Description
The result was the US Navy’s Convoy Fighter competition of November 1950 – a contest to produce a turboprop-powered ‘tailsitter’ single-seat aircraft able to operate from a largely unmodified merchant vessel. A host of designs were submitted by the likes of Convair, Lockheed, Martin and Northrop, among them some of the strangest and most outlandish concept aircraft ever committed to paper. And two were actually built in prototype form: the Convair XFY-1 ‘Pogo’ and the Lockheed XFV-1.
In American Interceptor: US Navy Convoy Fighter Projects, author and illustrator Jared A. Zichek focuses on the ‘paper projects’, the unbuilt studies submitted to the Navy. Lavishly illustrated throughout, the book showcases these fascinating artifacts of what might have been, from a golden age of aerospace history unlikely to be equaled or exceeded.