XF5U-Pancake
The Vought XF5U "Flying Pancake" — Charles Zimmerman's disc-shaped Navy fighter prototype that was cancelled before it ever flew — captured as a sport-scale RC model.
About
The Vought XF5U "Flying Pancake" (or "Flying Flapjack") is one of the most unusual experimental U.S. Navy fighter aircraft ever designed. The disc-shaped layout was the work of Charles H. Zimmerman, who promoted the concept from 1933 through 1937 while working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at Langley Field, Virginia. Zimmerman's research showed that a flat, somewhat disc-shaped body could serve as the lifting surface itself, with two piston engines buried in the body driving propellers at the leading-edge wingtips.
The U.S. Navy initiated development of the Flying Flapjack on February 27, 1940, awarding a contract to Vought-Sikorsky for the design of the VS-173 — a smaller proof-of-concept aircraft that did fly successfully (more than 190 test flights starting in November 1942), demonstrating Zimmerman's disc-shaped layout was aerodynamically sound. The V-173 was nicknamed the "Zimmer Skimmer" after its designer.
The full-scale XF5U fighter version was built and taxi-tested at Vought's Stratford, Connecticut plant on February 3, 1947, but vibration levels during ground tests were considered excessive. With jet aircraft coming into service and rendering piston-engine fighter prototypes obsolete, the U.S. Navy officially cancelled the F5U project on March 17, 1947 — and the XF5U never made an official first flight. The completed XF5U airframe was eventually scrapped, while the smaller V-173 prototype survives today, restored and on display at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas.
The unmistakable disc-fuselage XF5U silhouette — circular planform, two engines mounted in the disc, twin tails on stubby booms — is one of the most distinctive scale subjects in modern RC flying.
In the simulator
A unique experimental scale subject with the visual character of one of the strangest fighter prototypes ever built. Use it for sport-scale flying with experimental-aviation visual signature. A natural sibling of the Lockheed XFV-1 in this same pack — two American Navy experimental fighters that never reached production.
