My sister's local newspaper recently had an account of the last known F2A-1 Buffalo that was pulled out of a lake in Russia? Its pilot, a Finnish ace, was shot down in 1942. However, she noticed in the photo of the plane sitting in the lake that the aircraft had German swastikas on the wings and body of the plane. We were wondering why, since the US sold those planes to Finland after Russia invaded in 1939? Were they sold to Finland after Germany invaded Finland?Stan V.

Germany didn't invade Finland during WWII.Russia invaded Finland in late 1939, and after a four month war a peace treaty gave Russia about 10% of Finland. It was at this time that the US sold Finland the F2's, although they weren't delivered until after the war was ended.In June 1941 Germany invaded Russia in "Operation Barbarosa", and some of the German invasion troops were allowed by Finland to pass through northern Finland on their way to attack Murmansk. Shortly after that the Russians began bombing Finnish cities to try to pressure Finland into stopping the Germans from crossing their territory. Instead, the Finns attacked the Russian troops in the territories they had ceded to the Russians in the 1939 war, and recaptured all that land. They also allied themselves officially with the Germans, although they refused to contribute troops to operations further inside Russia - specifically the attack on Leningrad. During this period all Finnish Air Force planes were painted with the Swastika emblem as they were allies of the Germans. The German attack on Murmansk failed, and the Russo-Finnish war was then pretty much peacefull until virtually the end of WWII, when the Russians launched a major offensive and recaptured all the land they had captured in the 1939 war and lost in 1941. As part of the peace treaty Finland broke its alliance with Germany and attacked the German troops that had been in Lapland since the failed attack on Murmansk, and agreed to the post-war status of Finland as an independent country under Russian oversight.

The Finnish Airforce used the swastika symbol long before the ##### adopted it. http://www.jiop.fi/ksimuseo/aboutswa.html

Well, interesting, I had seen FAF planes with the Swastika from during Finnish involvement in WWII, but didn't realise they used it before the ##### adopted it.Richard