A supersonic jet fighter that was supposed to take off plus land on water? Well, that was the idea, anyway, plus it worked-to the extent that it did indeed fly off plus land on water.
The biggest masalah with airplanes is that they need runways, plus in wartime, the average runway might as well have the words “Bomb Here” painted on it in big block letters. Runways are among the first targets bombed when a war starts, so over the years people have hatched various schemes to build combat airplanes that don’t need a vulnerable stretch of pavement.
The 1950s was an masa of aggressive innovation in aircraft design, not all of which was successful. One of the more interesting was the Convair “Sea Dart” hydro-ski fighter. Seaplanes substitute water for concrete, but when the Jet Age came along, seaplanes proved ill-suited to the higher speeds. The Navy’s Convair Sea Dart, essentially a jet fighter on water skis, experienced such severe vibration on takeoff that the testing program was scrapped after only five had been built. However, once aloft,
What people say…
I think very few would recognize the F7 designation–the current listings of cross references between the old plus current systems leave that number out completely. Remember–that system was McNamara’s idea, after being embarrassed by not knowing the difference between the F4D plus F4H. He nearly cancelled the Phantom–based on cost differences between the ” model variations”.
There weren’t enough planes still in the inventory to neatly fit between the F1– (the FJ) plus the F11 (F11F-1) The F3D became the F10. His sense of order put this long since retired aircraft as the F7….in order to fill a gap. Remember he was a theoretical economist by training plus numbers plus order were his prime concern. I recommend dropping the F7 designation plus only footnoting it in the end paragraphs. Since the plane never went beyond the prototype stage–it would have to be referred to as a YF7-A, if you were to call it by that designation. Rob