Far East, to serve with RAF and Commonwealth units. These included RAAF squadrons 21 and 453, based at Singapore. Desperate attempts were made to improve the performance of the Buffalo, including the removal of drag-inducing or surplus equipment. However, this was to little avail, and the Buffalo units were distinctly outclassed by Japanese fighters. The B-339 units of the Netherlands East Indies were marginally more successful. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps F2A units also fared badly. In service, the Buffalo was plagued not only by poor performance, but by technical problems such as landing gear failure.
The only successful users of the type were the Finns. By April 1940, Finland had received 44 early F2A-1 aircraft which were deemed surplus by the U.S. Navy, which was switching to the later F2A-2 version. The aircraft arrived too late for the 'Winter War', but saw extensive service in the 'Continuation War'. In keeping with the Finn's seeming ability to use any aircraft successfully, Finnish Buffaloes were credited with 477 victories! Despite this record, the Buffalo has to be judged a failure. One only has to consider the record of the Wildcat, it's main rival. Almost 10,000 Wildcats were built, and the aircraft was in large-scale service right up until the end of World War II. In contrast, only a few hundred Buffaloes were built.
This kit was released in 1973, which makes it considerably newer than the Revell Buffalo kit (1964 I think), and probably slightly older than the Matchbox kit. All of these have since been eclipsed by the Hasegawa tooling from the mid-1990's. One of my earliest encounters with the modelling hobby was seeing this kit with the original artwork (showing a British/Australian version) in a shop somewhere in my home city of Cork, circa 1975, when I was but a scruffy young urchin. This was back in the days when kits were sold in most department stores and in newsagents large and small. I started modelling a few years later, and I eventually built this kit in 1983. For some reason, I never built either the Matchbox or Revell kits, even though both were certainly available. This kit is not currently in the Airfix catalogue, but I had one in stock that I'd bought in the mid-1990's. Should it turn up for sale, you shouldn't have to pay much for it - it's only a Series 2 kit. A timely article in a recent issue of the Air Enthusiast journal finally prodded me into building this kit.
1990's Boxart for the kit. This is based on the earlier boxart, but the wing colour has been toned down somewhat. Interestingly, the boxart for the Hasegawa kit depicts the very same subject and features the yellow-orange wing colour seen on the 1980's Airfix boxart. However, another Hasegawa cover shows a picture of a completed model with the same finish as depicted here.
This is a typical example of an early-1970's Airfix kit that has been tarted up with 1990's style packaging, instructions and decals. The kit consists of 42 parts, including 4 transparent parts. The rest of the parts are molded in light grey on a few 'open' sprues - typically Airfix. The surface detailing is also typical in that it consists mainly of raised rivets with some lightly raised panel lines. The mold is generally in very good condition, with very little flash or mold seam.
The instructions are now on a 4-page A4 leaflet which includes in-place painting instructions and 4-way paint/decal view for both subjects. Paint codes are given as Humbrol colours, naturally. The two subjects, for which optional parts are provided, are:
The earlier release of the kit included the same U.S. subject, but the other subject is a different RAF (RAAF?) aircraft, B-RD (WB243). According to the earlier instructions, that aircraft had a lower surface completely painted in 'Duck Egg Blue' - aka 'Sky'! However, this is neither the time nor the place to start on discussion on this most contentious RAF colour issue.
First things first: before putting cement to anything, I had to remove most of the rivets from the wing and fuselage parts. Remove is a bit misleading, as I left the base of each rivet in place, to give the impression of very fine surface detailing. The control surfaces were untouched, as they were designed to represent the fabric-controlled control surfaces of the real aircraft. In cutting down the rivets, I also removed some of the raised panel line detail. Actually, I am not sure if the panelling on the kit is accurate. Then there was the underside glazing. According to the instructions, this was left in place in the RAAF aircraft as well as in the U.S. Navy machine. Judging by the various pictures and plates that I have, there were some camouflaged Buffaloes that still had the glazing. However, I have two plates of RAAF Buffaloes of 453 Squadron (one of which is AN815), and both show this area being faired over. Accordingly, I sanded the part down, completely removing all detail.
This is the old (1970's) boxart that I mentioned earlier. I was finally able to track down a copy of this after searching for a couple of years. Oh, the nostalgia!
Despite the Buffalo being a mid-wing aircraft, the kit is designed with a single piece lower wing - no problems getting the dihedral right. This part includes the fuselage wheel wells, and the location for the underside glazing/fairing. The cockpit floor was attached to this central section - this is very unusual, as there is a huge cutout in the floor ahead of the pilot, presumably so that he could look down through the underside glazing, if it were present. A control stick is not included, and given the unusual design, I have no idea where it would go. I guess I need more references, and I also need another Buffalo kit - i.e., the Hasegawa kit. Any, after attaching the floor and seat, and throwing the pilot into the spares box, I cemented the upper wings in place. This has to be done before attaching the fuselage, and the instructions are quite clear about the sequence.
