Description

Seen at the United States Air Force Museum. It’s the AVRO CANADA V2-9AV.

Per its wiki: “The Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar was a VTOL aircraft developed by Avro Canada as part of a secret U.S. military project carried out in the early years of the Cold War. The Avrocar intended to exploit the Coandă effect to provide lift and thrust from a single "turborotor" blowing exhaust out of the rim of the disk-shaped aircraft. In the air, it would have resembled a flying saucer.”

It’s testing also shows just how hard it is to float like traditional UFOs of the past were remarked to have been seen doing! “The first Avrocar, #58-7055, rolled out of the Avro Malton factory in May 1959. From 9 June to 7 October 1959, it was tested in a static hover rig.[27] Unfortunately, hot gas from the exhaust was found to mix back into the intakes in hover, reducing engine thrust. In addition, the fan generated lift only from a small area of its surface, lowering overall thrust available. The ducts also proved to have higher losses than expected, and a series of modifications were not able to solve this problem to any large degree. These problems reduced maximum lift at higher altitudes out of the ground effect to 3,150 lb (1,430 kg), less than the empty weight of the aircraft at 4,285 lb (1,944 kg). This meant the aircraft would be incapable of hovering out of the ground effect. Following these tests, the vehicle was sent to NASA Ames for a wind tunnel testing.”