The Convair Pogo: The US Navy's Weirdest Prototype Ever

[@coptertim]

My father was an outside contractor for Convair during the 50s\60s and he took me to see a runup of Pogo. It had not flown for years and was only ground run for maintenance. Absolutely amazing! 100 feet away the noise was so bad it hurt. I was able to see many of the greatest aircraft of the time and by far Pogo was my favorite. Its easy to forget they engineered these machines with slide rules, not computers.

[@sundragon7703]

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained." If time allows, learning from failures is more important than the successes. Success is built on the shoulders of failure.

[@fredblonder7850]

I heard James Coleman speak. He said the transition from hover to horizontal flight felt exactly like when you begin water-skiing and you go from floating in the water to up on the skis. Also, this point - and the pint where he transitioned back to hovering - were the point where the Pogo was the lest stable, so he wanted to get through it as quickly as possible. I was once at the Smithsonian Garber facility looking at the Enola Gay, which was at the time split in half for restoration. I stepped back for a better look (It‘s pretty big.) and caught a hard object against the base of my spine. I turned around to find I had jabbed myself with Pogo’s lower landing wheel.

[@bluespinsix6987]

I have always loved this thing. Since building the model as a child. To flying a RC version in my twenties. It is remarkably stable, except when landing.

[@proteusnz99]

Convoy fighters. Take off was not the issue provided the power plant was reliable(not necessarily true of the XT-40, which also handicapped the P5Y Tradewind, A2D Skyshark and XA2J ). Rather landing since the rate of descent was a second order problem, i.e. adding or reducing power had a very lagged response in vertical speeds. While an experienced test pilot could handle it over flat ground doing this on a ship in mid-ocean ….. Hover control really needed something like the puffer jets the Harrier use. I think Kelly Johnson (Lockheed XFV-1) summed it up well, “We think it inadvisble to land the aircraft.” and the Navy agreed.

[@backcountry164]

Counter rotating props would have been a requirement to take off vertically. If there was just one, the body would have started rotating also. Even before it took off, it would start spinning on the landing wheels.

[@smalltime0]

Not necessarily, they could've employed something akin to a NOTAR solution that's found in helicopters

[@Matthew-bc9mr]

it had counter-rotating props. And to come full circle, almost 100yrs later, we have ultra fast drones using this configuration today, built theyre quad-copters with a prop at the end of each of the 4 fins/wings

[@absalomdraconis]

​@@Matthew-bc9mr: Those are arguably octocopters instead of quads.

[@Matthew-bc9mr]

@@absalomdraconis the drones are just quad copters. They only have 4 props, just like a traditional quad copter drone, it just flys in a different orientation, with the POV looking out what would be the top of a traditional drone.. This plane in the video had counter rotating props on a common shaft. But the race drones are just standard drone props (the counter rotate to each other but there is just 1 on each of the 4 fins/wings which act like the arms of a traditional drone)

[@michaelpalacio5]

“Skeets” there’s gotta be an insane story behind that callsign

[@SkyhawkSteve]

I used to work with a guy that went by his nickname "Skeet". His real first name was Hubert, so I guess Skeet was better. His middle initial was "H", and we could never get him to tell us what it stood for. Apparently it was worse than Hubert. Skeet had a southern accent of some sort, and this was back in the 80's.

[@SkunkApe407]

The term "skeets" refers to the sport of clay pigeon shooting. It didn't mean what you think it means until the early 2000's.

[@AcornElectron]

These are fun theories. The name came from his Sideburns, he looked like Amos, so people would call him Amos Skeeto. A mosquito. That became Skeeto and when he was flying, Skeets. The more you know huh?

[@mho...]

"Now calm down, Skeeter. He ain't hurtin' nobody"

[@jphilb]

@@SkunkApe407That’s exactly what I thought it meant(clays). What are you referring to? Never mind I don’t want to know. And I’m not going to Urban dictionary.

[@PsycoDwarf9]

Funny. With backwards facing cameras, milimetric radar and glass cockpit...TODAY it's doable.

