The Brewster Aeronautical Corp. of Long Island City is among the most substantial U.S. production fizzles of World War II. Earlier in the war, Brewster made a fighter plane, the Buffalo, that got into action in the Far East before Java and Singapore fell. By 1942 it had converted to making the Buccaneer, a not-so-hot dive-bomber, and is about to start making the Vought Corsair, an excellent Navy fighter. But the biggest trouble is not with the quality of Brewster planes, but with the quantity, which is a very meager military secret. Thus far the Axis has had little to fear from Brewster.
Last week a Manhattan Supreme Court judge listened to a settlement designed to unravel Brewster's main financial tangle: a stockholders' suit claiming that the corporation had been milked by three supersalesmen who took enormous commissions on foreign war contracts that Brewster would have got anyway. The salesmen: the brothers Alfred J. and Ignacio J. Miranda, and their partner, Felix William Zelcer. The settlement: the trio got clear title to $2,800,000 in commissions already paid them, to $800,000 they were paid as brokers on accessory sales, and to $500,000 of the $2,300,000 still due them.
Miraculous Mirandas. Mexican-born (1897, 1898), U.S.-naturalized (1930) Alfred and Ignacio Miranda have had quite a career. When their father's New York City export business went broke (he backed the wrong general in Mexico's Madero revolution of 1910), they left school to learn the export business themselves. By 1921 they knew enough to form their own outfit, Miranda Bros. Inc., prospered by selling things below the Rio Grande. First it was automobiles. Then they became minor-league merchants of death, unloading leftover U.S. war supplies in Latin America and in the Balkans. The leftovers ran out. So the Mirandas formed their own manufacturing company, American Armament Corp., to make light artillery and ammunition.
On the side Miranda Bros. Inc. found plenty of other things to sell. In 1926 they tied up with Major Alexander P. de Seversky, sold transport planes for him in Europe and Asia. They hawked Captain Melvin Maynard Johnson's famed semi-automatic rifle, finally landed him a big Dutch order. Through Seversky they hooked up in 1938 with Felix William Zelcer, a Polish-born ex-speakeasy operator with a yen for aviation.
The Mirandas have had lots of bad luck. Most of their corporate clients (like Seversky) did not really get into the big time until after the Mirandas' contracts had run out. One of their Latin-American deals ended, in 1940, in a Federal sentence for violating the President's 1934 neutrality proclamation by selling bombs to Bolivia (via Chile) in the Gran Chaco War. The bombs went into Curtiss-Wright planes and Curtiss pleaded guilty to the same charges — but the Mirandas were sent to Lewisburg Penitentiary while Curtiss got a $220,000 fine. This year their main American Armaments plant was requisitioned by the Government, turned over to Vultee.
Badgered Brewster. For the Mirandas, the Brewster deal was the saddest of all. In 1939, brother Ignacio decided that Brewster's export arrangements were 1) feeble, 2) expensive. Brewster paid a 3% ''finder's fee" commission on all business, plus 10% to the resident foreign agent, but had almost no foreign business.