HISTORY
The
company started existence as an
aircraft division of
Brewster & Co., a company
that originally sold
carriages and had branched
into automobile bodies and
airplane parts. In 1932,
James Work, an aeronautical
engineer, bought the
division for $30,000 and
created the Brewster
Aeronautical Corporation.
Brewster started out making
seaplane floats and wing
panels, but with the hire of
chief engineer Dayton Brown
it embarked on its own
designs. It operated three
aircraft plants, at the
Brewster Building in Long
Island City, New York,
Newark, New Jersey, and, in
1941, in Warminster
Township, Pennsylvania,
which was then known as NAS
Johnsville.
Brown's first design, in
1934, was a two-seat
scout-bomber, the Brewster
SBA, which first flew in
1936; subsequently the Naval
Aircraft Factory built them,
with the designation
SBN-1.
The SB2A Buccaneer was a
follow-on design that first
flew in 1941 and was also
used by the Royal Air Force,
who named it
Bermuda.
A
design in 1936 for a
carrier-capable monoplane
resulted in the Brewster F2A
(named
Buffalo
by the British), which was
chosen over an early version
of the F4F Wildcat. The F2A
prototype handled well in
1938 tests, and the Navy
ordered 54. However,
production was slow, at
least partly due to an
inefficient factory in
Queens, New York. The Navy
ended up ordering Wildcats,
which by 1938 had been
greatly improved.
The Buffalo was exported to
Finland starting in 1939,
and more were intended for
Belgium, but the country was
overrun in the early stages
of World War II, before
deliveries could begin. The
United Kingdom also received
Buffalos, which eventually
ended up in the Far East.
They engaged in combat with
Japanese Zeros and suffered
badly. The Buffalos were
most popular with the
Finnish Air Force, which
used them successfully
against the Soviet air
force, and began a program
to build an indigenous
version named Humu. The
Dutch also purchased 92
Buffalos and assigned most
to the
Militaire Luchtvaart KNIL
in the Dutch East Indies
(now Indonesia) where they
fought against the Japanese.
Several captured by the
Japanese were repainted with
Japanese
Hinomaru
insignia and extensively
tested.
During WWII it became
apparent that Brewster was
mismanaged. The company had
grown from a relatively
minor aircraft parts
supplier to a fully-fledged
defense giant in only a few
years. Brewster ranked 84th
among United States
corporations in the value of
World War II military
production contracts.
Jimmy Work had hired Alfred
and Ignacio Miranda as the
company salesmen. They had
been involved in frauds,
spending two years in prison
for selling illicit arms to
Bolivia, and had
over-promised Brewster
production capabilities to
customers. As WWII had
swelled the defense
industries, the quality of
the newly hired work force
was inferior in skills and
often motivation, and the
work was plagued by illicit
strikes; even outright
sabotage was suspected. The
Navy installed George
Chapline as president of the
company, easing out Jimmy
Work, in the hopes of
speeding up production, but
then in early 1942 Jimmy
Work regained control, just
in time to be sued for $10
million for financial
misdeeds. On April 18, 1942
the Navy simply seized
Brewster and put the head of
the Naval Aircraft Factory,
G.C. Westervelt, in charge.
In mid-May a new board of
directors was appointed by
the Navy, with Brewster
making the F3A-1 Corsair
under license.
When the Navy cancelled
Brewster's last contract,
for assembly of the Corsair,
on July 1, 1944,
the company was in serious
trouble. In October, after
reporting a large loss, the
management decided to shut
down the company, and on
April 5, 1946, the Brewster
Aeronautical Corporation was
dissolved by its
shareholders.
Source:
Wikipedia
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