5 Experimental Aircraft That Didn't Really Work

Aircraft concepts don't always go to plan. Here are five that absolutely flopped.

We love building our own aircraft here at Flite Test, but sometimes they don't work. However, sometimes proper aerospace designers and companies also get it wrong. There's something about these failures, as a vision of what the future could have looked like, that intrigues the imagination. If successful, could aviation have been different today?

XC-120 Packplane

Here's the real life counterpart of Thunderbird 2. This aircraft was almost completely unique when first developed and flown in 1950. It had a removable cargo pod that was positioned below the fuselage and could be swapped out to make loading and unloading far quicker. The aircraft could also fly without a the pod.

Although this cargo plane was tested extensively, it was eventually sidelined for more traditional cargo carrying models. Despite this, it has a distinctive look which could have been adopted by more on aircraft if history had panned out differently.

Northrop YB-49

If you've never heard of this airplane before, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of stealth experiment in the 70s or 80s. However, the YB-49 was developed just after WW2 and featured groundbreaking aerodynamics seen in much later military airplanes.

Unfortunately, the first prototype suffered a massive engine failure and the second crashed in 1948. These tragedies contributed to the airforce going for a more conventional direction with its bomber force in the years after the project.

Paul Cornu's Early Helicopter

Going all the way back to the early days of manned aviation, the Cornu helicopter was a machine that didn't exactly work all that well. The designer, Paul Cornu, was the French pioneer behind the invention of the helicopter. His first attempts left much room for improvement. The Cornu II was a 24hp bicopter which could hop into the air but remained pretty much uncontrollable.

Thankfully, Cornu's efforts weren't wasted as he found success with a later helicopter design. However, progress didn't go much further than this as he had to keep up his daily life producing bicycles. None the less, he should be remembered as one of the key innovators of those early years.

Schroeder S1 Cyclogyro

A cyclogyro, or cyclocopter, is an aircraft design that uses rotating airfoils on a horizontal axis, for both lift and thrust. They're theoretically capable of vertical takeoffs and landings. They can also hover like a helicopter. However, this is all in theory. Up until now, none have been all that successful. The Schroeder S1 was one such failure. Despite hopes that this form of flying would revolutionize how planes looked, the technology never - wait for it - got off the ground. I'm sorry!

Plymouth A-A-2004 Rotor Aircraft

Although little reliable information remains about this incredibly wacky looking plane noticeably lacking any conventional wings. This is a Flettner airplane that attempts to use the magnus effect to create lift. The 1930s Plymouth A-A-2004 had a spinning cylinder capped by circular end plates in place of a wing. Reportedly, the machine did have limited success, but there are no official sources to confirm this.

Our friend Peter Sripol successfully tried this for himself using KFC buckets!

Although no manned, full-scale Flettner aircraft have been successful, various RC models like this one proves that the concept can be used to fly a real-life aircraft.