Unbelievable Flying Objects
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00:00Aviators, engineers and dreamers are always trying to push the envelope, but sometimes
00:09the envelope pushes back.
00:17In the history of aviation, there were ideas that didn't quite work the way they were supposed
00:23to.
00:24A flying platform is a pretty goofy idea for a flying machine.
00:34There were ideas that were just a little ahead of their time.
00:38I flew it every chance I got.
00:40I was sorry they canceled it, I wouldn't have been flying it yet.
00:47And there were ideas that just wouldn't fly.
00:51The way they came up with this idea is either they were drunk or somebody had seen a science
00:57fiction movie.
01:06From the underappreciated to the downright bizarre to the plainly disastrous, these aircraft
01:14are a different breed of UFO.
01:16We've selected our top ten and we're counting them down.
01:20These are all unbelievable flying objects.
01:31The second half of the 20th century was a bold era in aviation.
01:38It was the dawn of the space age, the infancy of the jet age, a time when test pilots joined
01:44ball players as national heroes.
01:47The Cold War had changed the calculus of aviation and suddenly anything seemed possible,
01:54or at least worth trying.
01:59The mentality was let's make it and try it and see what happens.
02:02Some of it worked, some of it didn't.
02:05Some of these airplanes went faster than you could imagine and some of them flew straight
02:09into the ground.
02:10But there's an old saying, just because something can be done doesn't always mean it should
02:16be.
02:17These are the stories of ten aircraft from the annals of aeronautics that might be better
02:21called aeronautics.
02:24We were willing to make mistakes, we were willing to try things that we might not have
02:28tried in a different period of time.
02:30We almost had to crash to learn.
02:34With the full benefit of 2020 hindsight, we count down these ill-fated, unbelievable flying
02:40objects from number ten to number one.
02:50In the 1940s and 50s, everyone dreamed of having their own personal flying machine.
02:57And why not?
02:58You'd keep it in the garage or the backyard, hop in, start the engine and off you'd go.
03:06In the early 50s, a government engineer named Charles Zimmerman had an idea.
03:11What if the rotors of a helicopter were put on the bottom of an aircraft?
03:16Then the pilot could steer the flying platform simply by shifting his weight from side to
03:20side.
03:23All sorts of models came out, with names like Helovector, Aerocycle, Propcopter.
03:30There was only one tiny problem nobody seemed to notice.
03:33One wrong move and the pilot could fall through the rotors and end up as human gazpacho.
03:39These things were like flying vegematics.
03:42But one of them caught the U.S. Army's eye.
03:46This is the Hiller flying platform.
03:48This is probably the closest that anybody has come to developing a true magic carpet
03:52ride.
03:53The thinking went, you could put a soldier on the Hiller and he could zip across the
03:58battlefield.
03:59All you had to do was pull the cord and start her up, just like a lawnmower.
04:05Flying platforms offered the potential for freeing the infantryman from the restrictions
04:10of the terrain.
04:11The flying platform consists of a large duct.
04:14Contained within the duct are the engines that power the main rotors that lift it.
04:18The Hiller used a ducted fan to give the vehicle lift, including two counter-rotating propellers.
04:25The duct eliminates the turbulence that would normally form at the tips of the rotor blades,
04:30making the propeller more efficient.
04:32To control the aircraft, the pilot would simply lean in the direction that he wished to travel.
04:37Lean right, go right, lean forward, go forward.
04:39Very simple in concept, but a little bit more difficult in execution.
04:43It just looks like it would be a riot to be in this thing and you could almost charge
04:47people to do this at a carnival.
04:49Just a great idea.
04:52A simple throttle governing engine speed and a yaw control, and presto, you've got a one-man
04:58airborne fighting machine.
05:00It's more like a flying lawnmower.
05:02You could cut a lot of grass with a Hiller flying platform.
05:05At least a lawnmower is stable.
05:07The Hiller was a challenge to stabilize and control, especially for a GI playing amateur pilot.
05:14As you would gain speed, the leading edge of the platform would generate more lift than
05:19the trailing edge.
05:21As a result, the front of the platform would begin to pitch up, so you could never exceed
05:25maybe 15 miles per hour or so.
05:27The flying platform was also unstable above 10 feet.
05:31Hey, at least the soldier could fly 10 feet high.
05:35And the idea that a soldier could fly that thing and then fire a weapon is crazy.
05:41As you see from the pilot leaning forward, when you lean forward or raise your gun and
05:47change the center of gravity of the platform, it's going to start moving on you.
05:53Totally unstable, too slow, impossible to shoot from, and better suited for cutting grass.
05:59For some reason, the Army canceled the program in 1959.
06:04In our countdown of unbelievable flying objects, the Hiller flying platform is number 10.
06:15The Cold War spawned some pretty impressive aircraft, but some of them were less Dr. Strangelove
06:21than just plain strange.
