Australia Has Wings! | Wirraways & Boomerangs (1941)
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- Опубліковано 19 лют 2024
- AWM FO1248
A Department of Information film made by the Commonwealth Film Laboratory for the National Film Council of the Motion Picture Industry. The manufacture of Pratt and Whitney single row Wasp radial engine and construction of Wirraway Aircraft at the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation factory at Fisherman's Bend, Victoria. Identified personnel are Wing Commander Lawrence James Wackett and Mr A.G. Brown, Secretary Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation.
![Fighter plane that couldn't fight, the CAC boomerang [AH008]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Cke2BkekAzM/mqdefault.jpg)
![Fighter plane that couldn't fight, the CAC boomerang [AH008]](/img/tr.png)
I really like the narration. Unlike most modern narrators, he's proud of our country's achievements, actually intelligent enough to use a variety of superb, literary turns of phrase and formal English, and doesn't constantly make everything a joke or about himself. Modern narrators can't even read a teleprompter without a slip up.
It does seem as if nearly every UA-cam channel has some obnoxious, grungy person making cringe worthy "jokes" about subjects which do not lend themselves to levity.
Excellent video, on what Australia is capable of, It is a crying shame that our manufacturing industry has all but disappeared.
I used to work in aviation manufacturing in Australia. One company alone does about $4 billion a year in producing aircraft parts. Manufacturing is weak in Australia, but aviation is one of the better aspects. It's just that nobody seems to know about it.
Blame Unions.
Great video. Poor old Boomerang and Wirraway, about 5 years out of date.
The Wirraway was basically just a trainer. It was a copy of the NA-16 of which 17000 were built.
The Boomerang could actually have been quite a decent fighter if it only had an engine that would provide enough power at anything above low altitudes - but since it was taken from a torpedo bomber, it quickly lost power as soon as it started to climb above sea level. Therefor it wasn't "5 years behind" - it was just another proof of the fact that with limited resources - there's just that much that one can do.
If they are all you have...
Wirraway was an excellent trainer and general purpose aircraft, but it was a little underpowered as a fighter. My late father flew T-6 Texans in his primary flight training back in the early 1950's, I think they used the same engine as the Wirraway and it was about 600 HP. A Zero at that time used a Sakae engine that put out about 1000-1050 HP. For the Boomerang, the designers wanted to build the Wright-Cyclone R-2600 engine under license to put into it-that would have given them about 1600-1700 HP they needed for competitive performance. For whatever reason they couldn't get those engines or the license to build them, so experimented using the P&W R-2800 which was already being made in Australia and had even more power but was really too heavy for the Boomerang-and created problems with landing gear and fuselage stress that was unacceptable. So they had to go back to the older P&W R-2000 Twin Wasp engine which only put out about 1200 HP, leaving the Boomerang under-powered compared to most competing designs.
They did manage to get pretty decent performance out of the CA-14 variant with a supercharger though, but it was never put into production, (off the top of my head I think only the CA-12, CA-13, and CA-19 versions were produced). I've seen a documentary about the Boomerang where ex-pilots said was essentially rubbish as a fighter, but I think it was an amazing aircraft. With the intended engine I think it would have been an excellent fighter. I'd really like to see one up close one day.
I consider the Boomerang as Australia’s most successful failure. It was a failure as a fighter, being way underpowered and with the same thick wing as the Wirraway(it was an emergency fighter after all, and that’s just what we had) but at ground attack and close air support was superb! It also operated very successfully in conjunction with the much faster RNZAF F4U Corsairs in these roles as well as FAC.
9:20 - “off they go like newly evolved moths”
[to the flames ? Are you sure that’s right ? - Ed]
It's amazing that between the Wirraway and the Boomerang, only the former was actually credited with an aerial victory, unlike the latter which was expressly produced as a fighter.
Wirraway CA-5 A20-103 flown by Plt.Off. John S. Archer of No.4Sqn,RAAF shot down a Ki-43 Hayabusa(Oscar) at Rabaul ,Papua New Guinea on 12thDec.1942.
