North American 86 Battlewagon

Here's an aircraft that I had in the "unfinished / unsatisfactory" folder for quite a while. It is derived from the Mitchell and I meant it initially as an advanced trainer named the Rookie... but I just couldn't find how to finish it! So today I settled for a transport version instead and called it the Battlewagon.

The story behind it is this: when Japan declared war to the U.S. in December 1941, North American Aviation figured it would be good to develop a medium-size, single-tail transport using the NA-40 Mitchell as a basis. They built a single prototype of the NA-86 Battlewagon and sent it to U.S.A.A.F. for trials. However, there were already plenty of Douglas DC-3s, and NAA's production capacity was needed elsewhere, with the Mustang and Mitchell. The Battlewagon was therefore rejected and returned to NAA, which cannibalized the airframe for Mitchell spare parts.

NOTE: the real NA-86 is unknown, one in a handful of so-called "charge numbers" that has not been identified by researchers; that's why I chose to use it for this imaginary aircraft, even though the number most certainly corresponded to a real project at the time.


© Stéphane Beaumort / AviaDesign 2010