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A Story of a POGO

This aircraft was the last propeller driven effort in a long ago cancelled program, “the zero length runway”, in the United States. Other aircraft involved in the program were the Lockheed XFV-1 Salmon, the North American F-100 Super Sabre, the McDonnell Douglas F-101 Voodoo (both the F-100 and F-101 used rocket assist for take off from a truck bed but needed a runway for recovery), and the Ryan X-13 Vertijet (which I happen to be writing a Review on).

The F-100 and F-101 versions were of course modifications of existing aircraft, but the XFV-1 Salmon, XFY-1 Pogo, and X-13 Vertijet were built specifically to take off and land vertically. The prototypes flew with, both manufacture and sponsoring agency markings, ergo the Pogo sporting Navy marking, as well as Convair insignia. These efforts all took place before the Harrier or Combat Helicopters came into view.

On November 2nd, 1954 the Pogo, XFY-1 was the first aircraft to successfully take off vertically, transition to horizontal flight, then transition back to vertical flight / hover and land. Only one of the three aircraft produced survives, it is at the NAS Museum Norfolk, Virginia. The other two were scraped at the end of the program. The program was at least in part cancelled due to Navy interest in the new generation jets becoming available.

I decided to build the Pogo as my entry for the Project X campaign. I’d had this kit for a while and Project X gave me the chance to build it. Nostalgic as I am, I had built this aircraft for the Aurora Box Scale kit as a lad, and really wanted to do it justice this time.

I’ve seen several builds of this kit with the aircraft setting there, nose to the air all alone, just as I had built it the first time. I decided this time I had to do something more. I began researching for ideas, as almost always proves out “if you look deep enough, you’ll find something interesting” (at least to yourself). To my surprise and pleasure the task proved to be not too difficult. Within a day or two I found some reference photos of “specialized ground support equipment” that got the juices flowing.