Wartime License Builds Outside UK

She ought to know, given she drives one.

Pilots! 😉

Chipmunks were also produced in Canada, hence the ‘C’ in their DHC-1 name.

There may be some offended Canucks about. The Chipmunk was the first aircraft designed by de Havilland Canada, also produced in the UK and Portugal, hence the ‘C’…
Also, it’s a post-war design. 🙂

But wasn’t the Chipmunk designed in Canada, along with the Beaver, Otter and Dash airliner series?

rareness (is that a word) ?

Not normally. But you conveyed your meaning fine! Rarity is. 😉 Unless it’s a steak. Yum.

Nice pic, thanks for sharing!

Eddie – fair point.

Chipmunks were also produced in Canada, hence the ‘C’ in their DHC-1 name.

Finnish Blenheims

A while ago I stumbled across this pic of a Finnish Blenheim. Whilst not a great quality It’s rareness (is that a word) makes it worth while.

I found it on a really small site about 2 years ago and the site now escapes my memory. So who ever you are thanks. 🙂

I have similar of Finnish Ju 88’s if you would like too.

The Lincoln built in Canada

From “Warpaint Series No. 34” page 10:
“Just the one was built in Canada. Serial FM300, designated a Mk.XV as a Canadian version of the Mk.I, was rolled out on 20 October 1945 and made its maiden flight on the 25th flown by Victory test pilot Ernie Taylor. It was taken on strength on 17th August 1946 but completed a mere handful of flights before being struck off charge on 4 March 1947 and passing to a scrapyard shortly afterwards, apparently with five part-completed aircraft which formed the balance of an initial batch.”

…there was an airfield in the North of Britain filled with Swastika bedecked Blackburn Skuas which never left the UK in the end.

Dyce in March 1940: picture in The Fleet Air Arm In Camera 1912-1996 with the FAAM ref no of ROC/39.

Flood.™

Well, in 1940, the Russians were theoretically on the same side as the Germans..! The Finns were very consistent on who they were fighting – the Russians.

Finland:
Don’t forget that Finland wasn’t very consistent over who it was fighting. The Blenheim contract would have gone back to when the British were very keen to send a/c to help them fighting (now, who were they fighting in ’40? Ah, yes, the Russians) and there was an airfield in the North of Britain filled with Swastika bedecked Blackburn Skuas which never left the UK in the end.

Sweden paid Pratt & Whitney (or was it Wright?) for stealing the design for the engine of the FFVS J-22; i.e. NOT licence production, but they coughed up quite willingly after the war was over – couldn’t arrange it during I understand.

mark P & Wombat,
many thanks for the elucidations of Aussie facts.

Cheers / Salut

It is kind of interesting that Blenheims were produced under licence in Finland, especially considering that the British government declared war with Finland. I do not remember the date of the declaration, but I think it was sometime late in 1941.
Edit: The date when the war was declared was December 6th 1941. Technical support for Blenheims was discontinued already during the summer of 1941. After the war Finland had to pay licence fees for all Blenheims built during the war. Fair enough, I guess…

Indeed Wombat, and I believe that the Boomerang pilots were much respected by our RNZAF Corsair pilots, because they’d take their Boomers into hostile airspace and mark the targets for the F4U1-D’s to divebomb. They two types apparently worked very well together and the crews were full of mutual respect for each other. I think that was the first time the RNZAF had operated with Forward Air Control support, which the RAAF supplied admirably through the little Boomerang.

It is nice that a few are flying these days. It must make a lot of people proud at the Aussie airshows.

Cheers
Dave

Mark

Thanks for that info. I would like to get Wilson’s book on the Beaufort/Beaufighter/Mosquito – haven’t done so yet, but your info on APC/DAP etc, sort of fits in with what I thought had happened.

I also have Wackett’s book, having found it in a second hand bookshop about 25 years ago. I remember the developments you wrote about and couldn’t believe the chicanery that the British aviation interests AND government adopted to convince the Australian government to “Buy British”, and the gullibility of our government almost to do so blindly until Wackett convinced them that the yanks had more modern facilities, were building more modern aircraft and were willing to deal with us with an aircraft ideally suited to CAC’s needs in the late thirties. The Wirraway was no doubt the most practical aircraft for a brand new company to manufacture, and it had a recognised need within the RAAF for substantial numbers.