[@jtjames79]

SpaceX does it with a 20-story building. With AI, today it's child's play. The new high-speed quadcopters are using the tail landing form factor.

[@Matthew-bc9mr]

Yeah, I was going to say, the ultra fast race drones use this configuration today.

[@solarissv777]

And without a pilot.

[@frasermitchell9183]

As I recall, the Avro Shackleton engines had contra-rotating propellers. I saw one at Manchester Science Museum, and one of the display staff told me it was the only way to get the power out of the engine with propellors of a reasonable diameter.

[@jacobthornock317]

I appreciate the honesty and transparency in this broadcast. A good man should be able to speak his mind and deserve the respect of being heard and hearing the opinion of another without violence.

[@ignitionfrn2223]

1:15 - Chapter 1 - The issue at hand 5:15 - Chapter 2 - The pogo; the answer 8:30 - Chapter 3 - Death of the Pogo

[@simonbeaird7436]

This is an utterly crazy idea, and at the same time marvelous. As other posts have said it could probably be done today, a ship-board point defence interceptor might have a role to play. At the same time, whenever I look at it my British mind starts playing the theme music from Gerry Andersons' 'Thunderbirds'! 😁😁

[@dinsdalemontypiranha4349]

That was great Simon! Thanks!

[@shaider1982]

Tail-sitters still exist in drone form with the fastest electric quadcopter being.of this type. Anduril's Roadrunner drone is also of this type.

[@SkyhawkSteve]

I'm not sure that you're giving the Ryan X-13 Vertijet enough credit as being a more advanced and equally weird tail-sitting aircraft. The X-13 was a pure jet, so it was faster than the Pogo, but just as impractical. The take-off and landing process was very risky! The prototypes are located at the National Museum of the USAF in Dayton and the San Diego Air and Space Museum. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_X-13_Vertijet

[@MrGpse]

60 hours of "Tethered" flight time?! Jeez thats gotta be some sort of record!

[@ypaulbrown]

always great Simon........cheers from the USA, Paul

[@samsignorelli]

My father was an Engineer at Convair for over 3 decades...don't remember if the Pogo was one of his projects, tho.

[@lawrencelewis2592]

When I was in the Navy in the 1970s, stationed on a ship in Norfolk, there was a Pogo airplane on the base mounted on a plinth, sitting vertically. The Martin bomber, "The Truculent Turtle" was there too, mounted on a plinth but it was taken away in about 1977, to be restored, I suppose but the Pogo never went anywhere.

[@DragonEye435]

Could we get a video on the research vessel RV Flip? Would be cool to learn the history behind such a unique vessel!

[@nekot9274]

This concept is now used with drones, see the redbull f1 video about that.

[@poodlescone9700]

This design should be revisited for use as a drone. It looks like it was made for it.

[@mikefirth9654]

12:24 “ skeets never once closed his canopy while flying“ 13:38 picture of the plane flying with the canopy closed

[@Tommy-he7dx]

There was only 6 years between the 1st flight of the Propeller Pogo and the Jet Hawker Siddeley P.1127......certainly not "Decades"

[@RobSchellinger]

There's one at the Sun n Fun museum at the Lakeland (Florida) airport. I thought I had at least seen a picture of every aircraft until I saw that thing.

[@tedsmith6137]

They only built the one Pogo, which is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Maryland. What you saw at Lakeland was the Lockheed XFV, not the Convair XFY-1.

[@RobSchellinger]

@@tedsmith6137 Oh ok. I don't remember looking to see if there was a plaque or something. I seem to remember looking it up, but I don't remember what I saw. Thought this was the same thing.

[@Iskelderon]

It's still rather tame, compared to concepts like the Focke-Wulf Triebflügel they tried to imitate here.

[@scottfw7169]

Pogo fixed wing turboprop aircraft tried to imitate Triebflugel rotary wing ramjet aircraft? I'm not following that logic. What does make sense is that form follows function and the two aircraft are what resulted from designing vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for defensive local interceptor missions with their era's available technology.

