CA-23 The Australian-designed post-war jet

[old man emu]

Australians aren't mugs when it comes to designing tomorrow's aircraft today. In the twenty-five years between 1930 and 1955 this Nation with a population of only 6.75 million, babes to the graves, developed a number of worthwhile military and civilian aircraft. Total numbers produced were low, mainly because of the economic drivers, supply and demand. Even our wartime production was minimal compared to other nations (Wirraway 755; Boomerang 250), but those low numbers can be explained by the switch to the manufacture of British designs and assembly of US-supplied aircraft.

 

But with the end of WWII, and the discovery that the jet engine could push an aircraft higher and faster, the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation set about designing one that could meet the unique operational problem besetting Australia: distance. And design they did, creating the CA-23. But enemy gunfire was not what destroyed it. It was kowtowing to the British. The very same British who used Australians to save its neck in Africa and Europe, but couldn't spare aid to help against an Asian aggressor. The CA-23 had the potential to be a world-class first generation jet fighter, but British snobbery and Empire thinking killed it off at the wind tunnel stage. 

 

This video tells the the basic story of the CA-23 and the political shenanigans  that halted its development.

 

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Canada said CANDO, Australia said CAN’TDO.

[skippydiesel]

Interesting - in particular the observations regarding Australia's massive cultural cringe (my condensing words) , which still seem to raise its ugly head today.

[turboplanner]

23 hours ago, skippydiesel said:

Interesting - in particular the observations regarding Australia's massive cultural cringe (my condensing words) , which still seem to raise its ugly head today.

How did you get this impression Skippy?

 

The video tells us the Australian project received the go ahead, THEN:

 

The British wanted the RAAF to be led from London

A British Chief Officer was appointed to run the RAAF

He:

• said it was too expensive
• centralised design in Britain
• changed the design
• encouraged negative comments with incorrect data
• moved research to London
• where the design was obtained by Soviet spies
• Parts of the design were copied and used on UK fighters
• was sent back to the UK.

The next head of the RAAF ordered Sabres from USA and we have bought fighters from USA on a regular basis since; the Mirage being an exception.

 

I was lucky enough to be shown through CAC.

The height of their design capability was during WW2, but by 1955 many of their cutting edge Engineers with hands on experience would have been retiring, and there wasn't a lot of demand. They started contract work for various aircraft companies then looked ahead and in the early 1050s started a bus production line, mainly for school buses.

   

 

 

 

 

[djpacro]

The story in the video seems to have come from https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2016/05/somerton-man-explosive-details-from_15.html

This story of the Avon Sabre is also relevant

https://www.key.aero/article/creating-australian-sabre

Chief Engineer Ian Ring and some of the other engineers were still working at CAC into the '70s. https://www.australianflying.com.au/news/warbirds-the-turbo-interceptor-boomerang I went to a presentation by Ian Ring on all the CAC designs.

[marshallarts]

Whenever I see a discussion like this, I am prompted to wonder (again) what the missing ingredient is.  Example:  Pilatus is a Swiss company, producing some of the world's finest aircraft of their type, like the PC-12 turboprop and the PC-24 jet, both used extensively by our very own RFDS.  Heaven knows how many hundreds of millions the RFDS must have paid to Pilatus over the years.  And it's not just the RFDS - Pilatus sells aircraft all over the world.  Switzerland is a very small country - population only about a third of ours, tiny area, and probably far from ideal flying conditions compared to ours.  If Pilatus can do that in Switzerland, why can't someone in Oz be producing top-level aircraft of some sort?  What is the missing factor?

[turboplanner]

6 hours ago, marshallarts said:

Whenever I see a discussion like this, I am prompted to wonder (again) what the missing ingredient is.  Example:  Pilatus is a Swiss company, producing some of the world's finest aircraft of their type, like the PC-12 turboprop and the PC-24 jet, both used extensively by our very own RFDS.  Heaven knows how many hundreds of millions the RFDS must have paid to Pilatus over the years.  And it's not just the RFDS - Pilatus sells aircraft all over the world.  Switzerland is a very small country - population only about a third of ours, tiny area, and probably far from ideal flying conditions compared to ours.  If Pilatus can do that in Switzerland, why can't someone in Oz be producing top-level aircraft of some sort?  What is the missing factor?