06:23The Pogo and the Salmon, yes, that's what they were called, have to be among the strangest.
06:31In the early 50s, the Navy was looking for a vertical takeoff and landing, or VTOL, fighter
06:37aircraft that could operate off of almost any Navy ship.
06:42That way, if the dreaded Soviet nuclear attack ever came, the Navy's fighter aircraft would
06:46be spread out instead of being sitting ducks.
06:50So the result of this was a competition between two aircraft for a vertical takeoff and landing
06:56fighter plane.
06:57The Navy awarded contracts to two competing manufacturers, Convair and Lockheed, to develop
07:03prototypes.
07:05Convair came up with the XFY-1, also known as the Pogo.
07:10Lockheed designed the XFV-1, nicknamed the Salmon.
07:15Both these planes were designed to sit on their tails so they would be ready for vertical
07:19takeoff.
07:20It would have been great if that had been their only major quirk.
07:24For example, the Salmon needed a specially built cradle to raise it into launch position.
07:30Talk about swimming upstream.
07:33It took three years to develop a prototype for the Pogo.
07:38The first flight tests were conducted inside an old blimp hanger with a tether attached
07:42to the nose for safety.
07:44Then it was time to move the Pogo outdoors, minus the lifeline for the pilot.
07:50A Marine aviator named Skeets Coleman was the first, and one of the last, to actually
07:56fly one.
07:58The pilot had to climb a ladder to reach the Pogo's cockpit, more than 20 feet off the
08:02ground.
08:03His reclining seat back would be in an almost horizontal position, like an astronaut's.
08:08The most frightening thing about flying the Pogo was the terrible position in which the
08:15pilot was located.
08:17Johnny Nabel was one of the only other pilots besides Skeets Coleman to attempt to fly the
08:22Pogo.
08:23When it came my turn to fly, I was foolish enough to think that I could jump in it and
08:29fly it, and I almost wrecked the aircraft doing it.
08:32A new aircraft, a radical new concept, so who needs training?
08:36The Pogo idea proved that the test pilots of the 1950s were fearless.
08:47The XFV-1 was piloted by Herman Fish Salmon.
08:51The plane was actually nicknamed after him.
08:54But someone must have figured Fish wasn't a cool name for a plane, so they nicknamed
08:58it the Salmon instead.
09:01Okay.
09:04Both aircraft were powered by two counter-rotating propellers on the nose.
09:08The Allison YT-40 turboprop engine would provide enough sheer power to give the aircraft lift
09:14without the benefit of wings.
09:18Once airborne, the aircraft would slowly nose down until it flew horizontally, like a conventional
09:23airplane.
09:24Then, the pilot would simply transition back to vertical mode for landing.
09:29Sound easy?
09:30It was probably not too bad to take off.
09:34You know, I could take it off.
09:36You could take it off.
09:37Getting it back on the ground is another story.
09:40The problem was, the pilot had to land the plane on its tail backwards while looking
09:46over his shoulder.
09:48Only sissies would use rear-view mirrors.
09:52So you had to keep your head inside the cockpit, try to twist your head around in this manner,
09:57and if you'd like to get a feel for what it was like, try parking an automobile in
10:02parallel parking sometime by going this way instead of leaning over and looking at the
10:07curb.
10:08But while the Pogo was at least enjoying limited success, the Salmon was floundering.
10:14In two years of testing, it was never able to take off or land vertically.
10:20And if the Pogo and Salmon were having so much trouble with vertical landings on good
10:24old stable terra firma, how were they ever supposed to land at sea?
10:29Imagine now doing this, approaching a ship's deck that's pitching in violent seas, and
10:35trying not to flip the thing over as you contact the surface.
10:39Virtually impossible.
10:40During the final stages of the Salmon program, a Lockheed engineer actually admitted that
10:46test pilots were afraid to fly it.
10:49Test pilots afraid?
10:51No one was actually killed flying these aircraft.
10:54But by the mid-1950s, the Navy decided the Pogo and Salmon had the wrong stuff, and both
11:00programs were scrubbed.
11:02The Salmon fishtailing its way to total failure at number nine, and the Pogo coming in at
11:08number eight because it actually did take off and land vertically.
11:14Say it's the late 1960s.
11:16You look up and this is what you see.
11:19An airplane with mutant wings flying like a helicopter.
11:23No, you're not hallucinating this time.
11:26You're looking at the CL-84 Dynavert, an airplane that was so unbelievable it really should
11:33have succeeded.
11:34The CL-84 came along at the end of the 1950s and into the 60s and 70s, and it was part
11:42of a long search for an airplane that would take off like a helicopter, cruise at airplane
11:47speeds, and land as a helicopter on a fairly confined space.
11:52It's got to be 33 years since I've seen this.
