Bizarre Aircraft

 By Bruce Shawkey

The Spratt Controllable Wing flies parallel to the ground.

To look at Alexander Lippisch’s Aerodyne is to be baffled at how engineers managed to get such a crazy thing off the ground. The military drives a lot of the development. Some strange looking machines were simply built in order to confront genuine or perceived needs such as refueling in the air, escaping radar detection, or ferrying odd-shaped or heavy cargo. And in a few, rare cases, some odd flying creations help us discover entirely new methods of flight.

In 1934, the Nemuth Parasol, built by students at Miami University, demonstrated that even a circular wing could be used to fly a plane reliably.

When it comes down to the details, engineers can try some crazy things. The Vought V-173 “Flying Pancake” was designed with the World War II Pacific theatre in mind, where the U.S. saw an increased need for ship-borne planes that could take off from short runways. As inexplicably shaped as the V-173 is, Charles Lindberg once flew it and called the aircraft surprisingly easy to handle.

The modern Lockheed Martin P-791 was built to combine the high speed of an airplane with the buoyancy of an airship. Lockheed Martin is still making and selling this combo-craft, which, it says, can stay afloat at 20,000 feet for up to three weeks.

A 200-ton monstrosity, the H-4 Hercules 2 was nicknamed the Spruce Goose because of its wooden frame (despite the fact that it was mostly made of birch). The heavy transport aircraft is the largest fixed-winged seaplane ever built, and was designed by filmmaker and business magnate Howard Hughes. Only one was every built; today it sits in a museum in Oregon.

They said it couldn’t be done, but in the 1950s, tire and blimp-maker Goodyear created an inflatable, flyable plane as a prototype for the U.S. Army. Sadly, the Army cancelled the project when it realized there wasn’t much military use for a plane that could be popped like a balloon.