Business skills at the top, Management clear of internal politics.

[onetrack]

A major lack of Govt handouts to develop industry and ideas. America is the country at the forefront of innovation, technological development and excellence, because the U.S. Govt pours trillions into private R&D, innovation and ideas, subsidises new factories, and hands out grants by the billions for anyone with good ideas. There's actually an entire U.S. Govt website dedicated to the huge range of U.S. Govt Grants. Here's just one U.S. agency handing out mega-millions for R&D.

 

https://www.nsf.gov/

 

Meantimes, Australia pours billions into important things like the vastly inflated property market, more skyscrapers on the Gold Coast, the Aboriginal "industry", and massive sports stadiums - sells all our vital raw materials (including energy) at low cost using imported equipment, and lets other countries manufacture everything for us. Hopefully, I won't be around when the piper calls the tune, as eventually will happen.

[facthunter]

Abbott shut down manufacturing here. A lot of design talent lost when you don't build cars (and have the  related parts Industry).   Nev

[turboplanner]

Senator Button shut down the car industry by removing tariffs which had allowed our tiny manufacturing industry to hold off the huge overseas factories which could build x number of cars per second, and change their platforms in 2 or 3 years; we have to wait 10 years for our platform tooling to be amortised.

Australians were seeing the prices advertised overseas and wanted to buy the cheaper importeds cars. Senator Button caved in, the Australian manufacturers discounted to try and keep market share but failed. General Motors Holdens was wound up with $800 million liabilities. GM paid the off, set up Holdens Motor Co and Holdens Engine Co, and told them it was the last payout. Holden made a great effort trying to sell engines and cars to the overseas markets, and actually made the $800 million back selling Family II engines around the world. Ford also got close to its last legs. International Harvester went bankrupt, Chrysler went out of Australia and CKD manufacturing ceased At one CKD plant, one of the most efficient in the world, I used to go out every Thursday, buy half a sheep and have it cut up and made into packs and gave them to the workers on strike trying to save their jobs, but they couldn't compete building the low numbers without tariffs.

 

Australia will always have an issue with long delivery distances and low domestic volume, making the reason to set up manufacturing much harder than if the factory was located in a high consumption local market.

 

I also had a direct experience with CAC and their bus manufacturing in the 1970s, taking market share off them due to problems I noted in an earlier post.

 

 

[facthunter]

There's more to it than that. Nev

[turboplanner]

14 minutes ago, facthunter said:

There's more to it than that. Nev

Not in my Industry where I’ve worked all my life.

[djpacro]

14 hours ago, marshallarts said:

Whenever I see a discussion like this, I am prompted to wonder (again) what the missing ingredient is.  Example:  Pilatus is a Swiss company, producing some of the world's finest aircraft of their type, like the PC-12 turboprop .....

When Wamira was cancelled and the govt bought the PC-9 ...

Well ... the Wamira story partly answers your question ... it started off as a good idea but then the RAAF kept gold-plating the specifications for their basic trainer such that the weight and cost just blew out. Of course, the PC-9 came nowhere near meeting their specs ... and it wasn't even a basic trainer - the technical selection was made by RAAF officers with nil experience at flight training. Industry knew the cost was going to blow out but just continued to play the game, earn money, as it didn't matter to them whether the project was successful or not. By the end the project had a single, nearly complete prototype at the cost where the govt expected 72 production aircraft would've been delivered. Nil risk to industry in just spending money and not having to test a prototype and produce a finished product.

 

As part of the PC-9 deal, Australian industry was offered participation in the PC-12 program. I saw lots of analysis and PowerPoint slides showing that the PC-12 would never be viable.