megan,
The A-36 looks to be a very versatile and useful bit of machinery indeed. But in truth I never knew of the type until now. Did they ever try to replace the Allison with the "Packard Merlin", as was done with the P-51 Mustang, from which it was derived? Seems to be the: "
...dive bomber, low altitude attack fighter..." of Col Wolfe's wish list. Maybe he was not as confused as I at first thought!
Wiki tells me that the Army Air Corps had them only in Dinjan (Assam). A rough calculation shows this to be some 250nm N and 120nm E of Khumbirgram,
(EDIT: Faint boyhood memory of Pythagoras works this out out as 302 miles),which was as far North as we got in Assam, so it was understandable that we knew nothing of them and never came in contact.
As for the VVs, it seems an intricate story, but briefly, they came in two guises: the A-31 and A-35. The essential difference was that the A-31 had zero angle of incidence (the AAC wanted nothing to do with them, but asked for a redesign with a 4º angle - which made it a better aircraft but a worse dive bomber - and it had a 0.50 Browning in the back, replacing the 2x 0.300/0.303 Brownings in all the earlier Marks) . Then they turned that down, too, and never used it operationally.
They were mostly palmed off (L/Lease *) to all and sundry. The RAF got the lion's share of the A-31s (VV Mks.1-III, plus some Mk.IVs [A-35] which went to UK for conversion to TTs). The Aussies got Is and IIs, and Mk.IVs, but
AFAIK, only we (in Burma) and they (in New Guinea) operated the Is and IIs. (and nothing else). I believe the Free French got some IVs in N.Africa, others went to Brazil.
All gone now save one (the Camden Museum specimen), which the Museum stoutly maintains to be a Mk.I, whereas it is manifestly a Mk.IV (see the huge 0.50 in the back!)
Chugalug and I spent quite some time on this Thread long ago, investigating the beast.
* Not
all - we actually
bought the first few batches (@ $68,000 ea.) before L/Lease kicked in.
Danny42C.