Welcome back to my blog about balloons, rocket ships, airplanes, space travel, Star Wars, sci-fi, and everything about flying! Today I am going to share with you my favorite weird and wonderful experimental planes throughout history!!!

10.  SNECMA Atar Volat

French: Beginning in 1956, the French engine manufacturer SNECMA built a series of wingless test rigs called the Atar Volant, as precursors to a winged aircraft. Only the first of these was unpiloted and the second flew freely, both stabilized by gas jets on outrigger pipes. The third had a tilting seat to allow the pilot to sit upright when the fuselage was level and had the lateral air intakes planned for the free flying aircraft, though it always operated attached to a movable cradle.

The ninth flight, on 25 July 1959, was planned to make limited moves towards the horizontal but with insufficient instrumentation and a lack of visual benchmarks the aircraft became too inclined and too slow to maintain altitude. Morel was unable to regain control and escaped with an ejection at 150 m (492 ft). He survived but was badly injured; the aircraft was destroyed and a planned second prototype did not receive funding.
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German: The DM1 was built as a single-seat glider from steel-tubing, plywood and bakelite impregnated plywood, with a cockpit in the extreme nose of the junction of the triangular mainplanes and fin. Launching the DM1 was to be by piggy-back or aero-tow.

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German: The Horten H.VI was a flying wing aircraft designed by the Horten brothers during World War II.
Based on the Horten H.IV, the H.VI was an enlarged version of the H.IV, with the goal of comparing their flying wing designs against the very large span Akaflieg Darmstadt D-30 Cirrus.

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German: During the summer of 1944, JG 400, who flew the rocket-powered Messerschmitt Me 163B “Komet”, was moved to Brandis. They found the AS-6 there and tried to fly it, but the only attempt resulted in a collapsed landing gear leg. The AS-6 was damaged in a strafing attack during the winter of 1944-45, and was broken up to salvage the wood. All that was left was the miscelleneous metal parts, and these were thrown into the aircraft salvage area. In all probability, this is why American troops who entered the Brandis air base in April 1945 found no traces of the Sack AS-6.

Italian: Dubbed “the barrel-shaped plane” or “the cask plane”, this forerunner of jet airplanes was designed by engineer Luigi Stipa, and built as a prototype by Caproni di Milano-Taliedo. It featured a large cylindrical fuselage that enclosed the engine and propeller, so that the air thrust in the metal tube by the rotating blades could make the propelling system more dynamic. However, the craft’s shape increased its drag and counteracted the benefits of the engine’s heightened efficiency.
The Caproni-Stipa took off only for a brief series of test flights, and was demolished in 1933. However, a 3/5-scale replica of it was recently built in Australia, with full-color photographs attesting to some successful flights in October 2001.

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5. Antonov A-40

 Russian: The Antonov A-40 Krylya Tanka (Russian: крылья танка, meaning “tank wings”) was a Soviet attempt to allow a tank to glide onto a battlefield after being towed aloft by an airplane, to support airborne forces or partisans. A prototype was built and tested in 1942, but was found to be unworkable. This vehicle is sometimes called the A-40T or KT.

Wikipedia Entry: Click Here!

4. Handiwork 181

Russian: Handiwork 181 is an experimental aircraft, which was built at Aviation Scientific-Technical Complex named by Oleh Antonov in Kyïv at the end of the 1980s. An interesting feature of the plane is its unusual arc-shaped wing.

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3.  Bartini Beriev VVA-14

Russian: The Bartini Beriev VVA-14 Vertikal`no-Vzletayuschaya Amphibia (vertical take-off amphibious aircraft) was a wing-in-ground-effect aircraft developed in the Soviet Union during the 1970s.^[1] Designed to be able to take off from the water and fly at high speed over long distances, it was to make true flights at high altitude, but also have the capability of “flying” efficiently just above the sea surface, using aerodynamic ground effect. The VVA-14 was designed by Italian-born designer Robert Bartini in answer to a perceived requirement to destroy United States Navy Polaris missile submarines.

2.  Grumman X-29

American: The Grumman X-29 was an American experimental aircraft that tested a forward-swept wing, canard control surfaces, and other novel aircraft technologies. The X-29 was developed by Grumman, and the two built were flown by NASA and the United States Air Force. The aerodynamic instability of the X-29’s airframe required the use of computerized fly-by-wire control. Composite materials were used to control the aeroelastic divergent twisting experienced by forward-swept wings, and to reduce weight. The X-29 first flew in 1984; two X-29s were flight tested over the next decade.

Wikipedia Entry: Click Here!

1. John’s Multiplane

American: The massive septi-wing made a series of short hops during testing, but was eventually scrapped in 1920^[2] due to its inability to maintation Mutley and Din controlled flight chasing that pigeon. I believe this is the one configuration Mutley and Dastardly flew.

Wikipedia Entry: Click Here!

~Max

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