- The Army and Navy once tested one-person vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.
- These aircraft—including the Aerocycle, 1031 A-1, and Rotorcycle—were meant to present even small units the power to survey the battlefield from the air.
- Largely, this stemmed from the concept that nuclear weapons would probably destroy larger helicopters, leaving small units on their very own.
As aviation technology kicked into overdrive within the Nineteen Fifties, the U.S. Army and Navy briefly flirted with giving individual soldiers and sailors the power to fly.
The 2 services experimented with what amounted to single-person helicopters that may give even the smallest units the power to locate enemy tank columns or submarines. Experimentation never led to adoption, and the services would go one other 50 years without fulfilling the role of those “flying platforms.” Here’s the way it all went down.
A Bleak View from Above
By the Nineteen Fifties, the U.S. military was within the midst of a real technological revolution. Jet engines had quickly replaced piston engines because the primary propulsion of fighters and bombers. Helicopters, first utilized in the Korean War, were proliferating across the services. The primary nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus, went to sea in 1954. A much darker development was President Eisenhower’s Massive Retaliation doctrine, which guaranteed that any major conflict would quickly go nuclear, forcing the services to organize to fight on the nuclear battlefield.
A flying platform would have allowed the Navy to identify submarines at periscope depth, while the Marines were excited about them for pilot escape and “small unit tactical operations.” On the bottom, the Army was refashioning its units to a so-called “Pentomic” structure, with nuclear-armed units holding their ground in a 360-degree defense against the Red Army juggernaut, flinging tactical nuclear weapons at tank columns. Ground units could turn into isolated, cut off from their headquarters and aerial reconnaissance units that scouted the front from above.
The answer was to push aviation downward to smaller command levels. An Army captain who had his helicopters wouldn’t must depend on his division’s aviation unit … which had probably been vaporized by a Soviet nuclear warhead anyway. These helicopters would should be small and simply transportable. The shortage of computer brains and processing power meant that, unlike the drones of today, these mini-helicopters would should be flown by an actual human.
A Horse for the Atomic Battlefield
The armed services tested at the least 4 different single-person aircraft designs. One was the 1031 Flying Platform, which first flew in 1955. The 1031 was powered by two Nelson H-59 engines that drove a pair of counter-rotating propellers encased in a hoop, a propulsion scheme often known as the ducted fan. The vehicle could carry a single person, and had a top speed of 9.9 miles per hour. Like a surfboard or skateboard, the aircraft was controlled by the movements of the pilot’s body. The Army judged the test model too slowly, and asked for an improved model with a 3rd engine, but the additional weight adversely affected the pilot’s ability to manage the craft. This system was canceled in 1963.
A second aircraft was the Williams X-Jet, also often known as “The Wasp,” and maybe more accurately because the “Flying Pulpit.” The X-Jet resembled a laundry basket with skids, and was powered by a Williams turbofan engine. The X-Jet was faster, able to traveling as much as 60 miles per hour, and will fly to an altitude of 10,000 feet, but rapid fuel consumption meant that it was limited to a flight time of 30–45 minutes, or about 15–20 miles round trip. Williams later went on to fabricate turbofan engines for cruise missiles, including the American Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile.
The de Lackner HZ-1 Aerocycle was the most effective, but by far probably the most dangerous, of the single-person platforms. The DH-5 first flew in 1955 and shared some features with the 1031, including counter-rotating propellers and using pilot body movements to manage the craft. The Aerocycle used a Mercury Mk.-55 boat motor for propulsion, had a top speed of 74 miles per hour, and a spread of 14 miles. A serious flaw, nevertheless, was the shortage of safety barrier between the pilot and the rotors chopping on the air at hundreds of rotations per minute. For safety reasons, alone, it’s probably no surprise that the Army never picked up the Aerocycle for mass production.
Probably the most conventional-looking of the single-person platforms was the Hiller YROE-1 Rotorcycle. Developed for the U.S. Marines, the Rotorcycle had the layout of a standard helicopter with a “cockpit” (actually, only a seat), primary overhead rotors, and a tail rotor for stabilization. It had a top speed of 52 miles per hour and a spread of 40 miles. In keeping with the Smithsonian, a scarcity of range and the opportunity of a pilot experiencing spatial disorientation on the stripped-down craft ultimately led to it hitting the scrap pile.
Ultimately, not one of the services adopted a flying platform. While this likely saved the lives of many draftee pilots, the services lacked a small commentary platform for a long time. It wasn’t until the 2020s and the appearance of the quadcopter drone that small units could field their very own aerial reconnaissance.
The Takeaway
The Nineteen Fifties were a heady time of accelerated technological progress. Lots of the Space Age’s inventions, like rockets, jet planes, and satellites transformed society, but others, just like the one-person flying platform, failed repeatedly. It could take one other 60 years—during which era technology found a technique to finally remove the pilot and shrink the platform right into a smaller, more nimble, wirelessly connected package—before small teams of soldiers could finally peer over the following hill, or city block, to spy on the enemy.