North American A-27

The North American A-27 was a light attack version of the T-6 Texan trainer. Ten aircraft were ordered by Thailand as the NA-69, but in October 1940 the United States Army Air Corps took them over to keep them out of Japanese hands and redesignated them A-27 under its own system. They were powered by a single Wright R-1820 radial engine and carried two forward-firing .30 calibre machine guns, a third gun in the rear cockpit and 400 pound bombs on underwing racks. The aircraft were assigned to the 4th Composite Group at Nichols Field on Luzon in the Philippines, where three pursuit squadrons used them as trainers in 1941. All of them were destroyed within a month of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines during World War II.