The Friday Flyby - Wings of Weirdness

The Vultee XP-54 Swoose Goose

(Source)

Whoa! What the heck was that?!?!

The Curtiss-Wright XP-55 Ascender

Wait! What?!?! What the Hell? Did you see that? What the heck was that?!?!

The Northrop XP-56 Black Bullet

Holy crap! What is that, what the fire truck is that!?!?!

I gotta quit drinking, you won't believe what I think I saw!

Weird looking aircraft, I blame Beans.

Actually the subject came up in the comments the other day when Herr Beans mentioned an experimental aircraft that could do odd things with its nose...

The Vultee XP-54 prototype. A Pusher aircraft with twin booms leading to the tail. Tricycle landing gear. Pressurized cockpit. Nose with twin 37mm cannon steerable 3 degrees side to side, 6 degrees up and down.

So you know, I just had to go looking.

The 1930s and 1940s must have been a pretty wild time to be an aircraft designer. Seems like they let their imaginations run wild from time to time. Note that all of the aircraft above actually flew, although none ever became operational.

Vultee XP-54:

The Defense Media Network website had this to say about this aircraft:

As happens so often, the intended powerplant of the big XP-54 ran into technical glitches and had to be canceled. The aircraft had to be completed instead with a 2,300-horsepower Lycoming XH-2470-1 24-cylinder liquid-cooled engine driving a single, four-bladed propeller instead of the planned contra-rotating blades. 

Apart from the engine switch, the XP-54 faced other challenges. In the book Vultee Aircraft, Jonathan Thompson enumerated the strikes against the XP-54 before it ever flew: The XP-54 was, Thompson wrote, “burdened by unconventional engine, airframe, armament, pilot accommodation and ejection systems” and it would have been “unrealistic” to expect it to become “a successful operational airplane.” In an emergency, the pilot was supposed to be able to jettison the propeller twirling around behind his back and escape the aircraft via a downward ejection. The downward escape system was dictated by another revolutionary feature, a pressurized cockpit, something “engineers really didn’t know how to do in fighters,” at the time, said Dustin W. Carter, an engineer who worked at Vultee.

For those of you who expressed interest in how the exploding bolts to jettison the propeller thing actually was supposed to work, if you go here you can read the patent for a similar device (note that it's a link to a PDF, I downloaded the PDF, my computer has not exploded, yet) here. (I was somewhat disappointed that no exploding bolts were involved.) (Note that the patent paperwork actually shows the Bell YFM-1 Airacuda, which we talked about here.)

Another odd thing about the XP-54 was that the pilot boarded the aircraft using an elevator. (I'm sure Tuna will get a kick out of that!)

The XP-54 was unique in numerous ways. The pressurized cockpit required a complex entry system: the pilot's seat acted as an elevator for cockpit access from the ground. The pilot lowered the seat electrically, sat in it, and raised it into the cockpit. Bail-out procedure was complicated by the pressurization system and necessitated a downward ejection of the pilot and seat in order to clear the propeller arc. Also, the nose section could pivot through the vertical, three degrees up and six degrees down. In the nose, two 37 mm T-9 cannon were in rigid mounts while two .50 cal machine guns were in movable mounts. Movement of the nose and machine guns was controlled by a special compensating gun sight. Thus, the cannon trajectory could be elevated without altering the flight attitude of the airplane. The large nose section gave rise to its whimsical nickname, the Swoose Goose, inspired by a song about Alexander who was half swan and half goose: "Alexander was a swoose." – a name also partly shared with the oldest surviving B-17. (Source)

In case you're wondering about the song, well as we're a full-service blog -

Not very PC, is it?

Curtiss XP 55 Ascender:

While I'm not a big fan of the name, (Well, it's supposed to ascend, innit?) this bird is kind of neat looking, but...

(Read Me)

That's the second time I've seen that pusher-type aircraft had engine cooling problems. Makes sense, no airflow over the engine with the prop in the back would be like turning the fan off on a hot Louisiana morning and expecting not to sweat. (Thank the Lord for central air!)

I suppose Ascender is a better name than Descender, which it should also do, but gracefully and not tying any low altitude records if you get my meaning.

At least the engine sounds normal -

Does look like a Burt Rutan design doesn't it?

Northrop XP-56:

Now this bird was just odd looking all the way around -

About that name, Black Bullet -

For reasons that remain obscure, the Northrop XP-56 (first prototype natural metal, second olive drab) was nicknamed the 'Black Bullet'. It certainly resembled a bullet but lacked the projectile speed or direction. The first prototype had no vertical fin, and relied on its underfin more to protect the propeller than to provide stability. This arrangement, of course, was inadequate. Nose heaviness was corrected but became tail heaviness. During a fast taxi run the aircraft blew a tire, somersaulted and threw test pilot John Myers out. He was saved by his polo helmet and the second prototype was fitted with an upper fin. With a 2000hp engine, one thing the XP-56 was not was underpowered, but it proved slower than expected. The intended X-1800 water-cooled engine had been cancelled and the substituted air-cooled radial was not the most suitable for a pusher layout. Fuel consumption was excessive and while waiting to conduct wind-tunnel tests, the project was cancelled. (Read Me)

Threw the pilot out?!?! Not a good thing I'm thinking.

Now of all the weird aircraft out there, and there are many, I've actually seen this one in person, it is a pretty big aircraft!

(Source)

Uh, that thing that just flew by, did that have a puller propeller and a pusher propeller? Yeah, I thought so.

That last bird is the Dornier Do 335 Pfeil, or Arrow auf Englisch.

There is exactly one of those in existence, non-flying rather sadly. Down at Udvar-Hazy, juvat and I both have pictures of it. (No, none with a gunsight superimposed... Which is, of course, a juvat favorite.)

It was apparently very fast and handled very well!

The following video actually talks about the Pfeil in the possession of the Smithsonian...

So the US got two of those at the end of the war, one went to the Army Air Forces, the other to the Navy. Apparently the AAF lost their aircraft, no record exists of it. (I'd check Dave 's Daily Day Dream's condo, I'll betcha he's got it stashed somewhere. Hhmm, juvat has a lot of places to hide an airplane...)

I suspect shoe clerkery!

So the Pfeil at Udvar-Hazy was the bird the Navy test flew? Seems they beat it up quite a bit but at least they didn't lose it.

Interesting little tidbit, which is maybe interesting to only me, is that all four of these aircraft had their first flight in 1943. Odd that...