Beating Gravity - Convair XFY-1 Pogo

Both Convair's XFY-1 Pogo and Lockheed's XFV-1 Salmon resulted from the same design contest held in 1950 to design a vertical takeoff fighter aircraft, and they embodied a number of design similarities including sharing the same power plant and contra-rotating propellor unit, gimballed pilot's seat and caster wheels on the aerofoil surfaces.

The Convair's stubby delta wings and unusually large vertical surfaces created what was effectively a set of cruciform flight surfaces.

The Pogo made some 280 tethered flights in an airship hangar before making its first free flight in August 1954, with the first transitions to and from horizontal flight taking place that November.

The program was cancelled in 1955 from a combination of handling problems and the realisation that the design could not match the performance of contemporary fighter aircraft.