Pogo Stick

At Moffett Field, near San Francisco, the Convair XFY-1 last week made its first public test flight, inside a blimp hangar. Nicknamed "the Pogo Stick," the XFY-1 is the Navy's vertical-takeoff fighter. Standing upright on the tips of its delta wings and two big vertical stabilizers, the odd craft was tethered by six cables to control it, if necessary.

Test Pilot Skeets Coleman started the Allison turboprop engine (5,500 h.p.), and the two counterrotating propellers roared like an indoor tornado. Climbing at about 2.5 ft. per second (a slow walk), the plane rose 60 ft. under perfect control. The restraining cables, hanging slack, were not necessary; Pilot Coleman rose and descended three times, hanging on his prop for 15 minutes and landing on the exact spot from which he took off.

The Navy's job for the XFY-1 is to give air protection to cargo ships. Helicopters can rise from a freighter's deck, but they have little fighting potential. The XFY-1 proved last week that it can rise like a helicopter. Its engine is powerful enough to pull it up vertically with the acceleration of 20 ft. per second per second. At about 500 ft. elevation, this rate of climb will give it the speed of 100 knots (115 m.p.h.). Then it will nose over and fly horizontally.

To return to its base, the XFY-1 will rear back into a nose-up attitude; then it will sink gently to its landing space. Convair engineers are confident that it can do this even on a rolling, pitching freighter plunging through dirty weather.

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