Australia is unlikely to be considered by anyone as an aircraft building power, and this will generally be true, but there was one interesting period in its history when it could become such - and even almost became. Having started by copying a training aircraft, the Australians literally in a few years have gone all the way to an almost full-fledged fighter capable of showing good results in aerial combat.
But their first step into aviation was a simpler machine. And it also turned out to be the "workhorse" of the Royal Australian Air Force for a while during the Second World War.
Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation emerges
The Japanese military expansion in Asia made Australians nervous. After all, the Japanese controlled Micronesia and had a powerful fleet - and this gave them the opportunity to subsequently "get" Australia. The latter did not really have its own military industry and depended on the import of weapons and military equipment. This was especially true for aviation - Australians relied on aircraft imports, half covered by supplies from Britain, although calls for the creation of a national aircraft industry in the mid-thirties were quite active.
Everything got off the ground in 1935, in May. Then in Britain it was decided to dramatically increase the size of the Royal Air Force. Australia sounded out the same opportunity for itself, but it turned out that British industry simply could not meet the needs of the Australian Air Force - the planes were required by Britain itself.
By that time, Australia itself had only one aircraft manufacturer - Tugan Aircraft, which produced a small twin-engine passenger aircraft Gannet - the first production aircraft of Australian design, built in a series of eight machines. The company was based in a hangar near Sydney and could not do anything significant for Australia's defenses.
In the same year, however, several factors coincided. One of the local industrialists, Essington Lewis, head of Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP), the largest Anglo-Australian mining company, returned from Europe to Australia. He brought from Europe a strong belief in the high likelihood of a future war, in which Australia could also be drawn. And then he launched a powerful activity to promote the idea of creating a national aviation industry.
In August 1935, the government agreed with Lewis's arguments. The following year, several large Australian companies, which, however, had nothing to do with aircraft construction, founded the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation - SAS. This company was destined to become an Australian manufacturer of combat aircraft. However, it is not enough to found a company, you also need personnel, and in the same 1936, SAS bought Tugan Aircraft, and its chief Lawrence Wackett, a former air wing commander who had the corresponding military rank, immediately became the chief of the entire business.
Now it was necessary to choose what to build. The war on the doorstep hinted at the need to have fighters, and at one point even the idea of starting to produce Spitfire was discussed, but common sense quickly won out - in a country devoid of its aviation industry and personnel and traditions, it was wrong to start with such a complex machine.
While the factory was being built, three Australian Air Force officers, along with Wackett, traveled across the United States and Europe, with the task of choosing a prototype for the future first Australian combat aircraft. The task was complicated by the fact that the selected aircraft had to be both a "mobilization" fighter and a training vehicle for Australia, it had to perform strike missions and be easy to manufacture.
As a result, the Ozzies chose the American North American NA-16 trainer. This aircraft was produced in the United States in huge numbers, and for a long time was the main training aircraft. It was on its basis that the T-6 Texan was created a little later, and they are outwardly similar.
The Australians were captivated by the simplicity and at the same time the perfection of the aircraft design, this was exactly what was needed for the nascent national aviation industry.
SAS acquired a license for this aircraft, as well as the Pratt and Whitney Wasp R-1340 engine, an air-cooled radial inflatable "star" with a capacity of 600 hp. It was this motor that was to become the "Heart" of the future aircraft.
1937 was a formal year. An assembly plant was being completed. Changes were made to the aircraft design. Lewis vehemently protested against the NA-16 becoming the base model for the Australian Air Force, due to insufficient performance, but the Air Force demanded this particular car, as the most realistic in terms of production time. As a result, the Air Force and SAS won, and soon the new car went into production.
On March 27, 1938, the first production aircraft made its first take-off from the runway. In the series, the aircraft was named CA-1 Wirrraway. The word Wirraway ("Wirraway") in one of the languages of the Australian aborigines means "challenge" (the one that is thrown, challenge in English), which well reflected the circumstances of the appearance of this machine.