11:55Here's my name on here, still there, after all these years.
12:02Doug Atkins was the chief test pilot for the CL-84 program in Canada.
12:08Yeah, this has to be one of the hottest airplanes I've ever flown, with all that glass on top.
12:13And that was because it had a frangible top, and if you were going to eject, you ejected
12:18through that frangible glass.
12:20Built by Canadair, the Dynavert could fly horizontally like a normal airplane.
12:25But its wings could tilt, allowing the Dynavert to take off and land vertically like a helicopter.
12:32The whole wing, moving up and down, was moved by that screw jack.
12:38And that was a very, very primary piece of the equipment.
12:42The Dynavert could also hover, fly sideways, and even backwards.
12:47With this airplane, it had both very high speed, and it was superbly maneuverable.
12:52Of course, you get into this mode where you're going to do a 360-degree turn, where you just
12:58wind the wing tilt up, and you're driving your lift vector into the center of the turn,
13:03and you can literally do a 360-degree turn into a 200-foot diameter.
13:07The Dynavert was much faster than a helicopter, with flight speeds up to 330 miles per hour
13:13and a range of up to 2,400 miles.
13:15To take off vertically, the pilot simply pushed a thumb wheel on the joystick, and the wings
13:20would rotate to a 90-degree angle, putting the propellers in a horizontal position like a helicopter's.
13:27Sometimes, the tilt wings had a mind of their own.
13:30Engineering had assured me, absolutely assured me, that this thing would never move uncommanded.
13:34And I'm flying along north of Montreal one day, and all of a sudden, I'm going slower and up,
13:40and here's the wing going up.
13:42I looked at my thumb, it was not on the wing tilt mechanism, and that thing had run away.
13:50In addition to its vertical takeoff and landing abilities, the CL-84 had short takeoff and landing,
13:56or STOL, capability, meaning it could operate with less than 150 feet of runway.
14:03For STOL operations, the pilot would tilt the wings at a 30 or 40-degree angle,
14:08and the Dynavert would touch down or take off in the blink of an eye.
14:12The military would have been crazy not to want this aircraft, or so you'd think.
14:18It could be used for troop transport, reconnaissance, supply drops, and as a gunship.
14:34The U.S. Navy was interested in the Dynavert for search and rescue and anti-submarine warfare.
14:41We took it from the Pentagon demonstration down to Oceania in Virginia,
14:47and did a number of flights out of Oceania and then three flights out onto the Guam,
14:54which is a 15,000-ton helicopter carrier.
15:03But it wasn't all smooth flying for the Dynavert. Mechanical failure caused two crashes.
15:09No one was injured, but the planes were totaled.
15:13While engineers ironed out the kinks, Canadair looked for customers.
15:18The timing couldn't have been worse.
15:22The Dynavert was the first of its kind.
15:27The Vietnam War was coming to an end, and during the war,
15:31helicopters had proven themselves as the vertical takeoff and landing workhorses.
15:36So, let's see. Helicopters in.
15:40Weird planes with propellers and tilting wings? Definitely out.
15:44I flew it every chance I got. I was sorry they canceled it.
15:48I would have been flabbergasted.
15:52I flew it every chance I got. I was sorry they canceled it.
15:56I would have been flying it yet. In fact, with my name on it, they could give it back to me.
16:00So, was the Dynavert a crazy, impractical idea, or maybe just a little ahead of its time?
16:06After all, a mere one generation later, there's the V-22 Osprey,
16:11an airplane that combines vertical takeoff and landing and short takeoff and landing capabilities.
16:16Sounds familiar, eh?
16:18We're in the same landing zones that helicopters can go, but we can fly higher and fly faster than they can.
16:23So, what changed? Instead of tilt wings like the Dynavert, the Osprey has tilt rotors.
16:29You can see the nacelles up here, and within that are our engines and our gearboxes.
16:33And what those do is they actually move all the way back to 96 degrees, and they can come forward to zero degrees.
16:39And, like the Dynavert, it's taken the manufacturer a couple of decades to iron out the kinks.
16:45It's a very advanced cockpit. We actually have three flight control computers
16:48that allow us to be able to phase in and phase out either helicopter or airplane controls
16:52as we change from airplane to helicopter modes.
16:56With cutting edge controls, the Osprey was able to lick some of the problems the Dynavert couldn't.
17:02So, where to rank the tilt wing plane that could, but didn't, yet paved the way for the Osprey?
17:08And for giving it the old Canadian try, the CL-84 Dynavert comes in at number seven.
17:19One look at the McDonnell Douglas XF-85 fighter, the Goblin, might have you wondering,
17:25what were they smoking when they thought this one up? It was nicknamed the flying egg.
17:31It looks like somebody took an egg and stuck some wings on it.
