1:32 Buffalo B 339 (RAF)

A stocky machine with an undeserved reputation

The Brewster B-339 is the export variant of an American carrier fighter that the British ordered under the name Buffalo. They were not to come to Europe, so they were sent to the Far East, to Malaya, Burma and Singapore. There in 1941 they clashed with Japanese fighters and came off badly, which broke the reputation of the type for a long time. The blame, though, lay mainly with the overloaded production version, worn-out engines and poor servicing; the same machine in other hands and in another climate served long and reliably.

A scheme from another landscape

The most interesting thing about these machines is precisely their finish. Most arrived in the British covering scheme for the temperate zone, that is in dark green and earth brown, supplemented with a light underside. Such a pattern came about so that an aircraft on an English airfield would merge with the fields and banks. Over the Malayan jungle, where the green is uniform and far deeper, the brown fields on the contrary gave it an outline and did not help at all. It took months before the schemes began to be adapted to the place of deployment, and even then they were put right with whatever was to hand. It is a textbook example of the fact that a pattern of camouflage makes sense only against a particular background.

What the masks bring

In the set you will find two masks for the cockpit cover, for the outer and the inner side, and two national insignia masks. The roundel in the British form is made up of several concentric circles, which are cut out by hand only with difficulty, and a sprayed insignia looks more natural on a matte covering finish than the film of a decal.