[@Crioten]

Starfishes love everything you guys do

[@Tommy-he7dx]

Er......A helicopter was used in a 1938 Motor Show in Berlin, Germany, It flew around an indoor arena, There is footage of it if you search for it. "Focke-Wulf Fw 61 helicopter indoors demonstration (1938)"

[@SkyhawkSteve]

I believe that was Hanna Reitsch. A very well known individual. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanna_Reitsch

[@onenote6619]

@@SkyhawkSteve It was. But that has to be considered a stunt - they put a very experienced and (very light) test pilot into a tiny helicopter indoors, and got lucky. It could equally have gone horribly, horribly wrong.

[@tomhenry897]

And Germany did nothing with it

[@Tommy-he7dx]

@@tomhenry897 check out: Focke-Achgelis Fa 223 Drache Flettner Fl 282 They used these during the war

[@davidjernigan8161]

There was also the Ryan vertijet

[@everypitchcounts4875]

X-13

[@rocksnot952]

You'd need balls of steel to land that thing.

[@GrassXMagnum]

I'd add: stepping into it as well, even if you don't actually intend to take off

[@tedsmith6137]

7:00 Don't overlook the Fairey Gannet with contra-rotating props, 340 odd built.

[@rdelaat100]

Shackleton ?

[@Furtheronmusic]

Hey - Suggestion. The Fairey Gannet. Over 300 produced and used by HM Navy for decades. Would be a good episode as that was contrarotating propeller plane.

[@richardbrayshaw570]

I liked that one. Good old Skeets.

[@jmanj3917]

15:45 The National Air and Space Museum is in Washington, DC.

[@lady_draguliana784]

Tailsitter drones are getting popular in the military nowadays again! 😁

[@martylawson1638]

So with: full fly-by-wire, active leveling landing gear with brakes, steering jets or cyclic on one prop, and a backup camera this looks like a viable airplane. Wonder if it would have higher survivability doing close air support and anti-tank runs than an attack helicopter? A few drones use essentially the same design as the Pogo.

[@soulesslemming]

James Coleman a.k.a. skeets is my brothers wife’s grandfather. He wrote a book. I’m not sure if it ever got published though. I read it as a three ring binder, man what his stories were interesting.

[@darrenfox5883]

As “unique” as the Pogo may have been; my vote for the weirdest little Cold War experimental aircraft would be the USAF’s XF-85 Goblin. It was supposed to have been a very small parasitic escort fighter that would be carried in the belly of a B-36 bomber.

[@everypitchcounts4875]

US is testing that concept again but in a drone mothership version called Project Gremlin

[@s9josh778]

I always wondered how good of a drone this design would make.

[@oxcart4172]

The Pogo was a turboprop-a jet running a propeller

[@rhetorical1488]

we knew how to fly for centuries. landing without liquefaction was always the issue😉

[@harrymaciolek9629]

Don’t knock it. I’m sure we learned a lot from it.

[@LaneSplitting247]

lol the algorithm brought this to me 16 seconds after dropping. 🤙🏻

[@eugenebelford9087]

It took THAT long? Teenagers w/ their smartphones can watch 5 TikToks in that time and already forget 4 of them again. Your computer still uses floppy disk? **just kidding** 😉😁

[@Sirdoolan]

Sometimes I live the algorithm.

[@brianloomis9351]

I believe that the XF-85 Goblin would challenge the Pogo!

[@tedsmith6137]

4:57 "The Lockheed XFV flew horizontally, so why say it couldn't fly horizontally while show ing a photo of it doing so?

[@sirclarkmarz]

The Pogo set outside of a hanger at the navy's brown outlying airfield in San Diego for years .

[@ahmedshaharyarejaz9886]

Now there are VTOL drones that look exactly like this.

[@wolfvontyr2266]

I bought my Pogo plane to show her a trick, she had so many friends...

[@jmanj3917]

0:48 Hare-Brained??? That thing is BadASS! I want one

[@davidjernigan8161]

It needed contra rotating propellers to help cancel torque while landing. Think tail rotor on a helicopter.

