The B-49 built under license by the Commonwealth Aircraft Company at Fishermen's Bend, Australia as the PS-2 Boomerang II. It was powered by 8 Rolls Royce Avon engines similar to the J-47 in the Sabre. (7,500lb thrust Rolls Royce RA.7 Mk.26 turbojet). These produced a combined thrust of 60 000 pounds. An interesting side note to this is that the initial B-49s were powered by the J-35 jet engine. These proved to be inadequate in power giving the first B-49s a lacklustre performance. The Ministry of Defence, while impressed with the B-49, were not too impressed with its performance. Aussie engineers being what they are, had a simple solution, "Just whack a bigger donk in it mate!" This simple solution gave the Boomerang a very substantial performance boost. This gave the Boomerang II a top speed of well over 600 mph and a bombing range of just over 3000 miles. This would allow the Boomerang to reach targets in Indonesia and southern South East Asia and return to their bases in either Darwin (Northern Territory) or in Curtin (Western Australia).
The PS-2 carried a crew of 9 and on longer missions had a relief crew of 6. With the later upgrades of automated flight systems, the relief crew was often omitted.
It is fairly common knowledge that the first prototype suffered an untimely end when, during high-speed taxi tests, a violent instability developed in the nose gear causing it to collapse breaking the plane in two. This problem was fixed by Australian engineers by upgrading the landing gear from the single nose wheel to a more sturdy dual nose wheel arrangement. The two-wheel main gear configuration was also upgraded to a four wheel main gear strut. This proved highly successful in reducing landing stress on the airframe when landing on un-sealed runways, typical of the Australian Outback. These outback runways were planned for use if the threat of invasion by a southeast Asian country actually eventuated.
Later PS-2s (Also nicknamed the "Playstation" be some crews) had two underwing hard points to carry the license built GAM-77 "Red Heeler" cruise missile. These missiles were built to Australian standards for conditions in the PACRIM and SE Asia theatres. The Red Heeler would be used primarily to knock our forward air defences and other hard targets. Another version, the Blue Heeler was also developed but its capabilities are still classified. (The "Heeler" series of cruise missile were named after the famous Australian breed of cattle dog.)