Ciao everyone,
I am not a brownshoe, myself, but I thought that I would share some information with my winged brothers here at the big "A."
Recently, the only surviving Brewster Buffalo in the world arrived at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in a crate from Finland. A finnish ace was flying it during WWII when he was shot down and landed on a frozen lake to make his escape. The plane was recently recovered and is going to be refurbed at the museum's hanger. There is also a Brewster Buccaneer being refurbished. If any of you would like more information or pictures, I will do my best to help.
Ciao for now
Rob

Rob, when I'm ready to do my buffalo, I will beg you to run over for photos.... :-)

The Buffalo seem to be one of the not very popular planes..Thnaks for the info...Hmmm whats a brownshoe?

Brownshoe=US Naval aviator

And if anyone wants to read the incredibly circuitous route it took from that Karelian lake to the US, here's a link- http://www.sci.fi/~fta/BW-372.htm ,
Story of the incident & the bird being removed from the lake- http://www.hut.fi/~ssipila/bw-372/'
And a shot of the old girl on the ground in Ireland, circa 1998.

You know, I've reaaly begun to lose all respect for Gary Viliard. True he gets the job done, but at what cost? He's been getting very bold & careless lately, chopping up old wrecks for just the parts he needs & leaving the rest to rot...And now this seemingly underhanded deal he cut to secure the Buffalo. I guess somebody's got to do it, but I wonder how many treasures are lost to history due to such shady dealings.
Anyway, thanks RobL for posting this to our attention. I had mistakenly believed the Finnish Air Museum had one, turns out it was actually a Humu!
Scary how our minds seem to work alike sometimes...maybe it's the name!
Enjoy, RobH

Ciao,
Dave - let me know and I will try and get access to the refurb for you. I can go a lot of places in a police uniform!
Johnny - Rob is right. Brown shoe is the aviation community and Black shoe is the surface community. Bubbleheads are submariners. CT's are just weird!
:-) (I'm kidding. Everyone knows that ET's are the weird ones.)
RobH - I had no idea that this guy was kind of robbing Peter (maybe Paul & Mary, too) to pay Paul! Not good! If you need info though, I am your man!
Ciao for now
Rob

Hi Rob

Any pics you can take will be MOST welcome!




I've got an old Wings '48 vacuform that is just crying out for some decent reference shots!...

All the best

Rowan

Merlin,
Do you want pictures of the Buc, Buffalo or both? I know that the Buff just arrived and is still in the crate (if I understood right.) The buc is up and being retro-corrected. Apparently, someone (or some entity) had been adding pop rivets and bondo to the buccaneer (neither of which existed in WWII.) So, they are having to take it apart to clean the stuff off that is inaccurate and then having to go back to fix those parts. Let me know which and will try and get over there this weekend (when I am off.) I would have went today had I known (I had patrol in that area.)
Ciao for now
Rob

And the most important are the 'Snipes" ....... :-)
We dwell in the bowels of the ship, and it don't go, unless we make it go.....

Hey, thanks for the info!!!! I have a Combat Models 1/32 Vac-form Buffalo kit I started but am shy on refrences. Would love a running account of the restore.

By the way, Enlisted Aircrew may not be the pride of the Navy, but without us..."The Pride Don't Ride"

"Semper Perdium" (that's money for going on deployments, Beer and staying in hotels etc.)