The only recorded kill by either a Wirraway or Boomerang. Apparently the Boomerang was a lousy\underpowered fighter but a pretty good ground attack plane.
Those who are about to die, salute you, message was sent from Rabaul to RAAF HQ Australia moments before the handful of Wirraway and Hudson defenders were shot out of the sky, by Japanese naval task force.
Conspiracy theory: Those were actually only ever created so that modern day T6 owners can dream of building their own warbirds.
No dream. N.A. built an export fighter based on their T 6 Texan trainer. They were sold to various South American governments.
Incredible achievement to make this happen. With so many new skills and ‘moving parts’ in the process it’s a miracle they got any of the planes actually to fly😖
Very interesting......but I think the narrator watched Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator once too often as did the screenwriters.......LOL
He’s a bit over the top for these times. Very worked up near the end! Lol 😂
@@scottlewisparsons9551 Yup, reminded me of the last speech Chaplin made at the end of "The Great Dictator" . A fantastic film and if I am not mistaken, it was the first film where he actually spoke.
@@gumpyoldbugger6944 I will try to find that film. When I think about it, all these narrators during ww2 seem to sound the same.
Definitely a drama lama lol
It was an amazing accomplishment...but dearie me Australia was a big country town back then!
Beautifully told story with great gusto. To think these pilots trained in planes that were built abroad, then go to War in an Australian built machine, must have made them all very proud. ❤
Considering it was underpowered and not sent abroad as a fighter, only close air support I doubt that those pilots felt much pride. Apprehension seems more likely.
@@chaptermasterpedrokantor1623I thought they were used in PNG, but I could be wrong.
It's a propaganda film. Those things were flying coffins.
@@scottlewisparsons9551
24 Squadron RAAF was sent to try to hold Rabaul in New Britain. The IJN wrote off the entire squadron in a couple of days. They didn't stand a chance.
@@thegreatdominion949thank you for your reply. I met an old guy at an Anzac Day parade in Sydney years ago who flew these. Apart from the fact that he flew the things he made no other comment!
outmatched by everything by about 1942
At one point we hear something like "...to make Hitler grunt in his mountain lair." I instantly thought that, "...to make Hitler moan in despair from his mountain lair" might have been a bit cuter and more memorable. 😉
The narration was impressively and competently technical. The swelling surge of patriotic, propagandistic fervor at the end came across as perhaps a tad heavy handed, though.
Altogether an important slice of history. 😊
Thank You.
Great Video
Strewth!
Yeah, we’re not as dedicated to the “motherland” as this vid may try n make believe!!!!
Yeah, we did switch allegiance to the US pretty quickly after Singapore!
@@ArmouredCarriers Yank here. I had an Australian roommate in college and we used to talk about our nation's relations with Mother England. It was just before our July 4th Independence Day holiday in the early 1970's and I told him-'This Holiday is all about how we told the Brits to take their taxes and get stuffed back in 1776! Didn't you Aussies do the same thing with them?'. And he responded, 'Yes we did, but we were a little more decent about it.' I still laugh when I think of that! 😆 Another time-this was around when the US TV melodrama 'Roots' was on-we were talking about the concept of family roots-he said 'We Aussies don't really get into the drive to dig up our family roots, we're concerned with what we may discover!'. Funny guy! He's a world renowned professor back in Australia today.
@pimpompoom93726 Your story reminds me of sitting in on a discussion between a few Aussies and an American. The American boasted we did cut the ties, unlike you folk. An Aussie replied yea but we like doing the Brits slowly, by humiliating them every few years by beating them at Cricket(their own game) and getting more medals than them in the Olympics(a country with a third of their population).
The narrator kinda sounds like the actor Gordon Jackson.
Ahhh Australia, we won the Second World War single handed through the unstoppable force that is the Wirraway.
Just about every country seems to think they were the sole contributor, it seems.
@@ArmouredCarriers I was joking man........ the Wirraway and Boomerang were war winners in 1935, not when they were made..... but the Aussie Digger, he made up for it.
