Fantastic Flapjack
Another beautiful abandoned idea: note the fire extinguisher that the man on the left may be eying.
One of the most unusual aircraft ever designed for the U.S. Navy was the Chance Vought V-173, also known as the Zimmerman “Flying Pancake”. It was a prototype “proof of concept” aircraft that lacked wings, instead relying on its flat circular body to provide the lifting surface. This multi-million dollar project nearly became the first V/STOL (vertical takeoff and landing) fighter. The V-173 blueprints were shown to the Navy in 1939.
[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfpTDOAfj7Y”]
Beautiful and very UFO O___O
It’s funny you should mention that – from the wikipedia article:
“Flight testing of the V-173 went on through 1942 and 1943 with 190 flights, resulting in reports of “flying saucers” from surprised Connecticut locals.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_V-173
I’ve seen it. I really love X-planes. So many of them fail for reasons totally unrelated to their reliability in air, others actually suceed but as basis for other concepts, and then there are just the weird concept planes that look bizarre but cool.
Absolutely agreed. I’m not sure how much attention it gets in the US, but there’s a lot of love up here for the Avro Arrow, and the conspiracy theories surrounding it.
I think I built a model of that when I was a kid. I’ll have a look on the net for info 🙂
Very nice! Most of my childhood models were of pretty standard American jets.
Model building is another activity that’s slowly sliding into the dustbin of history, but I really feel like I learned some patience by having to glue those tiny wheels on. 🙂
Up to six or seven years ago I built models of Japanese giant robots (Gundam, Mazinger Z), but I stopped due to lack of time. I guess I also got bored with it… I’m not very clever with my hands and the time it took me to build and color one model was more than it took me to do just about anything else, so at one point I couldn’t see a good reason to go on doing it. Mind, I only built four or five, but yes, that’s something that teaches you patience 🙂
I loved building models but I wasn’t so hot at the painting.