No point to this thread other than to share. One of my "make your eyes glaze over" threads I'm afraid.
I like finding out "stuff" of almost any sort, and this was new to me today. I just thought someone else might be a bit interested too.
By a long boring story I won't relate, I ended up on the FBI archives site. There's a search, and after prodding about with the usual stuff, such as political corruption, Hitler, Elvis, that kind of thing, I ended up, inevitably, doing UFO related searches.
Which produced lots, including a report written in 1947, in which a pilot on leave was sunbathing on the grass, and saw some disc shaped planes go over. Ah, he thought, I know what they are. They're XF5U Flying Pancakes, I'll be bound.
Well, other than he reported seeing ten go over, and seven come back later, and apparently they only ever built one, he was spot on.
So the POINT of this ramble is that I'd never heard of the Flying Pancake. Turns out it was an almost circular prop driven test plane from the forties. The US Navy thought it promising, but were at that point of moving on to jets, and so it was abandoned.
Common knowledge for our aviation experts here? Here it is.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought_XF5U
www.pilotfriend.com/photo_albums/potty/4.htm
Oh, in case anyone else wants to poke about in the FBI archives, here is the link to my search. Make your own as you want.
vault.fbi.gov/search?SearchableText=Sphere
Doesn't explain what the pilot reported though. I expect it was something similar.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Sun 11 Feb 18 at 16:55
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Yes I've seen that before, I wouldn't have known the model off the top of my head though. I knew it was ww2 experimental aircraft.
Last edited by: sooty123 on Sun 11 Feb 18 at 17:14
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Flying pancakes - sooty123
