The Convair XFY-1 Pogo is an experimental V/STOL (vertical/short takeoff and landing) aircraft developed during the early years of the Cold War. [1] It was intended to be a high-performance …

The Pogo proved that the VTOL fighter concept was theoretically possible but that much work remained to make the idea operationally practical. As it stood, flying the XFY-1 required above …

Jun 6, 2024 · Convair XFY-1 Pogo, a V/STOL experimental fighter aircraft preceding the Harrier and Osprey by 13 and 35 years. Pogo made its first flight in 1954, aimed to protect Navy fleets …

Dec 15, 2024 · Key Points: In the 1950s, the U.S. Navy explored vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) fighters to counter potential airstrip losses in nuclear war. Lockheed’s XFV-1 “Salmon” …

Jun 29, 2023 · The Convair XFY Pogo was an experimental VTOL aircraft. While it showed that such an invention could exist, it never entered service.

Convair nicknamed its VTOL aircraft Pogo after the Pogo Stick jumping toy popularized by an earlier generation of American youth. Such appellation referred to the XFY-1’s tendency to …

This was intended to investigate the potential of a small single-seat tail-sitting VTOL fighter aircraft for operation from and to small platforms on a variety of ships.

Nov 2, 2017 · Both the CONVAIR XFY "Pogo" and Lockheed XFV were developed to a 1950 United States Navy (USN) requirement intended to test the viability of a "tail-sitting" shipborne …

Nov 4, 2025 · This episode traces how the Pogo came to be, what it got right, what went wrong, and how its lessons echoed decades later in aircraft like the Harrier and the F-35B.

Lockheed and Convair were awarded contracts to build experimental VTOL fighters, with Convair producing the XFY-1, also known as the "Pogo." It was developed as an attempt to create a …