Development of
The Australians, in a sense, went head to head with the Americans. The "original" NA-16 had a two-bladed propeller and a 400 hp engine. Both the Americans, who developed the famous Texan on its basis, and the Australians simultaneously switched to the Wasp R-1340, with a capacity of 600 hp. and a three-blade propeller. In addition, the Australians, who were planning to use the aircraft as a strike, immediately reinforced its fuselage, especially the tail section. The bonnet and bow in front of the cockpit were also redesigned to accommodate two 7.7mm Vikkers Mk. V machine guns firing through the propeller.
The rear seat was made to rotate so that it could be used by the shooter protecting the rear hemisphere. His armament was also a 7, 7 mm machine gun. The cockpit canopy was made in such a way that the shooter had the maximum possible firing sector in flight. The aircraft was equipped with a radio station and was modified for the possible installation of cameras for various purposes. For technological reasons, the skin of the fuselage was carried out differently. Bomb attachments were installed - a pair of 113 kg (250 lb) bombs or one 227 kg (500 lb bomb). However, it was possible to take two 500-pounds, but leaving the shooter "at home".
A large and massive antenna, which has become the "calling card" of Australian aircraft, was "registered" on the nose in front of the lantern. In the future, the aircraft underwent other upgrades, which further alienated them from the original model, with all their similarity to each other.
Service
Initially, the aircraft were used as training aircraft, however, with an eye to participating in hostilities, if necessary. By the beginning of the war in the Pacific, seven Air Force squadrons - 4, 5, 12, 22, 23, 24 and 25 - were armed with these machines.
Soon after the start of the war, it became clear that outdated, slow and poorly armed aircraft could not fight Japanese fighters, but they had to do it - with sad results.
The first battle of the Wirraway took place during the bombing raid of the Japanese Type97 flying boats at the Wunakanau airfield near Rabaul, on January 6, 1942. Nine flying boats attacked the airfield, avoiding surprise losses and causing some damage to the Australians. Only one Wirraway reached the range of opening fire on the Japanese, but did not achieve success. This was the first air combat of both the Australian Air Force and these aircraft.
Two weeks later, the 24th squadron was forced to take an unequal battle - eight "Wirraway" threw to repel the attack of almost a hundred Japanese aircraft on Rabaul. Of this hundred, twenty-two fighters attacked eight Wyrravays, which were also not deployed at the same time. Only two Australian aircraft survived, one of which was badly damaged. However, the "Ozzies" very quickly realized that the former training "flying desks" had nothing to do with Japanese fighters and tried to use them to strike ground targets.
Nevertheless, this aircraft model achieved one victory in the air. On December 12, 1941, J. Archer, the pilot of the Wirraway, during a reconnaissance mission found a Japanese fighter 300 meters below him, which he identified as the Zero. He immediately dived at the Japanese and shot him with machine guns. After the war, it turned out that it was a Ki-43, not a Zero.
This, of course, was an exception. The slow-moving Wirravays had no chance as fighters. However, they could be used as attack aircraft and bombers - and were used. The Australians simply had nowhere to take other aircraft - no matter how slow and weakly armed the Wirraweys were, and there was no choice.
The Wirrawei were supported from the air by the allied forces defending in Malaya as early as 1941. The planes in the number of five units flew from the airfield in Kulang, they were piloted by New Zealand pilots, the Australians were the observer shooters. From the very beginning of 1942, these aircraft began combat missions to attack Japanese troops in New Guinea. In early November, these machines were extremely widely used during the repulsion of one of the Japanese offensives in New Guinea - the aircraft were used as light attack aircraft and light bombers, conducted photographic reconnaissance, directed artillery fire, dropped supplies to surrounded detachments and even scattered leaflets over the Japanese.
Surprisingly, but "Wirraway" managed to gain a positive assessment of their effectiveness from the ground forces. As the American general Robert Eichelberger wrote after the war: "The pilots of the Wyrravays never got the proper marks." The general himself, who commanded the allied forces during the battle of Buna-Gona, systematically used these aircraft for flights to the front, taking the place of the gunner, and appreciated the contribution of these machines and their pilots to the war quite high. Overall, these vehicles made a significant contribution to the outcome of the battle.