[@ricksmith4736]

This " plane" is at the Sun n Fun museum at lakeland Florida...

[@JamesKuffner-cg2pv]

Ah Simon,........you've done it again.

[@richardkrotec1440]

can you make a video of the austro hungarian pkz 2 helicopter that actually flew or partly flew during world war 1? Richard

[@theraven6836]

“It also nearly worked”. Yeah, that’s a quote you never want associated with the plane your are flying in. Lol😂

[@AtheistOrphan]

Interesting concept, made instantly obsolete by the Hawker Harrier.

[@andybryson3887]

Counter rotating props were implemented to prevent the whole plane from rotating when doing VTOL, if it had been built with a single propeller

[@daveburgie6099]

You said it was move to a museum in 1973. I saw it my whole 3 years at the Navy base in Norfolk from 3-77 till 3-80.

[@danl6191]

There’s one on display in Lakeland FL airport.

[@scottmeredith3359]

Additional issue with the design: when you inevitably crapped your pants trying to land it, it ran up the back of your shirt

[@gdfinke]

Xf-84 might be the funniest though

[@tonyroberts7481]

How was Japan caught of guard by the use of air power exactly? They used aircraft carriers to drag the US into the war?????

[@macmcgee5116]

The only thing I can think of was that they were "caught off guard" by the innovation and mass production ability of the allies. Especially the US. At the end of WWII, Japan was flying, for the most part, the same planes they were at the beginning, while the US had constantly cranked out multiple types of new and better aircraft as the war progressed. Not to mention that, in the 4 years of the war, the US produced over 150 new carriers compared to Japan's 19. They knew the US would bounce back. They just weren't prepared for how fast. While Japan did experiment with new aircraft designs throughout the war. There was an attitude that using the old tried and true method would always overcome in the end, while experimenting with new ideas was for the weak and desperate. Also, changing from one type of aircraft to another would slow down production while things changed over, so the Japanese concentrated on quantity above innovation. The Germans weren't as bad about not using innovation, as they were constantly rolling out new aircraft. But they couldn't comprehend the speed at which the US could build war machines. There are reports that when high ranking Germans were told about the production levels of the US during the war, they thought it was propaganda. Over the course of the war the US alone built over 300,000 aircraft. Japan built about 85,000 and Germany built around 94,000.

[@tonyroberts7481]

@@macmcgee5116 I agree with all of your statements that you mentioned. I just find on this channel that there are a lot of mistakes in the actual “facts” that are presented. A little more actual knowledge of the subjects presented would be nice.

[@macmcgee5116]

@@tonyroberts7481 given how many videos this group puts out a week, with all the different channels, (I am not sure how many people they have working) it's not surprising that the get a decent amount wrong. All in all it's still not all that bad, I don't think.

[@HoundMonkey]

I feel like most of the issues this thing had could be fixed with today's technology and making it a drone.

[@Tunagoat]

one of these is at my local airport on display.. lakeland fl

[@KingLeonFourstar]

Hu, 1 pm on a Saturday. Interesting choice.

[@Sacto1654]

It's small wonder why the Hawker P.1127 prototype proved to be way more successful once the bugs were worked out.

[@jareds3020]

What about the Canadair CL-84 Dynavert.

[@nobilismaximus]

The counter rotating props were to cancel out the torque effect which would spin the fuselage when taking off vertically . Think helicopter with no tail prop

[@brandongaines1731]

#ThatMomentWhen the KZbin auto-captions make so little sense that you have to watch the video to find out what's really going on. BTW, where'd YT get "19 BS" out of "19-aughts"?

[@barefoot3662]

I was abel to see this aircraft sitting outside of a hanger in Alaska

[@dustybunny6716]

Didn't the Germans make a strange jet copter thing as well?

[@tauaru]

Didn't the ingenuity helicopter have counter rotating blades?

[@diogenes34]

When I was stationed at the Marine barracks in Norfolk Virginia in the early 1970’s,there was a static display of a version of this plane, whoever flew that plane had gigantic cojones.

