VJ-101 VTOL

About

The EWR VJ 101 was an experimental West German VTOL tiltjet aircraft developed in the early 1960s by the joint-venture company EWR (Entwicklungsring Süd). The VJ 101 C made its first flight on April 10, 1963, and on July 29, 1964 became the first vertical-takeoff aircraft and the first German aircraft to break the sound barrier (Mach 1.08). The program produced two prototypes — the first lost in a 1964 crash, the second preserved today at the Flugwerft Schleissheim museum.

The VJ 101's defining feature was the tiltjet configuration: swivelling engine nacelles mounted at the wingtips that pivoted from vertical (for hover) to horizontal (for cruise), supplemented by additional fuselage-mounted lift engines for VTOL operation. This separated the lift and propulsion functions in a way that anticipated later VTOL programs but added complexity that ultimately proved prohibitive for production.

This "VTOL" variant of the model represents the same airframe as the standard VJ-101 in this pack, with the same rare-experimental-VTOL visual signature. The unmistakable VJ 101 silhouette — twin tilting wingtip-mounted engine nacelles on a slim swept-wing fuselage — is one of the most unusual experimental VTOL scale subjects in modern RC modeling.

In the simulator

A unique experimental jet scale subject. The VJ 101 in our sim flies as a conventional aircraft (since the simulator does not model the VTOL transition), capturing the aesthetic of one of the most unusual VTOL prototypes of the Cold War era. A natural sibling of the standard VJ-101 in this same pack and the Lockheed XFV-1.