The next step was to cement the fuselage halves together, and simply position the fuselage unit on top of the wing/ forward underside assembly. The newer instructions fail to mention that the arrestor hook should be omitted from the RAAF version, as should the life raft container (part #13) behind the pilot. I added a basic instrument panel, as the kit did not provide anything. The panel was painted black, but the rest of the interior was painted interior green (Hu 151), as were the wheel wells and wing undercarriage strut wells. Of course, this painting was done is stages as the kit was being assembled, but I hardly need to say that. Nor should I need to say that I had to fill in the holes in the rear of the cockpit where the life raft container would have been located. The kit provides separate windscreen, pilot and rear cockpit canopy sections. The U.S. version had a gunsight protruding through the base of the windscreen, but the RAAF version didn't. The kit includes a gunsight and different windscreens to cover this. The fit of these parts was good, but not perfect. The framing detail, with raised framing detail was quite tricky to paint. Between interior green undercoating and camouflage painting, I painted most of the framing three or four times.
The tailplane units were an excellent fit, in that they set at the correct angle (0 degrees) without any help or coaxing from me. The engine/propeller unit consisted of seven parts - spinner, blade unit, front cowling, left and right cowling, engine block and retaining nut. The instructions suggested attaching the engine block to the back of the front cowling. I did it the other way around, by omitting the retaining nut. I first fitted the engine block into the front fuselage opening, then added the side cowling parts, then the front cowling, and finally the propeller and spinner as an unfixed but secure unit. The spinner was designed to properly mate with the angled cuffs of the propeller blades, something that wasn't the case in another kit that I'd built recently (aka the Heller Tempest). The instructions called for the cowling interior to be painted aluminium, but I used interior green again.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
The kit correctly provides different tail wheels for the two versions. In flight, the tail wheel on the U.S. aircraft would have been semi-recessed, but this is not covered in the kit. If fact, the instructions have somehow lost the details on assembling the main undercarriage in a retracted position. The older instructions say how: omit the support struts (#29 and #32), and use the 'alternate' main support struts/undercarriage doors - #33 and #34 on the starboard side, and #35 and #36 on the port side. I built my kit with lowered undercarriage. I noted two problems, and they would also apply if a 'wheels up' model were being built. The first is that the lower section of the main undercarriage units are extremely delicate, and need to be removed from the sprue with extreme care. I broke one of mine, and eventually had to use a small 'splint' to get it to hold together. The second is that the extensions onto which the wheels are to be positioned are obviously too long. These need to be very carefully cut down by a couple of millimetres each.
The RAAF paint scheme was straightforward - Dark Green (Hu 30)/Earth (Hu 29) camouflage on top, and 'Sky'/black undersides. The specified colour for 'Sky' was the discontinued Hu 95 (concrete). Although I had this colour, I used Hu 90 instead. Hu 90 is the colour usually specified by Airfix and Heller kits, although I think the two Humbrol paints are very similar anyway, if not identical. I painted each main wheel the underside camouflage colour used on its side of the aircraft. The spinner was painted 'Sky', as was the rear fuselage band - no decal was supplied. I didn't mind this, and I think the hand painted band looks far more realistic than a decal ever could have.
The decals were of reasonable quality, but they were not clearly of the same standard as Airfix decals supplied in the last few years. Some of the smaller marking for the U.S. Navy were a bit smudged, but I was always going to be building the RAAF version. The RAAF decals didn't take long to apply, even using a decal-setting solution - an episode of The Simpsons to be exact. As well as varnishing with Humbrol MattCote for a seamless matt finish, I also did some touching up around the edges of the main roundels to cover up some 'silvering'. The underside port wing roundel decal is yellow-edged, but the starboard roundel decal isn't - I assume that this is because of the different underside camouflage colours on each side. I wasn't entirely happy with the positions indicated for the fuselage decals, based on the photographs and plates that I had seen.
For some reason, there are no gun ports on the wings, even though the 'blister' fairings are included. Both subjects should have the wing guns, even though those on the RAAF aircraft may have been changed from .5 inch to .303 inch to save weight. I drilled out a gun port on each leading edge, just outboard of the undercarriage doors, and roughly in line with each blister. The kit is also missing diagonal framing lines on each side of the rear canopy section - it may be that reproducing this item of detail was beyond the Airfix kit designers at the time. There is a small slit at the top rear section of the engine cowling where it (should) meet the fuselage. I think this is accurate, although there are other slits and items of surface detailing that are not included in the kit.
According to the entry on Brewster kits and plans on the Warbird's Forum web site (see below for URL), all the old Buffalo kits suffer from 'serious outline problems'. The exact problems with the Airfix kit are not specified. All I can say is that whatever problems exist, the completed kit certainly looks like a Buffalo. Wingspan appears to be accurate, fuselage length a small bit short. One final item: the RAF Buffalo I standard is roughly equivalent to the U.S. Navy F2A-2/3 standard, so there is no problem offering both subjects in the one kit.
© Kevin Ronayne 2005
Although showing it's age, this is still a very neat little kit, and very easy to build - there are no major fit problems at all. An outdated, but underrated kit from Airfix.
The article which finally made me build this kit was a feature in the May/June 2003 issue of the Air Enthusiast journal, entitled A Rotund New Yorker (Brewster's embattled Buffalo). The title pretty much says it all. I had other printed references, but this was the best printed source. There is only one Web reference that needs to be mentioned, and that is: Warbird's Forum: AVG Flying Tigers, Piper Cubs, Brewster Buffaloes, and other stuff created and maintained by Dan Ford. This excellent site includes an entire section on the Buffalo - Annals Of The Brewster Buffalo, which has numerous articles on the aircraft. One of the best is: The Sorry Saga of the Brewster Buffalo.
© Kevin Ronayne 2007
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