Some aircraft never get at good press and received wisdom is often not challenged. Well-known examples of this are the Grumman F-111B (a victim of inter-service and Defense Departmentwrangling) and the Vought Cutlass (a victim of its Westinghouse engines, which, it was said at the time, gave out less heat then the domestic, electric heaters made by the same firm). Both are damned, though neither was an intrinsically bad design. My subject for today is a less well-known machine: the Rockwell XFV-12A. On the face of it, this is just one more on the list of failed attempts by the USA to achieve usable VTOL. What gave me pause to reconsider it was a splendid new book by Eric Simonsen, where this plane is one of his subjects. The book was quite recently reviewed in SAMI by Soren Lorensen. (By the way, keep an eye out for the latter's forthcoming build series on Swedish naval fighters of the inter-war years.) The received wisdom in this case is that the XFV-12A programme was a complete failure but to fail you have to have been allowed a chance to succeed. Simonsen argues persuasively that the XFV-12A was not granted that opportunity. Some background The US Navy, in the early 1970s, faced with escalating expenditure on big, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, arrived at the concept of the 'sea control ship,' a small aircraft carrier in the 12,000 ton class, intended as an escort vessel for convoys.These ships were to be equipped, along with'sensor carriers' and anti-submarine helicopters, with supersonic interceptors.
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