{"id":8161575,"date":"2026-07-31T15:35:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T13:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/?p=8161575"},"modified":"2026-08-24T16:56:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T14:56:17","slug":"vultee-xp-54-swoose-goose-pusher-fighter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/de\/vultee-xp-54-swoose-goose-pusher-fighter\/","title":{"rendered":"The Swoose Goose: America&#8217;s Backwards Fighter"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style><p>In 1939 the U.S. Army Air Corps put out a request for something deliberately radical \u2014 a fighter that broke the rules of how a fighter should be built. Vultee's answer was the XP-54: a twin-boom machine with an inverted gull wing, the engine and propeller mounted at the back, and a cockpit the pilot entered by riding his own seat up into it like a lift. It looked like the future. It flew like a disappointment.<\/p><p>Only two were ever built, and the second flew exactly once. This is the story of the Swoose Goose \u2014 one of the most ambitious, over-engineered fighters America never fielded.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px 24px;margin:24px 0;border-radius:8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px;color:#222\">Kurzinfo<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px\"><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 10px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Flugzeug<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">Vultee XP-54 \"Swoose Goose\" (Model 84)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 10px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Herkunft<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">U.S. Army Air Corps Circular Proposal R-40C<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 10px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Erster Flug<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">15 January 1943 (test pilot Frank Davis)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 10px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Configuration<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">Twin-boom pusher, inverted gull wing, tricycle gear<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 10px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Motor<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">Lycoming XH-2470 (after the Pratt & Whitney X-1800 was cancelled)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 10px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>R\u00fcstung<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">Two 37 mm cannon (fixed) plus two .50-cal guns (movable) in a tilting nose<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 10px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Empty weight<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">~18,000 lb after high-altitude changes<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 10px 5px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\"><strong>Gebaut<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0\">2 prototypes; project cancelled<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The competition for the unconventional<\/h2><p>The R-40C proposal invited manufacturers to abandon convention entirely, and three unusual pusher designs emerged from it: Vultee's XP-54, the Curtiss XP-55 Ascender, and the Northrop XP-56 Black Bullet. None would reach production. Vultee's design, internally the Model 84, won the competition, and a prototype contract was signed on 8 January 1941, with a second aircraft ordered in March 1942.<\/p>\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=1177794061  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/xp-54-xp-55-xp-56-pushers.jpg\" alt=\"XP-54, XP-55 and XP-56 pusher prototypes\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The three pusher fighters born from the R-40C proposal: the Vultee XP-54, Curtiss XP-55 Ascender and Northrop XP-56 Black Bullet. Photo: U.S. Air Force.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;A sleek twin-boom, inverted gull-wing aircraft with tricycle landing gear whose performance never lived up to its appearance.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>U.S. Air Force Test Center<\/strong> &mdash; on the Vultee XP-54<\/div><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">An engineer's fever dream<\/h2><p>The detail engineering was extraordinary. The 12-foot pusher propeller sat between the twin booms, behind the pilot \u2014 which made a conventional bail-out lethal, so the ejection system fired the pilot and seat <em>downward<\/em>, clear of the blades. To board, the pilot lowered that same seat electrically to the ground, sat down, and rode it up into the pressurised cockpit. The inverted gull wing incorporated a NACA-developed \"ducted\" section to house radiators and intercoolers.<\/p><p>Strangest of all was the nose. The entire nose section could pivot \u2014 three degrees up and six degrees down \u2014 so that the two 37 mm cannon could be elevated to aim without changing the aircraft's attitude, coordinated by a special compensating gunsight. It was clever, complicated, and heavy.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EhKenDU-dyY\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=1620384865  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/xp-54-vultee-factory.png\" alt=\"Vultee XP-54 at the factory\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The XP-54 under construction. Its ambition outstripped the engine available to power it. