posted 03-10- 06:49 PM               

Principle Users: Austria, Finland, Great Britain, Nederlands, New Zealand, USA

9 in service aboard the USS Saratoga (squadron VF-3) from 1939

the B-239 model (F2A1) appears to have had a 950bhp engin, but I don't have specs on that version

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JV~44 "Naturlich"

If you can't beat em.... out run em!

posted 03-10- 08:56 PM            

At 0600, June 4th, I took off in a F2A-3, bureau number 01568, with Captain Daniel Joseph Hennessy leading the division.

He climbed to twelve thousand feet and circled for two or three minutes and contacted the enemy formations.

Captain Hennessy led us in a attack on the horizontal bombers. There were three formations of nine planes to the formation.
After the first pass I lost my wing man and rest of the division. I made a long low fast climb and made a second above side pass, and started for a third, when I saw a Zero Fighter climbing up on my tail very rapidly. I rushed my stick forward as hard as I could and went into a violent dive. When I recovered and looked around, I had lost the Zero Fighter.

I regained my altitude and received a transmission saying that an enemy plane was leaving the area on a heading of 310o. I made a long fast above side pass on this plane which I had spotted. After the pass I saw him waver and make an easy left turn into the water. He was at approximately one thousand feet when I initiated the pass. I believe I shot the pilot. The plane was
Aichi 99 Dive Bomber.

I again regained my altitude and saw another Aichi 99 weaving in and out of the clouds, returning to his carrier. I had six thousand feet and gave my Buffalo all the power I could get and just stayed in the same relative position. I finally gained
enough to make a pass by nosing over and losing three thousand feet. After my fist pass I slowed down a great deal, and I was
able to make another pass quite easily. I believe that in my first pass, I had damaged his engine. After the second pass I
got behind him and was going to bore in and found out that I was out of ammunition. I am sure that I shot the rear seat gunner in
this plane because he did not fire on me on the third pass, and he could have easily.

I returned to the base and rearmed and took off and later received instructions to land.

The F2A-3 is not a combat airplane. It is inferior to the planes we were fighting in every respect. The F2A-3 has about the same
speed as an Aichi 99 Dive Bomber. The Japanese Zero Fighter can
run circles around the F2A-3. I estimated the top speed of a Zero Fighter, form what I saw, at better than 450 mile per hour.

It is my belief that any commander that orders pilots out for combat in a F2A-3 should consider the pilot as lost before
leaving the ground.