[@Caleb1874ya]

Be hoppin’

[@mattwilliams2740]

"was unable to fly horizontally." while showing a picture of it flying horizontally...

[@KeithPrince-cp3me]

The promising developments in the field of surface to air guided missiles during the 1950s that could in the event be installed on ships like destroyers and frigates for air defence may also have played a part in the US Navy's loss of interest in the project.

[@CarlWithACamera]

Had I been given the assignment, I’d have built a ramp and strapped rockets to existing fighter jets. Getting into the air at speed sufficient to sustain level flight was the goal, after all. Wasn’t it?

[@svenmorgenstern9506]

Didn't survive its first deadstick landing.

[@jsinope2786]

Hey! While you were listing off VTOL jets, you forgot to mention the Russian YAK-141? Why didn’t you mention that one? It sort of existed. 😂😂😂

[@melangellatc1718]

but no one cared...

[@jsinope2786]

@@melangellatc1718 …it barely even existed!😂

[@boglenight1551]

Technically the first flight was VTOL

[@AtheistOrphan]

True, the Montgolfier brothers.

[@boglenight1551]

@@AtheistOrphan Sorry to hear about your parents

[@levischittlord6558]

Ryan vertajet.

[@peterkirby1753]

From an engineeing point of view it was likely still a very useful learning exersise.

[@buzbuz33-99]

Imagine trying to land this thing on a moving ship!

[@lebaillidessavoies3889]

Those test pilots of the 50/60 's who had to fly unlikely deathtraps....

[@girthbloodstool339]

Good, but the phrase 'prop-plane' is a bit useless. The XFY-1 was a turboprop, meaning it had a jet turbine whose power was used in part to turn an external fan.

[@DKArmstrong]

I wonder if this inspired Thunderbird 1.

[@clintonpangburn3698]

Don't stop pressing that Upload button Simon. I'm ready for TIFO and BBlaze😎

[@IanSinclair77]

Oooo OGBB eh?

[@clintonpangburn3698]

@@IanSinclair77 nah. started following about 6 mo ago

[@DuranDuran31]

Today's fly by wire would make this much more easy to handle.

[@Poorexampeofhuman]

I believe that Pogo was fairly successful

[@George_M_]

As with most WW2 German projects, the basic concept had a future (VTOL), their execution of it did not.

[@youngavaitor]

Yeah and we have one of the only prototypes of this aircraft at my local airport Lakeland Linder aka sun n fun

[@PiDsPagePrototypes]

Nah, the "Weirdest" is one you already narrated a video on, the XF-85 Goblin.

[@lonnywilcox445]

1973 is an incorrect date for transfer to the Air and Space museum. I know because I spent a lot of time at NAS Norfolk and it was there for certain in 1978 and possibly into 1979 also. It was parked near an office building 2 or 3 blocks south of the piers all of the times I saw it. If it had left in 1973 I would have been 4 years old and most certainly had no recollection of it today. Actually, 1973 would have been the year my Father's duty station went from Morocco to the Navy Annex in DC and I don't believe I went to Norfolk until 1975 for the first time. He was stationed in Norfolk from 1975 to 1979. It was kind of weird because it was the only airplane in the immediate area, and it was a strange little plane that stood on its tail and "took off like a rocket" as someone along the way explained it to me. Heck, I bet if I look around I have a picture of it taken by myself or my Father, but it was a long time ago.

[@michaelhband]

👍👍👍❤❤❤✈✈✈

[@Omni0404]

12:20 💀

[@kenrobba5831]

Two POGOs later U have an Osprey V-22.

[@manicmechanic448]

But it did, infact, fly.

[@davidvavra9113]

It needed modern flight controls, try again.

[@seventyfive7597]

Can you make a video about why you look like 2016 vsauce?

[@johnoneill270]

Modern control systems would make that totally feasible now I get well be seeing drones that look an awful lot like this

[@everypitchcounts4875]

Anduril has the Roadrunner & Roadrunner-M jet powered AI interceptor drones

[@kiptelgat]

redbull drone engineers: 👀