Wind tunnel model of the Higgins-Bellanca Model 39-60; photo courtesy of NASM. This article reproduces the original specification document for the Higgins-Bellanca Cargo Model 39-60 of 1944, an enormous transport aircraft designed for the USAAC which combined an elegant blended wing-fuselage with a twin boom tail assembly. According to various sources, this project began in [...]

The U.S. Navy’s “Special Weapons Ordnance Device” (SWOD) Mark 9 “Bat” glide bomb was one of the world’s earliest fully-automatic, target-seeking “smart” weapon systems. The Bat was a development of the “Pelican” glide bomb, which was equipped with a Receiving Homing Beacon (RHB) that required a radar beacon to illuminate the target. The Bat had [...]

The Forth Worth Division of Consolidated Vultee (Convair) Aircraft Corporation initiated conceptual studies of a supersonic bomber for the USAAF in October 1946 under the Generalized Supersonic Bomber (GEBO) program. This was followed by GEBO II in March 1949, under which Convair further refined the concept. This article presents excerpts from Convair Report Nos. 3 [...]

Cover to Martin 246 brochure. The aircraft shown in the brochure at left is the Martin 246, a jet attack aircraft submitted to the US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer) on an unsolicited basis in 1949. Its chief characteristics were its inverted gull wing and T-tail, the latter being a popular design choice at Martin [...]

Model of Stroop SP-6 as biplane.SP-6 model in flight as monoplane.Mock-up of Stroop wing-folding mechanism.Front view plan of Stroop SP-7.Top view plan of SP-7. Robert C. Stroop is one of the many obscure Depression-era aeronautical inventors who created innovative if somewhat impractical designs that, for various reasons, never saw their full potential. The author has [...]

In our final article in a series* on the Bell D188A/Model 2000 (a.k.a. XF-109 / XF3L—both spurious designations invented by the Bell marketing department) supersonic VTOL fighter of the late 1950s, we present a brochure and mock-up inspection guide dating from February 1959. A preview of the brochure is shown to the left; it is remarkable for [...]