17:34You can see that it's extremely small from the tail all the way up to the nose, not very big at all.
17:41The Goblin is another crazy aircraft designed in the 1950s and proves the axiom of aviation
17:48that if an airplane looks good, it'll fly good. And the Goblin is not a good looking airplane.
17:55Believe it or not, there actually is a rational explanation for this tiny jet fighter with the stubby little wings.
18:03After World War II, the Air Force thought bombers should have their very own personal escort fighters.
18:10And what better way to make sure one is there when you need it than to carry it along with you?
18:15Latching onto the bomber like a mosquito on steroids, the Goblin earned the designation Parasite Fighter.
18:22So, the idea was for this Parasite Fighter to be carried inside the bomber like a B-36
18:28and then be released to fight off the hordes of the enemy fighters and then be recaptured into the airplane and flown along.
18:36Well, that just isn't going to work.
18:38The Goblin was designed to be carried in the bomb bay of the B-36 Peacemaker.
18:43That would be a tight squeeze for a fighter jet.
18:46The Goblin was going to have to be mighty small to fit, really small.
18:51At 14 feet from nose to tail, the entire aircraft was shorter than the wingspan of some jet fighters.
18:57A conventional tail and elevator wouldn't have fit into the bomb bay of the mothership.
19:02So, its designers gave the Goblin six smaller tails for stability.
19:06And the plane was so compact, the pilot couldn't be any taller than 5 foot 8.
19:12So, we have a jet nicknamed the Flying Egg with six tails flown by a miniature pilot.
19:18But that's not the best part.
19:20The Goblin was attached to a retractable trapeze on the B-36,
19:24which latched onto a hook mounted just in front of the Goblin's cockpit,
19:28detaching from the trapeze when it was time to launch the Goblin piece of cake.
19:33After it was launched and while it was in flight, the hook would actually retract into the nose of the airplane.
19:40But hooking back onto this flying trapeze while flying was a nightmare.
19:45Due to the turbulence of the mothership, the Goblin wasn't able to hook up very easily to the mothership.
19:54In one incident, the Goblin collided with the trapeze, smashing the canopy
20:00and forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing after plunging 40,000 feet.
20:06And since the Goblin wasn't intended to ever actually land, they never bothered to fit her with landing gear.
20:13Oops, make that a belly landing.
20:16The pilot survived and so did the aircraft.
20:19But the Goblin had succeeded in spooking the Air Force.
20:22It was the little fighter jet that couldn't.
20:25It was no match for Soviet MiG-15s.
20:27It was no match for anything.
20:30The project wasted about a billion in today's dollars before the government pulled the plug.
20:35The Flying Egg was more scrambled than well done.
20:39And flying it was no yolk.
20:42In our countdown of unbelievable flying objects, the Goblin ends up at number six.
20:53In the 1950s, it seems like everyone was obsessed with UFOs.
20:59People turning south from the freeway were startled when they saw three flying saucers high over Hollywood Boulevard.
21:07At the same time, the armed services were willing to test almost any idea that seemed promising.
21:13So it was only a matter of time before someone tried to invent a real-life flying saucer.
21:20In the early 50s, the Canadians had begun experimenting with a proof-of-concept aircraft
21:25that captured the imagination of the U.S. armed services, called the Avrocar.
21:32Early studies on behalf of the United States Air Force
21:35proved the feasibility of a circular planform vertical takeoff aircraft
21:40utilizing a system of peripheral jets for propulsion, stabilization, and control.
21:49The Avrocar looks like George Jetson's car that he drove to work.
21:54The way they came up with this idea is either they were drunk
21:58or somebody had seen a science fiction movie
22:01and they thought, you know, if we've got flying saucers in these things and they can go intergalactic,
22:06we can build a flying saucer that will go Mach 1 or Mach 2 for the ground.
22:10The U.S. Air Force was interested in the Avrocar as a kind of early stealth aircraft
22:15that could hover beneath enemy radar, then zoom into the sky at supersonic speeds.
22:21That's right, supersonic, an all-terrain, all-American, built secretly in Canada,
22:27reconnaissance vehicle that would be invisible to radar and fly supersonically.
22:32And best of all, an homage to a Frisbee.
22:38Like a Frisbee, it features a curved upper surface in which air traveling over the top
22:43functions just as it does on the wing of a fixed-wing airplane.
22:47But how is this flying saucer supposed to actually fly?
22:50The Avrocar was powered by three gas turbine engines.
22:54The exhaust from these engines drove a turbo rotor in the center of the vehicle.
22:58The thrust from the turbo rotor passed through a combination of nozzles on the bottom and side of the Avrocar
23:04to create lift and control the aircraft's movements.
23:08The pilot, when he moves his control stick, moved this ring one way or the other
23:13to allow more air either out of the aircraft to the front, back, to the sides,
23:18and this provided its directional control.
