VJ-101
The EWR VJ 101 — West Germany's experimental supersonic VTOL fighter prototype, the world's first VTOL aircraft to break the sound barrier — captured as an RC EDF scale model.
About
The EWR VJ 101 was an experimental West German VTOL tiltjet aircraft. The "VJ" stood for Versuchsjäger — "Experimental Fighter" in German. By 1959, German aerospace firms Heinkel, Messerschmitt, and Bölkow had formed a joint venture company called EWR (Entwicklungsring Süd) to develop and manufacture an envisioned supersonic VTOL fighter, designated VJ 101 D. As a stepping stone, EWR developed the VJ 101 C — a pair of subsonic prototypes powered by the lighter RB145 turbojet engine, with the engines mounted in swiveling nacelles at the wingtips and additional vertical-thrust engines in the central fuselage.
The VJ 101 C made its first flight on April 10, 1963, with a series of subsequent flights demonstrating both vertical takeoff and conventional horizontal flight. The aircraft achieved supersonic speed (Mach 1.08) on July 29, 1964 — becoming the first vertical-takeoff aircraft and the first German aircraft to exceed the speed of sound. The first prototype crashed on September 14, 1964, but the second prototype continued flight testing into the late 1960s.
The VJ 101 D supersonic interceptor was never completed; the program was cancelled in 1968 as German rearmament priorities shifted and conventional supersonic interceptors (like the F-104 Starfighter, which was eventually license-built in Germany) proved more cost-effective for the Luftwaffe's interception mission. The surviving VJ 101 C X-2 prototype is on display today at the Flugwerft Schleissheim museum near Munich.
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, capturing the aesthetic of one of the most unusual VTOL experimental programs of the Cold War. Use it for sport-scale flying with experimental-aviation visual signature. A natural sibling of the Lockheed XFV-1 in this same pack and the VJ-101 VTOL variant — three different VTOL-experimental subjects.
