New Look, but No Ability to Fly
For many people around the world, American aviation was (and still is) the gold standard. So it’s a mystery why anyone in the US military thought this plane would work. The Rockwell XFV-12 was a prototype supersonic Navy fighter jet with a distinctive appearance. The plane’s thrusters were intended to enable vertical lift-off (we’re starting to see a pattern here with such planes).
The prototype from the 1970s didn’t work as planned; just three-quarters of it could lift off the ground, and the plane never flew. A second attempt was canceled because it would have cost too much money to create something that would almost certainly fail.
The following plane was a complete failure at the Paris Air Show.