Brewster SBN

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The US Navy begins taking delivery of the Brewster SBN scout bomber. Already obsolete compared to the Douglas SBD (also just entering service), the thirty aircraft built will be used for training.

 

The aircraft had first flown five years ago, but mismanagement at Brewster Aeronautical Corporation combined with a decision to focus Brewster's limited capacity on producing F2A Buffalos resulted in the scout bombers being built by the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia, hence the ‘N’ in the designation. "

 

 

[edit: Wikipedia has a different time line, saying deliveries began in Nov-40. Not sure what's right, but it's a good picture, so enjoy]

Edited March 24, 2021 by cardboard_killer

[cardboard_killer]

End nears for a plant that made flying junk (2001)

 

Quote

PHILADELPHIA -- When crews demolish three World War II-era airplane hangars in Warminster this year, they will obliterate a piece of history that the Greatest Generation probably would rather forget.

 

The hangars once housed the Brewster Aeronautical Corp., which built warplanes in Bucks County from 1941 to 1944. The operation was supposed to be part of the "Arsenal of Democracy" proudly arming the Allies.

 

But it didn't work out quite that way.

 

Brewster planes were the bane of the U.S. Navy, scoffed at as jokes, or worse. One model came to be known as a deathtrap -- a sluggish, unreliable fighter easily picked off by Japan's agile Zeroes.

 

A chaotic plant

 

The company's biggest troubles, though, were much closer to home. Its Warminster plant -- one of three that Brewster ran -- was among the most chaotic arms factories of the war, manufacturing scandals that put the torch to star-spangled images of Americans working as one to defeat fascism.

Brewster laborers staged a seemingly capricious strike that astonished the nation and provoked a congressional investigation. They allegedly loafed in washrooms, stole parts, and had sex in half-built fuselages -- all at a time when GI corpses were piling up overseas. [continued on link]