23:25In theory, the Avrocar should have worked great.
23:29But in reality, it performed pretty dismally.
23:33Its unusual propulsion system left the Avrocar underpowered and seriously unstable.
23:39And the flying saucer rocked and rolled its way through early flight testing.
23:55When you reach the speed of about 30 miles an hour,
23:58the Avrocar would begin to oscillate wildly around its vertical axis.
24:03There were more tests and more modifications.
24:06The nozzles were repositioned again and again.
24:10Eventually, it began to sink in.
24:13The Avrocar was never going to fly very fast or very high without wobbling.
24:18In fact, the fastest the Avrocar ever flew was 35 miles per hour.
24:24That's Mach 0.04.
24:27The only way this thing is going to go Mach 2 is if you're hovering at it
24:30and you come over a cliff, and in that split second before it hits the ground,
24:35it might go Mach 2.
24:37Okay, it was a little slow.
24:39And the highest it ever got off the ground was about 3 feet.
24:43But it looked cool.
24:45The Avrocar was not only weird, it was a failure in every sense of the word.
24:49At the end of 1961, and $10 million later,
24:54the Air Force squashed the Avrocar program for good.
24:57Colonel Edwards gave the signal to fire.
25:01The search for UFOs and flying saucers would go on,
25:05but the official attempt to build one was officially dead.
25:09The verdict was, let the aliens build flying saucers.
25:13It was time for us to try something else.
25:16The Avrocar's ranking in our pantheon of perfectly strange aircraft?
25:20It's a solid number five.
25:28There's nothing unbelievable about the Avro Arrow supersonic fighter.
25:35It's only what happened to the Arrow that's hard to believe.
25:40The first thing you see when you see the Arrow is it's just a gorgeous airplane.
25:45It is a beautiful airplane.
25:47Unfortunately, it's a beautiful airplane that came along probably at the wrong time.
25:54And there she is.
25:56Loren Ersel was a test pilot in the Arrow program in the 1950s.
26:00He hasn't seen the aircraft for nearly 50 years.
26:04It's magnificent. It's just magnificent.
26:08It almost makes me think it's the real thing.
26:11This is an Arrow replica at the Toronto Aerospace Museum.
26:15All of the original Arrows are gone, but more on that later.
26:20I'll open up the clamshell doors for you, and you can have a look inside.
26:24The Arrow was a remarkable aircraft for its time.
26:28In fact, this sleek supersonic interceptor was actually ahead of its time.
26:33In flight, the Arrow was beautiful.
26:36It was an elegant thing to see.
26:39You cannot appreciate the elegance of the shape of the aircraft when it's sitting on the ground.
26:46In the air, I can only describe it as a thing of beauty.
26:52Designed by Avro Aviation in the 1950s as a supersonic interceptor,
26:57the Arrow was fast, fleet, and furious.
27:01Its mission was to defend North America from Soviet nuclear bombers.
27:05With its advanced electronic system and guided missiles,
27:09this supersonic sentinel is designed to guard the Arctic approaches to the western hemisphere.
27:16Developed for the Royal Canadian Air Force,
27:19the Arrow became an intense source of pride for all of Canada,
27:23possibly even edging out hockey and maple syrup, at least for a little while.
27:28Everybody thought they were doing something significant, and we were.
27:33The Arrow was one of the most advanced aircraft in the world.
27:37It was the first of its kind.
27:40One of the first things that's remarkable about this aircraft is its size.
27:46This aeroplane is 77 feet long and has a wingspan of 50 feet,
27:54and it carries a fuel load in the vicinity of 2,700 gallons.
27:59The Arrow had a swept, or decked, wing.
28:04and the leading edges of the wings were notched to minimize turbulence.
28:08The Arrow was to be powered by two Orenda Iroquois engines
28:12that would deliver three times the thrust of the closest rival, but weighed 30% less.
28:17And the aircraft featured a new fly-by-wire design,
28:21using electrical signals to move flight-control surfaces around the wing.
28:25The Arrow was designed to be able to fly in the air,
28:30using electrical signals to move flight-control surfaces,
28:33instead of the more conventional hydraulics in use at the time.
28:3810,000 employees swarmed to the margins of the field
28:41to watch the product of their hands and brains at this climax to the years of creation.
28:46Despite a few mishaps, unlike most of the other planes in our countdown,
28:50the Arrow actually performed even better than expected.
28:54On its third flight, the Arrow flew supersonically.
28:57On its seventh flight, it exceeded 1,000 miles an hour while climbing.
29:02It flew faster and higher than any other fighter jet at the time,
29:06with speeds approaching Mach 2 and altitudes of nearly 60,000 feet.
29:11Well, the Martin Baker seat had an elevator on it.
29:15Lorne Ursel was training to fly the Arrow in 1957.
