Douglas Cloudster II
The Douglas Cloudster II was an American prototype five-seat light aircraft of the late 1940s. It was of unusual layout, with two buried piston engines driving a single pusher propeller. Only a single example was built, which flew only twice, as it proved too expensive to be commercially viable.
Design and development
During the early 1940s, Douglas Aircraft Company developed a configuration for high-performance twin-engined aircraft, in which the engines were buried in the fuselage, driving propellers mounted behind a conventional tailplane, in order to reduce drag by eliminating drag inducing objects such as engines from the wing. This layout was first demonstrated in the Douglas XB-42 Mixmaster bomber, which first flew in 1944, showing a 30% reduction in drag compared with a conventional twin-engined layout, while eliminating handling problems due to asymmetric thrust when flying on one engine.Owing to the initial success of the XB-42, Douglas adopted this promising new layout for a medium-range airliner, the DC-8 and a five-seat light aircraft suitable for executive or air charter use, the Model 1015 or Cloudster II.
The Cloudster II was a low-winged monoplane with a retractable nosewheel undercarriage. The pilot and four passengers sat in an enclosed cabin well ahead of the unswept, laminar flow wing. Two air-cooled piston engines were buried in the rear fuselage, driving a single eight foot diameter twin-bladed propeller, mounted behind the empennage via driveshafts taken from P-39 fighters. Two air intakes forward of the wing directed cooling air to the engines, which then exhausted beneath the fuselage.