By mid-1943, supplies for the Australian Air Force had improved. They received more modern aircraft. The P-40 Kittihawk became one of the most widespread. And the second is Boomerang, an Australian single-seat fighter … designed with extensive use of Wirraway's structural elements and building on experience in its production. The Boomerang for Australians is almost a legendary car, with a much richer and more glorious history than the Wirraway, but without the Wirraway it would not exist.
From the middle of the summer of 1943, the Wirraway began to leave the front line, and rather quickly returned to the tasks of training aircraft. However, not all. Firstly, at least one such aircraft remains in every aviation unit of the Australian Air Force, where it performs approximately the same tasks that the famous Po-2 performed in the Red Army Air Force. Carries senior officers, delivers documents, urgently brings the necessary spare parts … One such car was even in the 5th US Air Force.
Interestingly, the Wirraway turned out to be far from the most shot down aircraft - most of the losses of these aircraft are due to Japanese air strikes on airfields.
Secondly, although the intensive use of the Wirraways over the front line ended in 1943, they sometimes continued to bombard Japanese positions, patrolled coastal waters, and were used to search for Japanese submarines. In general, aircraft of this type fought until the very end of the war, although after 1943 the scale of their participation in battles was small.
Production
Unsurprisingly, production of the Wirravays continued even after World War II. In total, the aircraft were produced in the following series:
CA-1 - 40 units.
CA-3 - 60 units.
CA-5 - 32 units.
CA-7 - 100 units.
CA-8 - 200 units.
CA-9 - 188 units.
CA-10 - project of a dive bomber, rejected, but reinforced wings were produced to modernize aircraft already built.
CA-16 - 135 units.
In fact, they were basically the same aircraft, and the modification number was changed only in order to distinguish aircraft built under different contracts. But some modifications were different. So, for example, the SA-3 had a modified "intake" of the engine, the reinforced wings from the SA-10, which did not go into production, were mounted on 113 of the previously built aircraft, such machines could carry more bombs under the wings. On some machines, 7, 7-mm machine guns were replaced with Browning wing-mounted machine guns of 12, 7-mm caliber.
The most different from all was the SA-16 modification - this aircraft was not only equipped with a reinforced wing, but also with aerodynamic brakes, which made it possible to use it as a dive bomber - and this aircraft was used in this capacity.
In the post-war period
After the war, in 1948, 17 aircraft "left" for the Australian Navy. A few more ended up in agriculture, however, the Wirraweys proved to be ineffective as agricultural aircraft.
In service in the Air Force, the aircraft were used as training aircraft, in the Navy similarly, in addition, part of the Wirravays received parts of the Citizen Air Force reserve, founded in 1948, where they were also used as training and for detecting sharks near the beaches.
The Navy retired its aircraft in 1957, and the Air Force in 1959. But they continued to fly in private collections and exhibit in museums.
Also, the post-war use of "Wirravays" was marked by several accidents, which claimed the lives of several dozen people.
Fifteen Wirravays have survived in the world today. Five of them can take off and have all the permits for this.
The SAS company continued to function after the war, but did not produce its own developed aircraft, collecting only slightly modified versions of foreign aircraft and helicopters, even without attempts to complete localization. In 1985 it was acquired by Hawker de Haviland, which transformed it into its Australian subsidiary, which was bought by Boeing-Australia in 2000.
And the beginning of all this was the transformation of the American training aircraft into the Australian combat training aircraft - Wirraway.
Aircraft technical characteristics:
Crew, pers.: 2
Length, m: 8, 48
Wingspan, m: 13, 11
Height, m: 2, 66 m
Wing area: 23, 76
Empty weight, kg: 1 810
Maximum takeoff weight, kg: 2 991
Engine: 1 × Pratt & Whitney R-1340 radial engine, 600 hp (450 kW)
Maximum speed, km / h: 354
Cruising speed, km / h: 250
Ferry range, km: 1 158
Practical ceiling, m: 7 010
Climb rate, m / s: 9, 9
Armament:
Machine guns: 2 × 7, 7 mm Vickers Mk V for forward firing with synchronizer and 1 × 7, 7 mm Vickers GO on a swing arm. Later versions were equipped with 12.7mm Browning AN-M2 machine guns under the wings.
Bombs:
2 × 500 lb (227 kg) - no gunner
2 x 250 lbs (113 kg) Normal Duty.
