TARGET 060705

VZ-9A AVROCAR 1

Development sponsored by The US Air Force and The US Army.

On February 11, 1953 The Toronto Star reported that a new flying saucer was being developed at the Avro-Canada plant in Malton, Ontario.

On 16 February the Minister for Defense Production informed the House of Commons, in Ottawa, that Avro-Canada was working on a 'mock-up model' of a flying saucer, capable of flying at 1500 miles per hour (2400 km/h) and climbing vertically.

The President of Avro-Canada wrote in AVRO NEWS that the prototype being built was "...so revolutionary that it would make all other forms of supersonic aircraft obsolete".

But by 1960 is was being officially claimed that the project had been dropped. The 'prototype' of the Avro flying saucer is now in the U.S. Air Force Museum in Fort Eustis, Virginia.

A true flying saucer. A circular craft with a large central fan, that sucked in air from the upper side and expelled it at the edges of the disk. It flew well at low altitudes of five or six feet, but when it tried to rise further it became unstable. Never did more than hover at low altitude, and was abandoned after seven months because of stability problems.

The AVRO Canada VZ-9A AVRO car was designed, built and tested just outside Toronto was unique in the annals of flight. Shaped like an obese discus, it was intended to use a novel flight mode called GETOL - Ground Effect Takeoff and Landing. The machine would lift into ground effect on a cushion of air expelled from a peripheral slot on its underside and directed by a sliding "focusing ring." The ring would then "focus" the cushion rearward, driving the flying saucer forward. The strange craft would thus taxi in ground effect until it had enough forward speed to climb out of ground effect and fly like a conventional airplane.

In actuality, the prototype never flew out of ground effect. To solve problems of stability in ground effect the designers came up with a pneumatic analogue control system using the huge vertical-axis lift fan as the sensing element. The obvious wobbliness of the ship in its original configuration completely disappeared thanks to this light, simple solution.

The U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and Germany all had versions of the "flying disk" technology. To access more information about the Avrocar and the similar technologies of the other countries, click here and follow the page's many links to other pages on this interesting technology.