This was the Focke Wulf F-19 and yes, the “backwards tail” is called a canard. It wound up in a museum and was destroyed in an Allied air raid.
.GERMAN TAIL-FIRST PLANE FLIES ACROSS CHANNEL
Germany’s tail-first plane, which appears to be flying backward, soared across the Channel to visit Britain in one of its first trial flights of any length. The triangular control surface at the upper right of the photograph above is the forward end of the strange-appearing craft when it is in flight.
.Planes That Go Straight Up OPEN NEW FIELDS FOR AVIATION
By Edwin Teale
AMONG the skyscrapers of lower New York City, a few weeks ago, a strange wingless craft drifted down in a vertical landing. Its wheels touched the concrete of a pier and rolled less than a dozen feet. With balancing wings eliminated, it represented the latest style in autogiros. The flying windmill has taken another step toward the goal of a thousand inventors, the helicopter.
An autogiro can descend vertically; but it can take off only after a run. A helicopter could get out of a field the size of its landing gear. It could climb straight into the sky, could hover like a humming bird, and could drop like an elevator descending its shaft. Entirely new realms of aerial travel await the perfection of such a craft.
.Super-Speed Turbo-Plane to Span Ocean
by DOUGLAS P. ROLFEFIVE hours out of New York and the flasher lights of the Central London Air Terminal are blinking their welcome to the Trans-Oceanic express as it glides to a swift, effortless landing.
Five hours out of New York! This and similar pictures of future transportation have been painted ever since man first flew, but today it can be said that this is no idle fancy or paper prophecy. Even the most casual review of various activities in the United States, Great Britain and France show the vast number of experiments that are now being conducted towards this very end.
.COLEOPTERE, or Beetle, is the last word in French jet-powered VTOLs. The annular (ring-shaped) wing gives it odd outline and name. It flies vertically or horizontally.
.Future GIs to ride rocket troopship
Troop transport in 45 minutes to a brush-fire war anywhere in the world is proposed by Douglas Aircraft space engineers.
The 80-by-210-foot re-usable rocket shown at right would speed 17,000 m.p.h., carrying 1,200 troops and equipment. Landing upright, it would debark them by portable ramps, jet packs, and rope ladders.
It’s called ICARUS: Intercontinental Aerospace craft—Range Unlimited System.
.Queer Wing-Flapping Plane Ascends Vertically Into Air
A QUEER-SHAPED aircraft, seemingly a combination of everything which has ever flown through the air, has proven successful in initial tests, doing just about anything in the way of performance that could be asked of a heavier-than-air craft. Jette, designer, a young Swedish engineer of Stockholm, believes his radically-designed plane will revolutionize the aviation industry.
Stubby wings like those of the earlier autogyros give the plane stability in horizontal flight. The engine drives a propeller mounted forward as in the ordinary land plane, and through gears turns the huge overhead rotor. Three flapping wings attached to the rotor move up and down as they spin, just as in an autogyro, and vanes on the inside of the rotor provide lifting force.