Oh I agree: The Wirraway and Boomerang set the standard for Australia's defence procurement and industry. Big aspirations. But wrong type, wrong time, much hype! @@chrismillard5172
Jeez, the narrator could probably get a gig at Nuremberg if he wanted.
pre Dec 8th 1941 I'll assume...
the narrator sure does get s bit frothy at the end there, doesn't he?
frothy bloody hell absolutely rabid
Great Little Fighter
Which one - the Zero or the Hayabusa? Little joke, but your comment is too funny ;)
@@josefhorndl3469 CAC Boommy
G'day,
To see a Wirraway, a Boomerang, a Texan & an Avenger, all displaying in a Thunderstorm at Armidale, NSW, Oz....
Backtrack moi to my
Personal Aeroplanology
Playlist,
To locate & view
The worst weather I've ever seen any Airshow Display take off into....
Seriously, this was
Scary
To
Watch...
Such is life...
Stay safe.
;-p
Ciao !
lot of work goes into making a plane
"Australian"?
✨🏴✨🥰✨👍✨♥️✨🤗✨.
Never mind that these machines became out of date soon after manufacture. We were making stuff and making it quickly, 6 months from design to in the air. It now takes 20 years to think about making a submarine. Australian military manufacturing has become a joke because politicians and bureaucrats are useless.
Australia was caught by the explosive technological surge between 1938 and 1941. Engines. Airframes. Aerodynamics. Radar. Navigation. Guns.
The fighters of 1943 were vastly different to those of 1940.
@@ArmouredCarriers most military technology is out of date before it is manufactured and used. Software and hardware is constantly tweaked and improved. What is cutting edge today is out of date before it comes off the production line.
The real issue for Australia lies with the lack of desire to do the manufacturing on shore and to trust in the home grown processes. Like we have to ask for permission from the US to build a submarine locally. If we had stuck with the French submarines they would be rolling off the production line as we speak, maybe not cutting edge but at least we would have submarines. As it stands we are still waiting for permission from the US to upgrade their old technology. Not to mention we have the Collin’s class Subs which use old diesel and lead acid battery technology. Why not just upgrade to lithium ion batteries to get greater underwater efficiencies.
Submarines are ... difficult.
I'm not an engineer. I probably know enough to be dangerously wrong. But based on what I've read over the years...
Replacing the lead acid batteries would likely necessitate cutting open several sections of the pressure hull. And every new seam (scar) is a new weak point.
That's on top of those hulls already showing the ageing effects of years of going through cycles of immense pressure and temperature change. That means metal fatigue.@@dantunno9264
@@ArmouredCarriers if you can get lead acid out you can get lithium in
😁
Australia should have been building Hurricanes or P-40s rather than the hopelessly inadequate Wirraway. The way they talk about the Wirraway in this film, you would think that it was an original Australian design and not just a slightly modified version of an American training aircraft. I have to wonder what they thought they were going to use it for in a real war.
P40s were outdated and slow in 1939, why the fuck would we want them?
@@throttlegalsmagazineaustra7361 In 1939 the P40 was brand new and flew 140 mph FASTER than the Wirraway could manage in 1941. The P40 was also much better armed and armoured.
@@PSPaaskynen it was an outdated design that even a Merlin couldn't improve on. The Japanese wiped the floor with them. The Wirraway was never officially intended to be anything but a training aircraft.
@@throttlegalsmagazineaustra7361 The original comment is about building P40s instead of Wirraways. Even you must admit that any Australian pilot facing the Japanese in a Wirraway would have thanked the heavens on his bare knees for a P40 in 1941. When competently handled, the P40 was adequate against the A6M and it had a positive kill to loss ratio.
@@throttlegalsmagazineaustra7361 Odd then that the RAAF kept using the P-40 until the end of the war. It was also the mainstay of the aerial defense of Australia for at least the first full year of the Pacific war. You really should educate yourself before posting on things you know next to nothing about.
And after all that…we gave our manufacturing base away to China. 🇦🇺
The rhetoric is a cack.
These aircraft were rubbish against the mighty zero.
I had to mute this guy
In Soviet Russia narrator mutes YOU.