CAC which was under the direction of Sir Lawrence Wackett began to work on his own design, hoping to outperform the Beaufighter serving both as a dive and torpedo bomber. In order to keep the weight low, Wacket dispensed with traditional self-sealing fuel tanks and opted to make wing cavities liquid-tight in order to serve as fuel storage. Initially, Australian Government wasn't interested in the design, however, in mid-1940, when Australia was cut-off from the supply of British-made components needed for the Beaufort, due to the need of maximization of British aircraft production during the Battle of Britain during mid 1940, the Australian Government ordered a prototype of the CAC design, even before the Royal Australian Air Force had expressed their opinion about the type.
The prototype flew for the first time on 19th September 1941. It was a low-wing, twin-engined, multi-role bomber with a crew of three. It was armed with four 0.303in machine-guns mounted in the nose and two remote-controlled twin machine-guns barbettes mounted at the rear of the engine nacelles. It could carry either 500lb (250Kg) bombs, 250lb (110Kg) or two torpedoes. In the case of the bombs, they were stored in a compartment placed in the nacelles.
It was originally powered by two Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp R-1830-S3C3-G radial engines yielding each of them 1200hp of power. Unfortunately, the novel fuel tanks weren't reliable and on 15th January 1943 the CAC Ca-4 prototype was destroyed in a mid-air explosion, probably due to a fuel leak and killing two of the three crewmen near Kilmore, in Victoria. The wreckage was recovered and used for components.
Due to the Japanese entry into the World War II, the RAAF accepted the design even before it was tested and placed an order for 105 examples on 8th March 1942, however the loss of the first prototype the programme was delayed.
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAC_Woomera
2. https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.asp?aircraft_id=848
No comments:
Post a Comment