Just to expand a bit on the Boomerang...
As mentioned by Fareastdriver, it did indeed share the same bloodline as the Texan/Harvard trainers so well remembered by Danny and others.
What I didn't know until a little earlier this evening was that the Boomerang was designed by an Austrian Jew by the name of Fred David.
He'd arrived in Australia as a refugee from Europe and on the outbreak of war, was promptly interned as an enemy alien.
Somehow, he came to the notice of Lawrence Wackett, the head of CAC (Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation) which had been manufacturing the Wirraway.
He'd apparently previously worked for Heinkel in pre-war Germany as well as Mitsubishi and Aichi in Japan.
Two aircraft, in particular, that he'd been involved with were the Heinkel 112 fighter (said by many, including the late Eric 'Winkle' Brown, to have been superior to the Me109).
The other one of note was the Mitsubishi A6M 'Zero'.
Thus, he had a pretty fair understanding of advanced fighter design.
Now, at that stage of the war, Australia had nothing capable of air defence except the Wirraway trainer, armed with two forward-firing (plus one cupola mounted) .303s.
Naturally, this was causing not a little anxiety as, in 1941, it was becoming increasingly apparent that Japan was shortly to enter the war in a big way.
We needed something - and quick!
So, Lawrie (Wackett), Fred (Davis) and the boys had a bit of a rummage around in the shed.
Well, we could turn out NA16 parts and General Motors-Holdens were by then producing P&W 1830s for the Beaufort program, so...
Fred Davis took his pencil from behind his ear, sat down and came up with his concept for a small, fast and highly manoeuvrable fighter that would stand a chance against the Zero.
As an aside, to show how desperate things were down here, on the subject of armament for it, at the time we had, suitable for aircraft,
only .303 machine guns.
However... an airman returning from the North Africa campaign had brought home a souvenir - a British Hispano-Suiza 20mm cannon.
This was grabbed, locally reverse engineered and... Voila! - something nice to fit into the wings.
What turned out to be the CA12 Boomerang was deemed to be pretty good by the standards of the day, except...
It wasn't quite fast enough and wouldn't perform adequately at altitudes much over 15,000ft.
Much midnight oil was being burned to improve these aspects of its performance, when...
Along came the Cavalry!! - the Yanks had arrived, with all their goodies!
So, the muscly and powerfully-armed little Boomerang went on to perform very creditably in other roles - and the rest, as they say...
Oh dear, Danny, we got side-tracked once again.
.