The plane with a propeller in the middle... Martin 262 Convoy Fighter!

flying through the air with its propellers moving as supersonic speeds this defensive fighter has one secret weapon it can take off and land vertically this aircraft was to be the Cornerstone of the Navy defense able to protect any ship in the fleet and begin the era of helicopter-like planes but this never happened let's explore the Lost Martin model 262 Convoy fighter World War II had revealed a flaw for the U.S Navy their Convoy ships that resupplied fleets armies and bases across the world were vulnerable to enemy air attacks and required excessive protection from warships to ensure cargo reached their destinations safe and on time the defense of these convoys was a difficult thing to do and an effective way for the enemy to tie up resources the Navy still traumatized from the war with the Nazis feared that the Soviets would play copycat and go after the lucrative cargo ships at the Atlantic if the Cold War turned hot so the answer would be a new type of plane one that had the power of a normal fighter Interceptor but didn't require a carrier to launch or land a plane that could take off vertically or veto from its tail in 1949 the U.S naval Bureau of Aeronautics began a competition to develop this new Convoy fighter that had the specific ability to be launched from smaller vessels and would protect them until a carrier could arrive this plane would have a new class called the VF standing for Convoy fighter and have several conditions in its design the first was obviously the ability to take off from the deck of a convoy ship the second was the ability to fly close to Sonic speeds at 45 000 feet a pretty mean feat considering it had to go from sea level to 45k in 5 minutes it would also carry a single pilot with an ejectable pressurized cockpit and perform a combat roll for at least 100 minutes to a range of a hundred nautical miles and also land to be re-armed and be refueled back on the original ship to get the best possible design they recruited five different aircraft contractors the first and the hero of our story was the Glenn Martin company of Baltimore in addition there was also Lockheed Northrop conveyor and Goodyear each with their own designs and Concepts including the convair Pogo that we have already covered on the channel so the competition was pretty Fierce for Martin and they would have to come up with a stellar new idea to win this contract [Music] and this was called The Martin model 262 and it was a series of three turbopot Fighters that had some very odd features that's right it was three different designs called a b and c and they differed with the placement of the propeller because you see the propeller wasn't actually required to be at the front of the plane with one of the designs C having it closer to the tail behind the pilot and the main fuselage this would allow for a better center of gravity and a smaller tail which I'll explain in a minute that was very important as well as improved visibility for the prone pilot at the cost of harder engineering to have two halves of the plane connected by a propeller a had a typical configuration for aircraft at the time that gave it excellent endurance and it was the lightest of the designs but they also included B that had better stabilization and better firing accuracy thanks to having to propeller in the center of gravity this list of pros and cons for each of these aircraft meant that Martin was planning to do further wind tunnel tests to choose which concept to develop forward but this wouldn't just be an ordinary Scout plane but would carry a sizable Armament consisting of two 20 millimeter cannons on the wings with ammo loaded through doors at the top of the plane other weapons considered were Rockets or even rudimentary missiles that could have been attached under each wing for interception had this been built likely Sidewinders would have been an excellent choice down the line if this aircraft was still in service at the time due to the ability to hover the plane would also need to have a much smaller tail to ensure that gusts of wind didn't push it off course when Landing or into the boat that it was trying to land on and to make Landings easier the plane's pilot would be able to rotate their seat 45 degrees giving them an excellent view out of a window that was built into the fuselage and let us talk about that Landing for a second because this is kinda crazy Martin quickly realized that the challenge of Designing this aircraft would be the takeoff but instead the complex landing something that they had to approach very differently from anybody else in the competition [Music] the Navy had made a major mistake in its Assumption of the Convoy fighter that during Landing the pilot would have perfect conditions and perfect control over the plane in this make-believe scenario the pilot could land the aircraft back onto its tail on a small patch of deck in just a few minutes whilst the ship was rolling 15 degrees side to side and also pitching forward and back four degrees but Martin with experience actually building and testing airframes knew that this was absurd thus they instead assumed some of the worst conditions known to man a storm a bad pilot and even stressful from flying combat missions where you've lost half your wingman that these Pilots would not be able to easily land the aircraft back on the deck so they designed all three of their Concepts to not land on the deck of a ship but rather right on the side of the middle using a special platform form to catch the plane whilst it hovered vertically the advantage of this was that the pilot didn't have to match the pitch or the role of the deck but would simply have to match the speed of the vessel a crew member on board who wasn't burdened with flying a plane vertically at the same time would move a stabilized platform towards the plane that would cancel out any rolling of the Sea The Fighter would then have a vertical Spike retract out and catch itself onto the platform the pilot would have a little window to look through the floor so he could see exactly where that Spike was aiming and this Spike would catch on a 10 by 10 foot area and slot in this Spike would then fall and arresting cables would catch it if the pilot bounced off the platform or wasn't able to get the spike through it would simply be deflected backwards and could have another attempt the whole plane would then be attached to the platform and then would be row rotated horizontally in times of bad weather the model 262 would have a small radar beacon on board that would allow it to appear on a small TV screen at the platform this screen would help the operator direct the pilot to land correctly in all weather conditions moving the aircraft's pitch and location as necessary for launch the whole concept could be reversed with the pilot starting the engine horizontally and it moving off the rails into the sky once vertically this concept would mean that nearly any ship in the Navy could carry Convoy Fighters with little to no modification even if they didn't have the deck space and for land operations they designed a truck that was able to carry the platform as well with the design sorted in the landing issues solved it was time for Martin to enter the competition because no one had ever built an aircraft like this before Martin planned out a whole wind tunnel test phase and plan to develop two prototypes similar to the A model that they proposed but small and without weapons to test the concept in addition they also went back to the drawing board on their Landing system and came up with alternative ways to get the plane on Deck including a platform that rolled in the opposite way of the Waves some of these are like what we use today with helicopters on Naval vessels confident that they had all the bases covered they went to Washington so what exactly happened next Martin's obsession with options would be it's undoing when they presented the findings to the Navy they showed three different models a b and c and they showed a prototype airframe that was different from a and an alternative Landing arrangements from the vertical platform and they couldn't even decide on a budget that's right they didn't even want to give an accurate cost to the Navy because they which admittedly is very honest and thought the whole project would blow out this lack of confidence and put the Navy off but the final blow might have been the weight Martin estimated that their aircraft would weigh 16 000 pounds much to the Navy's own estimate of 17 and a half thousand pounds arguing that the Navy was wrong and their idea warts and all was Superior the Navy decided against them and went with the lighter Lockheed and the lighter conveyor and the Martin 262 with all of its funny propellers was sunk to the bottom of the Lost Aviation sea let me know if you want me to cover the other aircraft in this competition or check out the conveyor Pogo right now to see what the competition was up to and very special thank you to Retro mechanics who had found a lot of these original design documents and helped with the research of this video If you really want to support him you can click on the link down below and go see all of the insane detail that he had about this competition and I mean way more than I'm able to cover here so click on that link down below thanks for watching foreign [Music]

Channel: Found And Explained

Views: 2,829,651

Keywords: air force, forgotten aircraft, history channel, dark skies, dark docs, documentary channel, martin baker, second world war, documentary channels on youtube, documentary channel 4, documentary channel walking with beasts

Id: KXzWGhlBqI4

Length: 11min 18sec (678 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2022