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Von seinem Motor im Stich gelassen<\/h2><p>Every ambitious airframe needs an engine to match, and here the XP-54's fate was sealed. Its intended powerplant, the Pratt & Whitney X-1800, was cancelled mid-programme. Vultee substituted the liquid-cooled Lycoming XH-2470 \u2014 which never delivered the promised power. Worse, in September 1941 the aircraft's role was switched from low-altitude to high-altitude interception, adding a turbo-supercharger and heavier armour and pushing the empty weight to around 18,000 pounds. A heavy airframe on an underpowered engine is a slow airframe.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7\"><em>&ldquo;The large nose section gave rise to its whimsical nickname, the Swoose Goose, inspired by a song about Alexander who was half-swan and half-goose.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>U.S. Air Force Test Center<\/strong> &mdash; on the aircraft's nickname<\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SMb-VYS642Q\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Two aircraft, one dead end<\/h2><p>Vultee test pilot Frank Davis took the first XP-54 into the air on 15 January 1943. The performance simply was not there \u2014 well short of what had been promised. The second prototype made a single flight and no more. With the engine problems unresolved and the whole R-40C pusher experiment yielding nothing usable, the project was cancelled.<\/p><p>The Swoose Goose is remembered now exactly as it deserves to be: a beautiful, brilliant, hopelessly over-complicated answer to a question the jet age was about to make irrelevant. Within a few years, the propeller-at-the-back fighter was a historical curiosity \u2014 and the XP-54 was its most elegant tombstone.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_NtAMs6CpeA\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:8px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;font-style:italic;margin-top:24px\">Sources: U.S. Air Force Test Center; The Aviation History Online Museum; MilitaryFactory; Rex's Hangar.<\/p>\r\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">\u00c4hnliche Beitr\u00e4ge<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/de\/northrop-xp-79-flying-ram-fighter-entwickelt-zum-rammen-von-bombern\/\">The Flying Ram: A Fighter Built to Crash Into Bombers<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/de\/rockwell-xfv-12-vtol-fighter-that-couldnt-hover\/\">The VTOL Fighter That Couldn't Lift Itself<\/a><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1939 the U.S. Army Air Corps put out a request for something deliberately radical \u2014 a fighter that broke the rules of how a fighter should be built. Vultee&#8217;s answer was the XP-54: a twin-boom machine with an inverted gull wing, the engine and propeller mounted at the back, and a cockpit the pilot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":8160923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8161575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Vultee XP-54 Swoose Goose: The Backwards Fighter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Vultee XP-54 Swoose Goose was a radical twin-boom pusher fighter with a tilting nose and an elevator seat, betrayed by its underpowered engine.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/de\/vultee-xp-54-swoose-goose-pusher-fighter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vultee XP-54 Swoose Goose: The Backwards Fighter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Vultee XP-54 Swoose Goose was a radical twin-boom pusher fighter with a tilting nose and an elevator seat, betrayed by its underpowered engine.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/de\/vultee-xp-54-swoose-goose-pusher-fighter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Afterburner - MiGFlug&#039;s Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/MiGFlug\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-31T13:35:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-08-24T14:56:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:450\/h:145\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/07\/vultee-xp-54-swoose-goose.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"450\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"145\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Max Gr\u00fcnwald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@migflug\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@migflug\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Max Gr\u00fcnwald\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/migflug.com\\\/afterburner\\\/fr\\\/vultee-xp-54-swoose-goose-pusher-fighter\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/migflug.com\\\/afterburner\\\/fr\\\/vultee-xp-54-swoose-goose-pusher-fighter\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Max Gr\u00fcnwald\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/migflug.com\\\/afterburner\\\/it\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/da89e4a5834c9a932ee20751ed75569c\"},\"headline\":\"The Swoose Goose: America&#8217;s Backwards Fighter\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-31T13:35:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-08-24T14:56:17+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/migflug.com\\\/afterburner\\\/fr\\\/vultee-xp-54-swoose-goose-pusher-fighter\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":707,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/migflug.com\\\/afterburner\\\/it\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/migflug.com\\\/afterburner\\\/fr\\\/vultee-xp-54-swoose-goose-pusher-fighter\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\/\\/migflug.com\\/afterburner\\/wp-content\\/uploads\\/sites\\/4\\/2026\\/07\\/vultee-xp-54-swoose-goose.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"History &amp; 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