G’day Folk’s:
Here is an Aircraft totaly designed and built here in Oz, of which only two were ever made. An interesting design in responce to a 1940 requirement for a strike/reconn, bomber a three seat twin engine built around the 1,200hp P&W Twin Wasp.
Interesting design characteristics included an auto pilot, twin remote machine guns in the rear of each nacelle and 4 machine guns in the nose. The nacelles also doubled as bomb bays each with a 500lb capacity, two torpedo’s or equivilant bomb load under the fuselage and light bombs under the outer wings. History: The CA-4 [A23-1001] first flew in Sept 1941 and was recieved by the RAAF in June 1942, it was lost in January 1943 following an explosion while in the air.
The second was a CA-11 [A23-1] was flown in 1944 and differed from it’s predecessor in several ways, extended glazing of the cocpit a taller fin and and rudder, horizontal tailplanes with dihedral incorporated and reconfigured armament which include 20mm cannon, it was re-engined with the R-2000 of 1,300hp but it suvived only untill 1946, when it was scrapped.
Regards.
Rob.