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Brewster Buffalo in Finnish service

These photos are among those posted on Air Warfare Forum by Jan van den Huevel of Rotterdam. They're from his personal collection.

Brewster Buffalo fighters go off to war
A herd of Buffaloes rumbles off to war. Note the bent-leg cross decorating the wings and fuselage. This Nordic good-luck symbol was known to the Finns as the hakaristi; to the Germans it was a hakenkruetz or swastika.

Sad end of a Brewster Buffalo fighter
Ignominious end of a Brewster Buffalo. The prop is bent, with likely damage to the crankshaft, especially given that the entire nose looks bent out of shape. Yet the canopy still seems to work smoothly!

Brewster Buffalo pilot
A Finnish pilot poses proudly in front of his Brewster fighter. The Finns knew the plane as the B-229, its Brewster designation; the fighting name of "Buffalo" had yet to be bestowed upon it when the U.S. Navy released 43 of its F2A-1 fighters for sale to Finland in 1940.

Jan van den Huevel claims a copyright on these photos. I don't think the claim has any merit, since he wasn't the photographer, and I doubt very much that he purchased the copyright—as opposed to the prints—from the photographer or his heirs. So I cropped these three, resized them, cleaned them up a bit, and posted them here with a clear conscience and a tip of the virtual hat to Jan for making them available. (Why didn't I ask his permission? If he hadn't claimed a copyright, I would have done just that, but once a copyright claim is made, then to request permission is to validate the claim, and I didn't want to do that!) — Dan Ford

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