29:18He had successfully completed a high-speed taxi
29:21and was looking forward to his first real flight.
29:24When he reported to work the next day, he got a life-altering surprise.
29:29My flight had been cancelled.
29:31Senior management had decided that they did not want to risk
29:35checking out another pilot on the aircraft at this time.
29:39Ursel didn't know it, but inside Avro headquarters,
29:42there were murmurings that the Arrow would be terminated.
29:45Despite its record-breaking potential and shockingly successful debut,
29:50a few months later, in early 1958,
29:53the Canadian government cancelled the program.
29:5629,000 workers and subcontractors were laid off in a single day.
30:02The impact of this cancellation on the Canadian aerospace industry
30:09was extraordinary.
30:12It set us back 20 or 30 years.
30:15Why kill a revolutionary new aircraft that exceeded expectations?
30:19The Canadian press claimed that the Arrow's costs were spiraling out of control
30:24and that the project was an embarrassment to the new prime minister,
30:27so it had to be sacrificed.
30:30But the real reason may have more to do with priorities south of the border.
30:34When the Arrow program began,
30:36the Americans were worried about Soviet nuclear bombers,
30:39but now the concern was Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs.
30:45The new defense strategy would center around missiles that could kill Soviet ICBMs
30:50and not manned interceptor aircraft like the Arrow.
30:54But it got caught up in the politics of intercontinental missiles,
30:59long-range bombers, and the fact that the technology,
31:04many people thought the technology was going to preclude even having a manned fighter at all.
31:09And still the plot thickens.
31:11Shortly after the project was cancelled,
31:14the Canadian government ordered all six Arrow research aircraft to be destroyed.
31:19No one is certain why.
31:24The Arrow, a cool plane that was mysteriously killed at birth
31:29and then had almost every trace of its existence erased.
31:33But for us, it soars faster than the speed of sound
31:37in the countdown of unbelievable flying objects.
31:44Surf's definitely up for our next unbelievable flying object.
31:49This is the Convair XF-2Y Seadart,
31:53a supersonic fighter jet on water skis.
31:57That's my aircraft.
31:59I did over 100 tests in the Seadart, and I loved it.
32:04B.J. Long was a Convair Seadart test pilot in the 1950s.
32:09When we operated the Seadart, both the single and twin ski,
32:13we would taxi down the seaplane ramp into San Diego Bay.
32:18The Seadart had a V-shaped bottom, like the hull of a motorboat.
32:23On takeoff, the hull would lift off of the water,
32:26and she'd leave the deep blue sea for the wild blue yonder.
32:31The U.S. Navy dreamed up the Seadart concept
32:34as part of a proposed long-range seaplane strike force
32:38that wouldn't have to rely on aircraft carriers.
32:41The thinking was, with 75% of the Earth's surface being water,
32:45that's a lot of runway.
32:47Convair Seadart is really a cool-looking airplane,
32:51but it's just an idea that didn't work.
32:54Well, maybe they didn't think this one through totally.
32:57After all, putting a supersonic jet on the water, on skis,
33:02could be asking for trouble.
33:04And we're just guessing, mind you,
33:06that saltwater and jet engines might not really mix.
33:11You know, the whole idea of a seaplane jet
33:14just doesn't make any sense at all.
33:16It's okay to put propellers on a seaplane
33:18and put them up way in the air,
33:20but on a jet, just by the nature of its design,
33:23and on takeoff, it gets very rough.
33:26Theoretically, it could be very rough,
33:28and that water is going to go into the engine.
33:30Worse yet, the ocean, as it turned out,
33:33was not the friendliest runway.
33:35It has these giant speed bumps we call waves.
33:40It had to be operated on a very calm sea.
33:44So imagine in a combat situation, if there was a calm sea,
33:48and the airplane returned and the weather changed
33:50and you had three-foot waves,
33:53you're stuck, you've got to bail out,
33:55or you're going to become a submarine.
33:59And what about those stylish skis?
34:02Turns out they vibrated so violently on takeoff and landing
34:06that the pilot was left shaken and stirred.
34:10Most people have been on water skis,
34:12and you know how rough that is.
34:14And I don't know how fast you water ski,
34:16but I would guess around 20 knots, something like that.
34:19Can you imagine taking off at speeds
34:21excess of 100 knots on these skis in a jet airplane
34:26and possibly rough seas?
34:28These poor guys are going to lose their fillings
34:30before they rotate the plane up out of the water.
34:34The vibration would be so bad
34:36that I would momentarily go blind from vibration.
34:40That's just exactly like having a tuning fork
34:42or putting a knife on the edge of a table and twanging it.
34:45Did he just say he'd go blind?
34:47Not good.
34:50But the Sea Dart program had bigger problems
34:52than just the occasional pilot going blind
34:55and salt water going into the jet engines.