I have always deeply regretted the failure of the Woomera and CA-15 to reach production. The Woomera is by far the greater unknown quantity, as it wasn’t needed by the time it was basically sorted out, but could have been an outstanding asset three years earlier when the first CA-4 prototype flew. An interesting thing with Wackett’s autobiography is that he barely mentions the Woomera anywhere except one photo of the nose and lists it in the production figures for the company by war’s end. Absolutely no other mention anywhere for what should have been a very significant aircraft in the company’s history, even if it was only two prototypes.

Dave

Love the painting of the Boomer. I have a copy of a video produced by ABC productions, of the development of the Boomer, with quite a bit of World War 2 film of the prototype being built and flown and a restoration being flown today. Excellent film work and even the Boomer could sound purposeful when put into a dive and honking over paddocks at a couple of thousand feet. A world war two Boomer pilot is interviewed and admits that as a fighter, they were not much use (aren’t they the only fighter with no kills to their credit?), but they were loved by the troops on the ground for their excellent army co-operation work, where they were nicknamed a high speed cropduster. They mightn’t have been much of a fighter, but I love ’em!

Regards

Wombat

Wombat/JDK,

1. Wirraways NA-16s, T6/SNJ & Harvards

The North American Trainer model numbers and Contract numbers become quite confusing, the following is based on the WARBIRDTECH series NA-16/AT-6/SNJ

The Wirraway is a direct NA-16 derivative with the distinctive all steel tube/fabric covered fuselage and straight trailing edge wing (The NA-32 and NA-33 were “contract” numbers as well as “model” numbers), The Contract numbers primarily related to the customer order, CAC received contract numbers 32 (actually an NA-16-1A with fixed gear and 2 blade prop), and contract number 33 (actually an NA-16-2k with retract gear and 3 blade prop and geared 1340).

The Harvard 1 is also an NA-16 derivative (NA-49 actually an NA-16-1E) while the Yale, NJ-1, SNJ-2 and BC-1 are themselves all seperate branch off derivatives of the NA-16 developments with various combinations of tapered wing, straight wing trailing edges, monocoque and steel tube rear fuselages.

The NA-16 design evolved further from the BC-1 (NA-26) and BT-9 (NA-29) family of T6 Ancestors with differing engine sizes, The NA-16 model references cease at the Contract number NA-56 which is an AN-16-4 and the BC-1A (NA-55), Yale (NA-57) and BT-14 (NA-58) at last started to bring together the monocoque fuselage and tapered wing and adoption of the ungeared P&W 1340 Wasp engine.

AT6 as contract number NA-59 commences the new T6/Harvard/SNJ family derivatives and leads on to the SNJ-2 as contract NA-65, Harvard 11 as contract number NA-66.

Finally the definative AT6A/SNJ-3 emerge as contract NA-77, with a multitude of contract numbers applying to the following T6-C,D,F and G, SNJ-4,5,6 and Harvard 111 and 1V models but are all effectively the same basic airframe structure of monocoque fuselage and tapered wing, hidden inside them all is the steel tube front fuselage frame derived from the basic NA-16.

2. APC, DAP and GAF

Stewart Wilson’s ‘Beaufort/Beaufighter and Mosquito” details the development of joint production of a “bomber” for RAF/RAAF service from 1938 resulting in the creation of the Aircraft Construction Branch (ACB) of the Dept of Supply and Development in July 1939, and in March 1940 the ACB became the Australian Production Commission (APC – still under the dept of Supply and Development).

In June 1941 APC was abolished and the Beaufort Division of the Department of Production was created.

Wilson’s “Lincoln, Canberra & F111” refers to the Beaufort Division of DAP proposing the Lincoln and Tudor production in Australia in July 1945, but refers to GAF from @1950 onwards.

