Most in Finland are ok with the Brewster at Pensacola, even the veterans who flew the Brewsters, as they’re taking good care of it and retain its history.

It belongs to them, that’s it.

It would have been nice to have it here, but it is better to have the BW at Pensacola than having it rusting to pieces in some shady storage.

As for JägerMarty’s claim for Finns having had a well trained air force compared to Russia, well, maybe, but in the beginning of the war at least the Germans did not have any part of its training. I remember the late head of CAA Finland K.J. Temmes, ex MS.406 pilot himself, once saying that in the war between Russia and Finland there were two bad Air Forces against each other.

At work, not going into lenghts here, later maybe 🙂

The training varied a lot, to what I’ve understood. LLv24’s pre war cadre was definitely very well trained and motivated group. They had had the luxury of time, good trainign and even “sparring” in peacetime with Soviets just before the war broke out (source: Mauno Fräntilä’s interview). They did also train younger pilots well.

Training was different in different squadrons. LLv32 was, to all my sources and interviewed vets, a good place for young pilots because their CO did all he could to train the young pilots. Training was very systematic. LLv24 was quite similar. But then there were also squadrons,where young pilots got little to none training from the older pilots.

Here’s some my interviews with Curtiss pilots:

http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/WW2History-JarlArnkilEnglish.html
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/WW2History-MaunoFrantila2English.html
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/WW2History-KyostiKarhilaEnglish.html
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/feature/photoreports/overdose2002/

Mr. Jarl Arnkil on Curtiss:

– How did Curtiss do against different Russian planes?
Well, in the Karelian isthmus we flew against I-16s and I-153s and we did quite well. There were no IL-2s or Pe-2s at that time. But like in there, it was tough to shoot down an IL-2, because the pilot and gunner sat like in a bath tub with a damn thick armor. Pe-2 was a bit too slick. Pe-2 flew many times over the western bank of Aunus isthmus. I don’t know where they flew those reconnaissance flights. They kind of came down over the west bank, following the shoreline of lake Ladoga. We caught some of them there when we happened to be around at the right time. But if you started to chase them, you couldn’t catch them.
– It was that much faster?
Yes.
– Then against these newer fighters?
Well, they were… I didn’t fly anymore because I was an intelligence officer. But when we encountered Airacobras, La-5s and so on, we were in trouble. Like in that story, Colonel Rekola had agreed with 6 AK that we should avoid dogfights so that we could help the ground forces with reconnaissance flights. So that we would not waste the last Curtisses we had.
– Not necessarily related to Curtiss, do you remember which was considered most dangerous opponent, Airacobra or Lagg?
My opinion is that Airacobra was more dangerous.
– On what basis?
It had a bigger cannon, I think it had a 37 mm cannon and it was pretty fast.

– How should you dogfight with a Curtiss? What kind of maneuvers did you use?
For example in Suursaari, where we had a lot of Russians going around in a Spanish circle, we could get them by diving after a plane and then pulling up again. Then attacked from above again. We chased the last plane, a Tsaika, with Manu Fräntilä. That guy either had a really flexible neck or he was sitting backwards in the cockpit. He was like an owl. Whenever we got him in our sights he kicked the plane to the side. We should have attacked from below, but he was hugging the treetops, so we couldn’t get him from there. We got him in the end anyway.
– It was normal pendulum (zoom&boom) tactics then?
Normal pendulum, yes.

– So, Curtiss pilots didn’t develop any own tactics adapted specifically to that plane type?
Guys had to fight quite fierce dogfights with it too. Sometimes the Russians had really superior numbers. Now I remember one time when I was somewhere there – more and more Russian fighters came in from near Lotinanpelto. I think we had five or six planes in the air and they started to call for help, because the density of Russian planes started to become too high. But we bagged that situation too. They were in a furball. And once someone even had a dogfight against some Lagg above our airfield.
– You mentioned that it could turn well. How fast was the roll?
Yes, it was…
– So you could change directions quickly?
It was quite agile. Very pleasant to fly.
– How about the armor in Curtiss? Did it have a back plate?
It only had a back plate.
– Was it standard equipment from the beginning or were they installed later?
I think it was standard equipment. FR (Fokker D.XXI) didn’t have a back plate. It was installed in Tampere (State Aircraft Factory) and then the fixed head plate was added. The armor consisted of two pieces and we lost one pilot during training in Siikakangas. He was doing aerobatics and lost control while doing a loop – or immelmann – at high altitude and crashed into a lakelet. We wondered what the hell happened, because he was pretty high when he lost control. When the war began, we installed the machine guns and started to adjust them. The tail wheel was lifted on a barrel and the weapons were adjusted. I don’t remember who it was, it might have been the squadron commander himself, who tried to raise the seat but it wouldn’t move. The back plate should have risen in front of the head plate, but it didn’t. It jammed against it. We inspected the problem and noticed that the seat brackets had almost broken off. That’s when we realized what had happened to the unfortunate pilot. His seat fell on the control cables when he was pulling an immelmann. It was an uncontrollable situation. The control cables ran beneath the seat. The airplane factory had not noticed that when you add armor to the seat, you also add quite a lot of weight and the brackets should have been strengthened too. I think we had many similar accidents.

