"The Brewster Aeronautical Corporation: A Case Study in How Not to Run a Defense Business in Wartime"

During the summer of 1944, with the world once again consumed by war, the United States and its allies were on the offensive. In the Pacific theater, American forces unleashed an unprecedented fury following years of intensive build-up of men and materiel. Central to this overwhelming power was the emergence of the airplane as the key to victory on the high seas and on the ground. Every available aeronautical resource was committed to producing vast quantities of the best combat aircraft in the world. Manufacturers were flooded with billions of dollars of orders from the government to feed the war machine. It would seem almost impossible for a company that made combat aircraft when its customer had an unquenchable thirst for more could go out of business, but one did.
On July 1, 1944, with the outcome of the war still in the balance, the United States Navy canceled its contracts with the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation. Years of bad management, poor engineering, corruption, bedeviling labor trouble, and suspected sabotage forced the Navy to shut Brewster’s doors. Originally been a builder of high-quality coaches, Brewster became well-known as a manufacturer of hand-crafted bodies for exotic automobiles. In 1932 the company was reformed as the Brewster Aeronautical Corporation to build aircraft, particularly for the U.S. Navy. In the late 1930s, Brewster produced the first modern monoplane naval fighter, the F2A Buffalo. After the Buffalo, Brewster attempted to build a new dive bomber but with little success. Subsequent designs failed and even a desperate attempt to salvage the company by building Corsair fighters under license also failed.
This paper will examine how and why a promising company making cutting-edge weapons for a winning war effort could squander its opportunity to profit handsomely by antagonizing its only customer through its own incompetence and ineptitude.