Terrible Plane From An Even Worse Company: Brewster SB2A Buccaneer

I love these long, single engine, pre-war scout jobs. My fav is the Aichi E13A. I think this Brewster is a handsome plane. And it reminds me of some Japanese late-war planes, as well as a smarter looking Helldiver.

Seems the Fins disagreed.

At least it had a cool name.Its like having a cool logo.

"Black sheep" ... I see what you did there 😄

It's always because of not enough engine power. This holds true in all makes in all countries, even continued into the jet age development. Power and speed won the fight

The best thing Brewster did, was force Grumman to re-do their wildcat prototype.

...the other 'Buccaneer' ~20years later was MUCH better...! 😉

Please do a video on some of those high efficiency horten gliders

Ive seen the only one in existence, national naval aviation museum

Brewster appears to be just like any Elon Musk company .

must remember early in the war we used what we had which makes sense. the Bruster was available old technology for sure. the young pilots were assured that the Bruster was as good as the Zero. when early on 90% of the Bruster's never returned, lead people to think this information was not correct.

clarification, I'm referring to the other plane, (Brewster F2A Buffalo).

Why did the Finns have such great results vs the US overloading for poor performance causing of the Brewster Buffalo

I liked the Brewster Buffalo.

Poor sad Brewster

And then there was the Vultee Vengeance....

I vote for the Messerschmitt Me 210. Ordered straight off the drawing board. Put into production only to find it was completely unstable in flight.

So, the Martlets/Hellcats made under license by Brewster which were originally intended for the French Navy but were redirected to the Royal Navy where very badly sabotaged by Brewster workers (possibly by Joey Maldini or Frank Schmitt or Kieran O’Connor or etc etc etc - Brits pissed a lot of folk off) that the FBI had to recruit the Mob to sort it out via the Union.

I remember the line from the Midway movie(the one starring Charlton Heston) When the base commander asks how many fighters they can put up, the reply is, 'About 10 F4F's and 15 Buffaloes.'
"Antiques.' 'We'll let 'em know we're up there.' (except no Buffaloes were shown)

Worst warplane? Other than the Bullet(mentioned by another commentor, and I would agree) there's the Italian Ba 88 ground attack plane... that was so bad the Italians only parked them on runaways as decoys.
Or the American Barling bomber... which had a range of 170 miles. Though it could double that... provided it didn't carry any bombs.

Brewster seemed to like making big old chonks of planes.

I wonder if any aircraft collectors go out of their way to get Brewster planes, similarly to how people love the Edsel nowadays.

I'd pick the three nastiest turret fighters in the war, the Blackburn Roc, the Blackburn Skua, and the Boulton Paul Defiant. Conceptual and aesthetic disasters, they looked like they were meant to fail.

I'd actually be embarrassed to be caught sitting there in one of those tubs when the Japanese showed up in their Zeros and Nakajimas.

Funny thing is the Blackburn Buccaneer was great but probably the only decent aeroplane Blackburn made.

You'd think somebody would mention the TBD Devastator in this category...

Ki-105 Otori is my choice, just off the top of my head. It's hard to justify, because it was built very, very late in the war and, while 300 were ordered, only 9 were made.....though, that could also be seen is an indication of the desperate situation Japan was in and their need for this plane.

Japan needed one plane to perform one task: A long range fuel tanker to move aviation fuel.

So, in the final months of the war, the Japanese took their KU-7 gliders and retrofitted them with engines.

Then the plane was given the task of transporting aviation fuel.

This plane is amazing horrible because it (as I said previously) was meant to be a long range fuel transport aircraft.....but it ended up using 80% of the fuel it carried, just making the trip from Sumatra to Japan. 😂

You be the judge?

The buffalo was not a bad mid 30s plane. As it got heavier its performance got worse. The overheating engine was more wrights problem than brewster. Vs an i16 or a5m it was quite good.

Then there was this thing. It looks like it could be capable. It ah... wasn't.

Funny as I was watching this I kept thinking” why did the USN they persist with their rubbish designs & just not use their production facilities....”& then I got to the rest of the dismal story 🤣

Too many brewskis at Brewster.

I would have thought it would have been russian

Would not actually being able to fly disqualify it as the worst plane ever???

Avia S-199 deserves to be on the list as well. Post war design with early war performance, nasty flying characteristics and tendencies to kill it's pilots. Truly horrible plane.

Very interesting. BTW I thought a Buchaneer was a thing on the side of you bucken head

Fairey Barracuda, Bolton Paul Defiant.... "Hold our collective beers"

Brewster WAS NOT that bad. Brewster DID NOT build bad airplanes. Myths. Brewsters biggest negative was it did not meet demand and the US Navy took over because of that reason ONLY! The Buffalo got fat and heavy because of US Navy requirements, the F3A was not a death trap, the company's reputation killed the SB2A.

Just as today, it was a myth that it was total population war even during WW 2. Most of the population was just trying to get by with there own lives. As an example the factory for this aircraft had an active prostitution ring operating inside. The US government spent millions to help build the factory while the workers were striking and having sex in the unfinished fuselages.

At 19 minutes and 33 seconds, the derelict Buccaneer photo, is that at tullahoma, tennessee? I used to fly over it during my freightdog days.

Thank you for this video. Especially thank you for bringing up just what a basket case and a national disgrace the Brewster aircraft company was. Despite the propaganda that all Americans were giving their all for the war effort, the Brewster employees were disgusting. They even had a prostitution ring where they would have sex inside the fuselage of the aircraft. They would have work slow downs and threaten strikes over the most ridiculous perceived offenses.

Another channel mention that after a while, all buccaneers rolled off the production line and went straight to the scrap yard. Did you find mention of that in your research?

Reminds me of the film 'Brewster's Millions'. In this case, the boss swindled $10 million. Plus, the company couldn't seem to make a cup of tea, let alone a plane. Just goes to show, just because it's American doesn't mean it's not S*it.
But in this channel's comments section, there are plenty of Americans taking the piss out of other country's stuff. America can make rubbish, but when it's pointed out, you get all bitter and twisted.

On the one hand, yes, the Ohka sucked...but it technically did what it was designed to do and it did it very well in the few cases where its mothership G4M could get into launch range. The main flaw with it was its reliance on a slow and vulnerable carrier aircraft.

The same can't be said of the Buccaneer.

Oh you are Canadian, that's nice

Anyone else hear "800 horsepower" for some planes and fantacize of bringing a corvette zo6 V8 back in time? Like 900hp naturally aspirsted and surprisingly fuel efficient? Just me? Okay..

I would suggest that the ME 363 "Gigant" might be a close contender.

Whenever I hear Brewster, I think of a beer company, not an aircraft company.

HE 177. Not even close.

I was kinda expecting commentary, not just on the quality of the management, but the workforce themselves, as well- anyone searching for "House Committee on the Naval Matters, 1943", will find difficult-to-imagine hearing, involving Tom deLorenzo, at that stage union leader at Brewster... as Meatloaf sung "read on and weep"....