– How rugged was Hawk considered by the pilots, in respect of structure stress or damage endurance?
I felt it was a sturdy plane. The worst spot was the gas tank behind your back. You didn’t want any bullets to hit that.
– It wasn’t protected? It wasn’t self sealing?
No, it wasn’t. Pretty big tank right behind your back.
– Were self sealing tanks then later installed by the Finns?
No. That kind of advanced contraptions were not installed in these planes. They remained as they were received from Germany. We only got the bigger guns, 12,7 mm.
– There is a rubbered Curtiss gas tank in Hallinportti aviation museum.
It’s possible.
– How about the engine? How good was the engine durability and how well was it liked?
We had two kinds of engines, Mercurys and Wasps. Mercury had a little more power than Wasp. I considered Mercury better, but there were sow few planes equipped with Mercury that they wore out quickly. In the end all the engines were Wasps.
– Kössi Karhila said, that with Mercury engine Curtiss was as good as Brewster
True. It was a completely different machine, but we ran out of engines. The fifteen planes which we retrieved in the summer of -43 all had Wasps. They were in crates. The Americans had sent them to France and they were found from some harbor in their packing crates when Germany occupied rest of France. The first planes we got came from Norway. America had sent them to Norwegians as military aid. When the Germans invaded Norway, they gave the planes to us.

Mr. Karhila, quite likely the highest scoring Curtiss Hawk 75 ace in the world alive today:

Your opinion is that the Curtiss was in principle a high class plane and pleasant to fly?

It was indeed, flying and mechanical quality. I used to admire the cockpit plexiglass quality. Sunlight did not affect it unlike that of the Messerschmitt. There was not even the blue tint. Comparing that with a Messerschmitt canopy, through that you could see but… .

The Curtiss windscreen did not include any bullet proof glass, it was just one piece.

What kind of gunsight was the Curtiss equipped with?

It was a reflector sight, a little offset from the center line, the pilot is sighting with one eye. The German planes also had off-set gunsights, but just a little. The supports for the Curtiss gunsight were placed inside the cockpit.

The first WW pilots had a fear of burning and some carried a pistol to get a more “pleasant” death in case. The planes of the Second WW must have been better “fireproofed” and fire was not such a fear factor, was it? A Messerschmitt pilot was sitting on the fuel tank, in fact ?

That is true but the fuel tank was covered with rubber that after penetration by a projectile sealed the hole. Only if the fuel exploded was the end at hand.

Did the Curtiss have self-sealing tanks?

She did.

There have been arguments about the Curtisses equipped for the French service. The ones in the Finnish Air Force had been used by the French.

And by Norwegians. Quite a lot of them were delivered from Norway (by Germans, tr.rem.) They were still in crates, brand new ones.

There are very exiting things about the Curtisses. For example the Curtiss Aircraft Company promised that a Curtiss (A-75)would do 511kmh with a Pratt-Whitney (P-W) engine which is quoted in all books. What is your view on the matter?

No, no. It was four hundred and fifty. A Cyclone powered Curtiss did 485kmh.

Do you have any idea how is it possible that the Curtisses in Finland were found to be so much slower than the manufacturer claimed? Was it a case of plain lying?

Look, a plane custom made for representation could be polished as well as possible, all the cracks were filled up and so on. A lot of advantage could be gained that way. The planes used in the front were not similarly treated, it cut the speed. And when testing there was no limits in using the engine. An engine could be worn out just to get good performance readings.

I have read the brochures sent to the Finnish Air Force by Curtiss and it is a real shame that these planes were not purchased before the Winter War. The offered planes were equipped with the Cyclone, by the way. The brochures mention that the top speed has been gained with the “max 5min” power setting, the climbing rates likewise: the first 5 minutes with emergency power setting. This could explain the matter partly.

In those days she climbed pretty high in five minutes. It could have been five minutes fifteen to 5000m. I could do it below four.