US Brewster Buffalos get the Finnish Upgrade in Nov 1941

The Finns used the Buffalo to great effect against the Soviets. Some of it was because it was a secondary theater for the Russians who used their best planes and pilots elsewhere. However it is also true the Finns improved them. Let us say that US Intelligence somehow finds out that 1) The Finns are using the buffalo to good effect and 2) Upgraded them before they did so and were able to find out what the upgrades were. The US also has to avoid the NIH syndrome. I admit this is a pretty long shot scenario but it isn't ASB.

So let us assume the US starts upgrading the Buffalo starting Nov 15, 1941. Of course the upgrade won't be complete by Midway but some planes will be upgraded. Most likely those starting at the PI and to a lesser extent PH. These are the most likely places for Japan to attack if they hit the US directly and it is fairly obvious by looking at a map. So the Buffalos would no longer be almost completely useless. What changes?
 
Other than Midway, the Buffalo didn't see much US combat.
The biggest impact would be if the British and Dutch had more capable Buffalos. But those were already denavalized and had different engine models with greater horsepower. I'm not sure if the Finnish tweaks would have the same gains.
 
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CalBear

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It has no history at all. The first thing the Finns did was "de-navalize" their aircraft meaning the USN won't be able to use them.

The U.S. )along with the Commonwealth and Dutch) also won't be able to transplant the Finnish weather. Like most early WW II engines the Wright 1820 had serious power drop off in high humidity and high heat (i.e. the entire PTO)
 
In my TL A True and Better Alamo, I had the Americans remove the pair of cowl mounted MG's and make a few other small improvements to boost performance. This, in conjunction with slightly earlier adoption of better tactics due to the survival of the Niihau Zero allowed them to do slightly better than OTL.

That being said, given the smaller caliber MG's on the British and Dutch aircraft I don't think that similar modifications would have been a good idea. However, P.C. Boer in his book on the air war over Java notes that the Dutch Brewster aircraft didn't have the atrocious combat record many assume. His book argues that the biggest problem facing the ABDA airforces wasn't their equipment or pilots but rather their poor air-warning system. In OTL there were 2 ships, one British and one American carrying radar sets and operators to the ADBA command area that were sunk early on in the war. Had they survived and had the radar been set up I'd wager that the ABDA airforces would have been able to inflict much higher casualties on the Japanese and correspondingly improve the combat record of the Brewster Buffalo in the PTO.
 
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