Pogo.

This is coolbert:

Every now and then you read and see a description of, and a photo, of some contraption that purportedly has a reasonable application. A contraption that eventually was discarded as it was too unreasonable. DID NOT have a purpose that had validity. AND, did not LOOK right from the get-go.

Such a contraption was the Pogo. 

An aircraft that the U.S. Navy wanted. Was originally developed during the Korean War. Was intended to allow ALL navy surface ships to become aircraft carriers. An aircraft that would take off and land vertically, balancing itself on it's TAIL.






[I guess the nickname Pogo came from the aircraft acting as a pogo stick, going up and down. I just cannot say so with certainty.]

Click here to see a picture of the Pogo. [this particular web site has a whole lot of strange aircraft indexed and linked].

The Pogo NEVER did get "off the ground", in the figurative sense of the word.

It was an experimental aircraft.

Became that and ended as that. It WAS ABLE to take off with relative ease.

However, standing on end it does not look right to begin with. The pilot had to sit on his back looking upward for takeoffs and landings. The latter [landings] was the problem with the Pogo. The pilot could NOT SEE where he was landing. His vision was obstructed. Takeoff was OK.

 Landing was almost impossible. 

And the performance of the aircraft was not up to standards. The Pogo was a PROP driven plane, it's performance not up to snuff when compared to jet powered aircraft. It WOULD NOT have been a combat effective aircraft.

I would think that attempting to land this "thing" vertically on a platform moving up and down and forward at the same time would have been next to impossible. In heavy seas the plane COULD NOT have flown and been recovered. The Pogo was more or less a NO GO from the start. What was the Navy thinking when they even came up with the concept??

[A number years ago I talked to a mechanical engineer about the concept that if it DOES NOT LOOK RIGHT, it probably is NOT!! This engineer agreed with me. MOST stuff that just "DOES NOT LOOK RIGHT", probably is not!! Humans DO have an intuitive feel for this!]

coolbert.