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Brewster SB2A-4 Buccaneer "US Marines Dive Bomber" (SH72303) 1:72 Special Hobby In 1939 Brewster was selected by the US Navy to develop a larger scout/bomber aircraft based on their Brewster SBN aircraft. The new aircraft shared the design platform but had a much higher rated engine. The aircraft was a conventional single-engined, mid-winged monoplane layout with two fixed forward firing 50 cal guns in the fuselage, and two 30 cal guns in each of the wings. The aircraft was supposed to have a rear enclosed turret although this was replaced by a flexible twin 30 cal mount. 1000lbs of bombs were to be carried in an internal bomb bay. As well as orders for the USN the French, Dutch, Australians and UK Governments placed orders for the aircraft. The French order was taken over by the UK following the fall of France, however the UK asked Brewster for many modifications which lead to production being delayed. These delays they caused the Australian Government to cancel their orders. Problems at Brewster with the company being badly run led the US Navy to take over the company but deliveries were still quite slow. The type actually proved unacceptable for combat and most of the aircraft were destroyed before being flown operationally. Aircraft which did make it to units became trainers, hacks or target tugs. The aircraft which were ordered by Holland were taken over by the USMC, re-designated SB2A-4 and used to form the first night fighter squadron VMF(N)-531. The Buccaneer has been described as "overweight, underpowered, and lacking maneuverability,", "one of the worst aircraft of World War II", a failure,, and by the Truman Committee as having "turned in a miserable performance." The Kit The kit was a new tool from 2009 and has been released in a couple of boxings since. There are 3 sprues of plastic parts, a clear sprue, a sheet of PE and a bag of resin parts. Construction starts with the cockpit and rear enclosures. The cockpit is first up with the seat going in, at the front a bulkhead and the rudder pedals with the control column behind. Seatbelts are PE; all this followed by the rear bulkhead. The radio compartment and rear gunners enclosure is up next. There are resin parts for the radios and gun sights. The seat goes in again with PE seatbelts. Next up various small parts must be fitted to both fuselage halves. Once this is done, the instrument panel, cockpit, radio compartment, rear gunners enclosure; and the shelf between the front and back cockpits are all fitted into the fuselage along with the engine firewall at the front; the fuselage can then be closed up. Now we can concentrate on the wings. on both sides the wells must be boxed in, and at the rear the support rail for the dive brakes are added. The main landing gear for each side is also built up now. The wings are added along with the tailplanes, than the landing gears and its doors can go on, followed by the underside dive brakes, last on underneath is the tail wheel. Moving back up top on the wings the upper dive brakes are fitted. Moving to the front of the aircraft the engine is built up from a central core, and individual cylinders. In the rear cockpit the defensive guns are added in. If the modeller want the canopy to be posed open then it will have to be cut up, the rear sliding section seems to be of a greater dimension so it should fit over the centre section. Once the engine goes on this is followed by the cowl, the prop and the hub. Markings The decals are printed in house and look to have no issues with them. There are marking for 4 aircraft; VS-30 Operational Training Unit, NAS Vero Beach, Florida 1943 (Faded wing markings) VMF (N)-532 , Cherry Point, 1943 VS-34 Operational Training Unit, NAS Vero Beach, Florida 1944 Fictional Dutch East Indies Scheme Conclusion A nice tool of a historically interesting aircraft.. The kit is detailed inside and out. Recommended. Review sample courtesy of

Special Hobby (Sword plastic) 1/72nd Brewster model 339-23 Buffalo "In RAAF and USAAF colors" boxing - ref. SH72128 - is ready Source: http://www.specialhobby.net/2017/05/privezeme-s-sebou-model-339-23-buffalo.html V.P.

This is one of my earlier builds finished as early as 1999. The level of painting and weathering leaves something to be desired being obviously below that of my more recent models presented here and the colours might be somewhat controversial in the light of new information, which became available since then. Nevertheless, as it seems not to be really a lot of NL-KNIL B-339 builds around and I was pretty busy doing all that extra detail, I still dare to present it to your attention: Brewster Model 339C B-3110, 2-VLG-V, ML-KNIL, Singapore, January 1942, flown by Kapt. J.P. Van Helsdingen Kit: 1/72 Hasegawa F2A-2 Buffalo "U.S. Navy" Afermarket sets : Eduard #72-233 photo-etched detail set Hobby Plus navigation lights, wire Decals: Aeromaster # 72- 146 "Buffalo Collection Part II" Modifications to convert F2A-2 to a Dutch B-339C: the tail fuselage cone with arresting hook was replaced with the longer and more pointed one (without a hook ) featured on land-based a/c; a fixed tailwheel mounting with a larger wheel was installed instead of the retractable one with a small wheel; cuffs were removed from the Curtiss Electric propeller blades (although the kit does provide the uncuffed blades as well, but these are Hamilton Standard referred to be used with a B-239 and therefore don’t fit to the Dutch version, being first of all just too short); the area behind the cockpit under the canopy was simplified as the navy equipment (liferaft, RDF loop etc.) used on F2A-2 wasn’t installed on B-339 the straight pitot tube on the starboard wing was replaced by an ‘L’ shaped pitot tube. Other corrections/additions/replacements: wing panel lines were not very accurate and were so filled in with superglue and then rescribed according to the available photos; only one landing light (on the port wing undersurface) is required on this version of Buffalo, so the second one provided in the kit was just mounted in place, the seam was filled and then everything was sanded and polished to be later just painted off; wing, rudder and elevator trailing edges were thinned the wheel wells were corrected and extra detailed as they should look like on the real a/c; the fuselage interior seen through the wheel wells was almost totally empty in the kit, so a lot of details were added there; air intakes at the top and bottom of the engine cowling were represented as just holes und had therefore to be deepened by cementing plastic pieces behind that holes followed by drilling them and scribing the correct tunnels. navigation&formation lights were replaced with transparent ones. the machine gun barrels were made of hypodermic needles.

Hi All, David Aiken posted a link on the Hyperscale Plane Talking Forum about the Finnish Wartime Photograph Archive it is well worth visiting, the images further below are some of what I found following ten minutes of putting in search terms on their website. Please note however that you need to use Finnish terms since English will not work although manufacturers names like Brewster, Fiat, Fokker Focke, Gloster and Morane for example bring up some results while Hawker does not. It is also worth noting that these images at least the ones I have seen are around 4900 pixels across one side are also watermarked and are only 8 bit sRGB jpg files. If you are after better quality files lest watermarks contact details are provided for the archive. To start people off I suggest the following search terms will bring up some worthwhile results; Suulajärvi, tyyppisiä, hävittäjiä, Suomalainen, syöksypommittajia & Lentolaivueen amongst others. The following images are all worthy of a seperate discussion in their own right however to help get them out here quickly I have posted them without any explanatory captioning so please enjoy as have I. All images SA-kuva. Cheers, Daniel. More images to follow.....