I am afraid I don’t know that much about the Continuation War. What were the success ratios of the other Finnish fighters?
Primary fighters, alongside Brewsters, for the early/mid COntinuation War were CUrtiss Hawk 75s, with Morane Saulnier 406s and Fiat G.50s struggling along. I’ll look for the ratios later, when there’s time, but all had positive victory ratios – though all were most successful in 1941, efficiency dropping fast in 1942 and later. Reasons were logistical as much as how Soviet pilots and equipment got better – Finns had only limited supply of spare parts, fuel for these planes built far elsewhere. It wasn’t easy life with those squadrons using Moranes and Fiats.
The Curtiss squadron, LLv 32, was anyway the second most successful of Finnish fighter squadrons, after LLv 24. They’re the “forgotten aces”, as the Messerschmitt squadrons (LLv 24, LLv 34) usually grab all the glory.
Messerschmitts victory ratio is generally accepted as 25:1 in aerial combats (Brewsters 32:1) based on official scores, but the Messerschmitt ratio has more or less overclaiming in it. Reason is that they arrived in 1943 and mostly fought either over Gulf of Finland 1943-1944 (no wrecks as proof at sea) or over enemy territory in 1944 in huge defensive battles, intercepting Soviet bomber formations and engaging in fighting in bomber escorts or recon missions etc. And even when they fought over own territory, well that land was lost in the initial retreat phase of summer 44 battles, so no solid proof available there either. Very messy period, confirmation-wise. But they *were* successful in their missions, whatever the overclaiming percentage, which is what counts.
But imagine that FiAF pilots were still flying ancient crates like Hawk 75, MS 406 or Brewsters in summer 1944, against first rate Soviet equipment, and only two squadrons had top equpment like Me 109 Gs. I’m most amazed how the Hawk/MS/BW pilots managed to survive, at all, even after talking to many of them.
As one chap I interviewed put it:
Which was your most frightening experience?
Well (thinking). It’s kind of hard to compare them, but it was scary when I had to play against larger numbers in a Brewster for the first time. There were four Brewsters up, it was in the beginning of June when it was worst (the summer battles of 1944 “summer war”). When suddenly there are dozens of them around, you do have to be careful. But otherwise, I can’t say what was worse than that.
I should say, that in the beginning of June during the offensive of Karelian Isthmus the numbers were really overwhelming and we were flying obsolete planes. Brewster was already so damn soft even though it had been a good plane in the beginning.
Once I was flying with Ate Lassila, Olli Riekki and Matti Kukkonen (here started a long discussion about the family Riekki, as we find a relative of the mentioned Olli Riekki, WarBirds pilot -koko-, from the table) as fourth and flew through a cumulus cloud there was this stream ahead. According to air control center there were 124 bombers on their way to Viipuri. Ate Lassila, who was kind of cautious and thinking just watched as Olli Riekki took off out wing, dived and shot down one DB continuing straight to low level because there were at least 40 La-5s above. And in between us with four old Brewsters. That’s how it was then, just insane.
From:
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/WW2History-OlliSarantolaEnglish.html
More articles:
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/
And heres a search on the pages with Brewster as keyword:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=fi&sitesearch=www.virtualpilots.fi&q=hist+brewster&btnG=Hae&lr=
Sign In