34:58It also had the mother of all laws to overcome,
35:02Murphy's Law.
35:04In November 1953, test pilot Charles Richborg
35:08was demonstrating the Sea Dart for the Navy Brass
35:10on San Diego Bay when he attempted a high-speed flyby.
35:15He was coming in going west over San Diego Bay,
35:19and when he got over the bay, he fired his afterburner,
35:23which caused the nose to pitch down.
35:25Then he was going to correct.
35:27Well, in those days, they had a delay in the system,
35:31the way the mechanism was,
35:33and he got into a pilot-induced pitch oscillation,
35:36and the airplane broke up in negative bending.
35:43And he was killed in the impact.
35:44It was not the kind of publicity that a troubled plane needed.
35:47The Sea Dart program was suspended,
35:49and a few months later, it was canceled.
35:53The whole concept behind the Sea Dart,
35:55to take off and land off the water,
35:57became surpassed by the advent
36:01of very large aircraft carriers with steam catapults
36:04and the ability to recover very heavy aircraft
36:07in very short distances.
36:10And the idea of a supersonic seaplane on water skis
36:13was sunk for good,
36:15all of which makes the Sea Dart an unbelievable number three.
36:26And now, from an interesting idea that might have worked
36:29to an idea that was so bad, it puts the horror in horrible.
36:34The Japanese Kugisho Oka was a guided missile
36:38with the most intelligent guidance system devised to that time.
36:43Near the end of World War II,
36:45Allied sea and air power were pounding the Japanese war machine.
36:49One of the only advantages the Japanese had were its kamikazes,
36:53pilots willing to fly suicide missions for the war effort.
36:57But before a kamikaze pilot could sink an Allied ship,
37:00he had to run a gauntlet of anti-aircraft fire
37:02and protective fighter planes.
37:04The Japanese wanted a new kind of aircraft,
37:07one specifically built for kamikaze missions,
37:10something lighter, faster, and most of all, cheaper.
37:13Like most of our other unbelievable flying objects,
37:16the Oka was a first.
37:18It was the first aircraft specifically designed to kill its pilot.
37:23It had a great sense of national honor.
37:25There was no shortage of people willing to die for the cause,
37:28and they took full advantage of that.
37:30With a one-way ticket on a flying bomb,
37:32the doomed pilot didn't need much training,
37:34but they did practice on a special Oka trainer.
37:38Pilots got two or three landing opportunities in this airplane,
37:42and they flew at pretty high speeds
37:46and landed at an amazing speed of 130 miles an hour.
37:50The landing skid down here can show you that.
37:52The Oka would be launched from its mothership,
37:55a Japanese Betty bomber.
37:57The Oka could have been devastatingly effective
38:00had it worked the way it was really supposed to.
38:03Each Betty bomber could carry one Oka into combat.
38:06The problem for the Japanese was the Oka had very limited range,
38:11so it had to be dropped close to the targeted warship.
38:14Making matters worse, the Betty motherships were so lightly armored
38:18and so flammable, they could have put a bullseye on the fuselage.
38:22The main problem with the Oka was not the plane itself.
38:25It was the fact of getting it to the target.
38:27The bombers were too slow and too easily intercepted.
38:30It didn't take the U.S. Navy very long to figure out what to do.
38:34Well, why wait for the Kamikazes to be dropped?
38:38Why not go out and destroy the Betty bomber?
38:40And that's exactly what we did.
38:42We went out and destroyed the bombers carrying in the Okas,
38:46and that put a pretty quick end to the threat.
38:50In March of 1945, U.S. Navy warplanes shot down 16 Betty motherships
38:56before any of the Okas could even be launched.
38:59And no doubt, much to the relief of its human guidance systems,
39:02by the time the Japanese had redesigned the Oka to boost its power and range,
39:07the war was all but over.
39:10So while the world's first human-guided missile might be a footnote in history,
39:15it is, without a doubt, our number two unbelievable flying object.
39:22So, let's see.
39:24We've had a flying platform that was more like a flying lawnmower,
39:28a flying saucer that never got more than three feet off the ground,
39:32a pogo, a salmon, a flying egg or goblin,
39:37an airplane with mutant wings that could fly like a helicopter,
39:40a supersonic interceptor that disappeared forever,
39:43a supersonic fighter on water skis,
39:47and the world's first aircraft actually intended to kill its pilot.
39:52What could be more unbelievable than that?
39:55Our final aircraft was the craziest of them all.
40:01It was yet another ludicrous last-ditch effort toward the end of World War II,
40:06this time by those ever-so-inventive Nazis.
40:11Allied B-17s and B-24s had been pummeling German targets,
40:16and the Germans hadn't found an effective way to stop them.
40:20Out of sheer desperation and maybe delusion,
40:23the Nazis developed a rocket-powered interceptor called the Viper,
40:27also known as the BA-349 Natter.
