Vultee XA-41

The Vultee XA-41 was a single-seat, single-engine ground attack aircraft designed by the Vultee engineers of the group that became Convair, known inside the company as Model 90. It was ordered as a dive bomber, but when combat experience made dive bombers look too vulnerable to fighters the contract was changed to low-level ground attack. It was built around the 3,000 horsepower Pratt and Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major, a 28-cylinder four-row radial, and was large for a single-engine aircraft, with a big internal load, external stores and a cockpit 15 feet off the ground. The only example flew on 11 February 1944 and reached 354 miles an hour in testing, with superb manoeuvrability, able to out-turn a P-51B Mustang. No production order came; it served as an engine testbed, was compared by the Navy with the Douglas AD-1 Skyraider and Martin AM-1 Mauler, and was scrapped around 1950.