Douglas Cloudster II

The Douglas Cloudster II was an American prototype five-seat light aircraft of the late 1940s with an unusual layout: two air-cooled piston engines buried in the rear fuselage drove a single eight-foot twin-bladed pusher propeller mounted behind the tail through driveshafts taken from P-39 fighters. Douglas had developed this buried-engine configuration in the early 1940s to cut drag and first demonstrated it in the XB-42 Mixmaster, then applied it to the Model 1015 Cloudster II for executive or air charter use. The pilot and four passengers sat in an enclosed cabin ahead of the unswept laminar flow wing. It made its maiden flight on March 12, 1947 and had good performance and handling, but it suffered excessive vibration and overheated on the ground; development was abandoned late in 1947 after only two flights, as the selling price had risen from a planned 30,000 dollars to 68,000.