Sir Lawrence Wackett’s autobiography “Aircraft Pioneer” (“father” of CAC) provides an excellent detail of the drama behind the demise of the APC. Apparantly as a method to get the Beaufort production back on timeline and underway, the APC Chairman and others atttempted to forceably “Nationalise” the CAC facilities to produce the “bomber” as it was a more strategic project than the Wirraway and other CAC projects. Apparantly CAC’s Board visited with the Prime Minister over the matter and passed the APC board who were also called up to see the PM in their aircraft, in the air on the return flight to Melbourne. Wackett describes rising the next morning to discover their visit had resulted in the APC Board being dismissed and the APC abolished and replaced by new people and the Beaufort Division/DAP as described in the Newspaper.

Wackett’s biography also provides an interesting insight into the colonial environment of the 1930’s with the prohibition on imports of US made aircraft and the activities of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors to discourage local Australian production to maintain colonial markets, and then to actively undermine CAC’s creation and production of an “American” aircraft.

Sir Dickie Williams (AM RAAF) autobiography (“father” of the RAAF), also discusses similar activities within the services arena to discourage the Cockatoo Island Experimental Section, and to question the “American” Wirraway production choice.

Some very interesting bits and pieces there everyone, cheers. All this talk of Australian built aircraft inspired me to post this lovely painting of a Boomerang…

Hi JDK

My source for the info was a book called Armed and Ready, written by AT Ross in 1995. It describes Australia’s industrial effort during WW II and has an extremely detailed section on our aviation industry founding years from the creation of CAC. It has by far the greatest detail I have yet found on the Woomera, which was an entirely indigenous design but took too long to develop and its need was nullified by the war’s progress and availability of suitable American aircraft.

Whilst Ross refers to the APC, I seem to recall similarly to you that the DAP was the more commonly known name for the Government established manufacturer. For some reason, Ross fails to refer to the DAP at all in his book. Maybe the name changed later during the war?

Anybody interested in this book might be able to obtain it through good booksellers, though I doubt it’s still in print. ISBN is 0 908031 63 7. Published by Turton and Armstrong, Sydney.

You’re quite right about the Wirraway too. It was actually derived from the NA-16-2K, a retractable undercarriage version of the NA-16-1A. The book Wirraway, Boomerang and CA-15 in Australian Service, by Stewart Wilson, gives an excellent detailed history of all 3 types.

Hi Wombat,

Thanks for a good post – a couple of glosses though. My grandparents worked for CAC, and were some of the first employees when CAC Fishermen’s Bend opened. The Wirraway was actually an adaptation of an eralier NA design, NOT the T-6 Harvard (can’t remember, for certain, but I think it was the NA-33)

The Boomerang was actually effectively a new design (though your right about the licence arrangement.) What causes confusion is that the Wirraway wing jig was used to build Boomerang centre sections, but it was a different unit in the same jig. Some tail parts were the same but otherwise it was mainly ‘new’.

I thought the Government factory (Later GAF – Government Aircraft Factory?) was originally DAP Department of Aircraft Production – Leastways I seem to recall the papers at the time referred to DAP. What’s your source?

Cheers / Salut / G’day

canada built!

Canada also license built Blenheims but called them bolingbrokes. Avro lancasters were also license built here as well.

.

Did Canada build and use Tigers or did they rely on a US design for elementary flying (I know much of their advanced flying was US types such as Cessna Bobcats/Cranes and Harvards and Yales)
Cheers
Dave

In addition to Tiger Moths, Canada also used U.S. designed Stearmans bi-planes (PT-13, 17,and the PT-27 with canopies) as well as open cockpit Fairchild Cornells (PT-19, 23…and the PT-26 with canopies).
The Fairchilds were also built in Canada by Fleet.

In addition to the list of UK designs built in Australia provided above by Wombat,
there were:

DeHavillands
DH Dragons built for RAAF during 1940’s
DH Moth Minors built/completed/assembled for RAAF during 1940’s
(I understand the UK production jigs etc for these two types were transferred to Aust)
DH 115 Vampires 1950’s

Government Aircraft Factories GAF
(previously APC and DAP – Dept of aircraft Production)
Canberra 1950’s

and prior to the 1940’s some small production occured:

AFC Point Cook
Bristol Boxkite 1914 (1)

AAOC
Avro 504k’s 1920’s

Larkins
DH-60’s 1930’s

Dept of Munitions
DH-60’s 1930’s

QANTAS
DH-50’s 1930’s