CAC Celebrate Fifty Years of Manufacturing

October 17, 1936 and the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation is formed as a result of a conviction of a number of leading industrialists that Australia needed an aircraft industry of its own.

They believed Australia could not depend in times of crisis upon supply from other countries. Events during the Second World War proved this assumption wholly justified as Australia for all effective purposes was cut off from supplies of overseas aircraft from the outbreak of hostilities until 1943.

CAC’s first venture into military aircraft production was a modified version of the North American NA33. It was powered by a single Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine and given the Australian name Wirraway – Aboriginal for challenge. The first Wasp was completed in January 1939, in record time and Wirraway 001 aircraft was flown in March that year.

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