CAC Woomera

The CA-4 Wackett Bomber and CA-11 Woomera were prototype twin-engine light bombers, including torpedo and dive-bombing capabilities, developed by Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) in Australia, during World War II. While two prototypes were completed and flight tested by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), an order for the Woomera was cancelled before it went into production.

Design and development

Background

In early 1939, the Australian Government ordered large numbers of Bristol Beaufort bombers, with major components to be built by its Department of Aircraft Production (DAP) in a variety of locations, including railway workshops, and in doing so it by-passed the local aircraft company, the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation.

CAC, under Sir Lawrence Wackett, began work on its own design, hoping to out-perform the Beaufort by building a machine that could serve as both a torpedo-bomber and dive bomber. To keep down weight, Wackett dispensed with traditional self-sealing fuel tanks and opted to make the wing cavities liquid-tight, and thus serve as fuel storage. The Australian Government was initially uninterested in the CAC design. However, in mid-1940, cut off from the supply of British-made components for the Beaufort program (due to a British embargo on the export of aviation products, due to the need to maximise British production), the Australian Government ordered a prototype of the CAC design, even before the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) had expressed a view about the machine.

CA-4

This prototype, known as the CA-4 Wackett Bomber, took to the air on 19 September 1941. The CA-4 was a low-wing, twin-engined, multi-role bomber with a crew of three. It was armed with four nose-mounted .303 calibre machine guns and two remote-controlled twin machine-guns barbette mounted at the rear of the engine nacelles. It could carry either 500 lb (230 kg) bombs, 250 lb (110 kg) bombs or two torpedoes.