40:32The Natter's mission was to intercept Allied B-17s and blow them out of the sky.
40:37That was the theory, anyway.
40:39It would have looked kind of like this,
40:41except this one was an unmanned target plane in a guided missile test.
40:46It's not the kind of airplane that you would build if you were winning the war.
40:50It's kind of the last gasp of the desperate people in the last battles of the war.
40:56Desperate indeed.
40:58The Natter was one of the few World War II aircraft made of wood.
41:02These German aviation workers are actually sanding and planing a war plane.
41:09They needed something that could be brought into service quickly,
41:12produced cheaply using wood rather than aluminum, which they were running short of.
41:18So the concept of a rocket-propelled point defense interceptor had a certain appeal.
41:25One of the only remaining Natters in the world
41:27is located at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's restoration facility
41:32outside of Washington, D.C.
41:35The Natter was among the most bizarre advanced German weapons systems of World War II.
41:40Powered by its rocket motors,
41:42the Natter would blast off vertically from a launch tower on the ground.
41:46The towers would be set up around whichever target the Natter squadron would be defending.
41:52The rocket motors would propel the airplane up to the altitude of the bombers in under a minute,
41:58up to 20,000 or 25,000 feet.
42:00The lucky pilot of this wooden interceptor would use rudimentary controls
42:04to guide it toward the Allied bomber.
42:06The Natter was armed with 24 70-millimeter rockets neatly packed in its nose cone.
42:12A protective nose cap covered the rocket armament in the nose of the airplane.
42:17As the pilot initiated his attack on a bomber, first the nose cap was jettisoned,
42:21and then all 24 rockets were fired off scattergun fashion in a salvo.
42:26The Natter was literally a one-shot deal.
42:29And there was no landing gear because, like the Goblin,
42:32the Natter wasn't designed to do anything as simple as just land.
42:37No, that would be way too easy.
42:39Instead of gliding back to Earth, the pilot would pull a lever activating explosive bolts,
42:46which allowed the entire forward section of the aircraft,
42:49the nose, the windscreen, to detach and fall away.
42:53After the nose section was jettisoned, the pilot, who had already unbuckled his seat harness,
42:58pulled another lever, which allowed a second parachute to deploy from the rear of the airplane.
43:04The pilot then was thrown forward away from the aircraft and came down by his own parachute.
43:09The rear section of the Natter then floated to Earth, where it could be refueled, refitted, and flown again.
43:15Let us review.
43:17Pilot flies wooden plane launch-like missile up to allied bomber,
43:22shoots 24 missiles at once out of the nose,
43:25and as he flies back toward Earth, he pops away the front of the wooden plane,
43:30has a parachute pull away the back of the reusable wooden plane,
43:34leaving him now wooden-planeless while simultaneously popping another shoot for himself.
43:40But the Natter program never really got off the ground.
43:44With an imminent allied invasion, there wasn't much time for testing, let alone deployment.
43:49This guy definitely wouldn't be smiling if he actually had to fly this thing.
43:54The odds of returning safely from a mission were not going to be zergut.
43:59No surprise that at least one pilot was killed during testing when he lost control after launch.
44:04The Natter is really an illustration of not only the desperation of the Nazi regime,
44:11but its attitude towards its fighter pilots by late 1944.
44:16The airplane was intended to be a semi-expendable interceptor.
44:20In a sense, so too were the pilots.
44:23And in the end, the Natter never even came close to downing a single allied bomber.
44:29On the eve of the allied victory, the Germans blew up 10 of the remaining Natters,
44:35we're guessing to spare themselves from the embarrassment.
44:38So let's see, inept, inert, and inhumane,
44:41in our countdown of unbelievable flying objects,
44:44the nutty Nazi Natter is hands down our number one unbelievable flying object.
44:51So there you have it.
44:53From the pitiful, to the impractical, from the sublime, to the ridiculous.
44:58Most of these aircraft were the wrong planes, in the wrong places, at the wrong times.
45:03Engineers and designers dared to dream, when in hindsight, they probably should have stayed awake.
45:09The Oka, the Natter, the Dynavert, the Sea Dart, and the Pogo.
45:14Some were wacky, some were wild, and some were built out of sheer desperation.
45:19But while most of these aircraft flopped,
45:21many of them bravely blazed a trail for aviation breakthroughs in years to come.
45:26I'm not sure we would have gotten there if it hadn't been for some of the funny things we did.
45:31And God bless them all for trying.
45:34As long as there is aviation, there will be engineers, aviators, and just plain dreamers
45:40who can't resist pushing that envelope,
45:43and are unafraid of inventing something unbelievable enough
45:46to qualify as an unbelievable flying object that just might work.
46:13Transcribed by ESO, translated by —