By far the goofiest of all the aviation accomplishments cited today, the Stipa-Caproni had a hollow, barrel-shaped fuselage, with the entire interior of the fuselage being a gigantic fan. This gave it a strange, almost Looney Tunes appearance. Developed at the height of Mussolini’s Italy and just as the world had been hit with economic depression and on the road to World War II, the Caproni, despite its cartoonish appearance, may have been designed with the hopes of having a military advantage. (source)
The Kaman K-16 was developed in 1954 by Kaman Aerospace, a company developed by Charles Kaman in 1945. The plane features a distinct “rototop” which reportedly provided lift enhancement. The K-16 succeeded in a number of tests in the NASA Ames Wind Tunnel although it never enjoyed full use by the United States Navy, who it was designed for. (source)
The Kettering Bug – By now, drones have an ominous and somewhat menacing role in our minds. American President Barack Obama has used drones more than any president before him, possibly as a means to avoid “boots on the ground” military involvement in countries where there is American interest and all of the headaches that that incurs. It is only recently that the unmanned drone has gotten to the point where it can do everything from fire missiles to deliver pizzas but the genesis of it goes back much further. As one narrator illustrates it, the first unmanned aerial vehicle developed during World War II, was more important “for what it heralded than any damage it was capable of doing.” Using contemporary technology of the time, the early drone was operated with a telephone dial which the operator utilized from the ground. (source)
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9 The Bartini Berieve VVA-14
The Bartini Berieve VVA-14, Image Source: Alex Beltyuko
The Bartini Berieve VVA-14 – Mimicking Hughes’ Hercules, the Bartini Beriev VVA-14 was developing in order to answer the question of whether or not aircraft could be amphibious i.e. move on water and in the air. The Soviets developed it in the early 1970s in order to combat the threat of missile submarines. To actually make it work and have utilitarian value outside of a controlled test, twelve engines would have been installed, which never occurred, leaving the device to linger outside a Russian museum ever since. (source)
Avrocar 59-4975 after modifications. Image source: www.wikipedia.org
During the 1950s, the idea of “flying saucers” was popularized by popular films portraying the arrival of “little green men” and aliens from other worlds. It shouldn’t come as a shock that the U.S. Air Force did devise its own flying saucer – the VZ9 Avrocar succeeded in taking flight, becoming one of the world’s fist ever hovercrafts. There were a number of serious technical issues that kept it from ever having long lasting use by the military, however – the hovercraft often would develop so much heat that it literally would melt its own equipment and instruments. (source)
