Click to open image viewer. The Convair XFY-1 Pogo is one of many attempts made after World War II to devise a practical Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) combat aircraft. The British finally ...

J.F. “Skeets” Coleman, who was the test pilot on one of the oddest military airplanes ever produced, died Tuesday of natural causes at an assisted-living facility in Oceanside, said his daughter, ...

1954: A Convair XFY-1 Pogo aircraft makes a vertical takeoff and landing. It’s a milestone in the checkered history of VTOL aircraft. Using designs captured from the Germans, the Navy and the newly ...

At Moffett Field, near San Francisco, the Convair XFY-1 last week made its first public test flight, inside a blimp hangar. Nicknamed “the Pogo Stick,” the XFY-1 is the Navy’s vertical-takeoff fighter ...

Nearly two decades before the Harrier jump jet would prove the efficacy of vertical take-off and landing platforms, the U.S. Navy considered taking another approach to fielding fighters without a ...

In the 1950s, the U.S. Navy chased a dream: a vertical takeoff fighter that could defend ships without needing a carrier. The result was the Convair XFY-1 Pogo—a prop-driven, delta-winged, ...

The Convair XFY-1 Pogo is one of many attempts made after World War II to devise a practical Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) combat aircraft. The British finally succeeded with the ...