Any good twin engined CAS aircraft?

Great picture, marathag but I'm with Frog.

Any Japanese contenders?

The Ki-45

Douglas 7B prototype

R-1830 engines and two .30 cal machine guns in each cheek blister. Four .30 cal guns had been standard attack aircraft forward firing gun armament all during the 30s.
Douglas, unasked, had designed a built an alternative nose with the bombardier taken out an two .50s and two .30s added to the cheek guns.
Please note that the 3 competitors to the 7B, the NA-40, the Stearman X-100 and the Martin 167 all carried two .30s cal in each wing in addition to whatever they had for flexible guns in the fuselage.
The US Army was looking for something better than the Curtiss A-18 and Northrop A-17.

The A-18 had take too long in the 1930s to get into production and was out dated. The wings were fabric covered after the main spar for example.
The Northrop A-17 was smaller(less capable) than the Army wanted.

I know the thread says twin engine, just showing the US evolution of requirements.
Please note that the US Army had issued requirments for medium bombers in March of 1939 and had ordered the B-25 pretty much off the drawing board in Sept 1939.
A bit risky but the NA-40

cut down some of the risk. Please note that this plane used a larger crew than the Douglas and Martin aircraft.
The Army was doing a lot of thinking/planning of the "attack role" and was moving away from the low level multiple MG type of attack due to war games and observations of the Spanish civil war. There was, as in a lot of countries, a lot of internal discussions (bickering) with Army ground forces wanting to keep their ground support aircraft helping on the front lines and the bomber mafia wanting to bomb the rear areas or at least bomb supply routes and not suffer the high losses over the battlefield ( 1937-39 AA guns were not what they would be even in 1940-42, either front line or further to the rear).
For the US, even defending the US shores required longer range aircraft than British, French, German and Soviets needed.

Crossover between light bombers and twin engine attack aircraft gets pretty murky. US Attack aircraft not only had the machine guns but increasing quantities of light (very light) fragmenting bombs vs a small number (relatively) of 100-500lb demolition bombs.

The Hs 129 was reportedly a lovely aircraft to fly and fight, and very popular with pilots. A dedicated attack aircraft, it was well protected and had a reputation of shrugging off hits and getting pilots home even when damaged. However, it was also considered sluggish in comparison to the Ju-87 and under-powered, even with the upgrade from the Argus to the Gnome & Rhone 14Ms. Single engine operations were something of a nightmare, with barely enough power to keep the aircraft above stalling speeds (although that's not unique to the Hs 129 in this time period).

A number of the more famous weapon configurations (the 3.0 cm MK 101, and BK 3.7 and 7.5 cm guns) were also prone to jamming. The 7.5 cm installation in particular was heavy and draggy enough that it was not liked at all. The G-R 14M radial was also rather thirsty - giving short range and loiter time - and its close fitting installation on the 129B produced reliability problems. The engine had a tendency to overheat - up to the point of the engines catching fire mid-flight - and was sensitive to dust ingestion (a serious problem on the Eastern Front and in North Africa) which could lead it to just seize up.



The Ba.88 was a dud. Intended as an all purpose heavy fighter, attack and reconnaissance aircraft, David Mondey said it "... represents perhaps, the most remarkable operational failure of any operational aircraft to see service in World War II". Despite good pre-war performance for the propaganda reels, the process of turning into a viable military aircraft produced an overweight, nasty handling brute of an aircraft with chronically unreliable engines.

The aircraft was probably more fatal to its own pilots than it was to the enemy.The Ba.88 was abandoned a handful of months after Italy entered the war. The best service it saw was probably as airfield dummies to distract Allied aircraft from attacking better aircraft. There's a story about the Ba.88s attempting to attack the British at Sidi Barrani in LIbya in September 1940. The attack had to be aborted because the aircraft couldn't climb to the planned altitude with the fuel/bomb load, couldn't maintain formation due to engine issue and couldn't even reach placarded cruising speeds.



The Bréguet 693 was intended to fill a general purpose light bomber/ground attack & reconnaissance role. It was actually a very handy aircraft which probably suffered more from issues around doctrine and tactical mis-use, rather than anything being fundamentally wrong with the design. The major criticism seems to have been that the aircraft was very lightly built, and so susceptible to undercarriage failures and combat damage. Crews were also critical of the relatively meager armour protection. The 693 was also seen as being a little underarmed and the rear gunner's position was considered nearly worthless.

Early operations saw heavy losses to flak and fighters. Initial French tactics were line up a group of aircraft 'in echelon' to attack German columns down a road, which put them right in the sights of German light cannon. At low altitudes the 693s were also faster than the MS 406s that usually escorted them, so often arrived without fighter cover, leaving them vulnerable to Bf 109s.

French Air Force tactics changed later in the Battle of France and loss rates fell. The 693 was employed in smaller sections of two to four aircraft and would attack perpendicular to German columns (rather than along them) and from very low altitude to gain surprise. Flak was the initial target with strafing, and then pilots would try to hit anything else with light bombs. There were some successes, but too little too late.