{"id":6569901,"date":"2026-07-21T16:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T14:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/?p=6569901"},"modified":"2026-08-24T16:54:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T14:54:55","slug":"vought-v-173-flying-pancake-xf5u","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/es\/vought-v-173-flying-pancake-xf5u\/","title":{"rendered":"The Flying Pancake That Refused to Stall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style><\/p>\r\n<p>It sat on the ground at twenty-two degrees nose-up, which meant the pilot could not see forward at all. To take off and land he looked down through windows cut into the floor at his feet.<\/p>\r\n<p>The Vought V-173 was a flat disc with two enormous propellers on the front and almost nothing a 1942 aviator would recognise as a wing. Test pilots called it the Flying Pancake. It flew 190 times and never once crashed.<\/p>\r\n<p>Its successor, built to turn the idea into a carrier fighter, never left the ground at all.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background: #f5f5f5; padding: 20px 24px; margin: 24px 0; border-radius: 8px;\">\r\n<p style=\"margin: 0 0 12px; font-weight: bold; font-size: 17px; color: #222;\">Datos r\u00e1pidos<\/p>\r\n<table style=\"width: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.6;\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Aeronave<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">Vought V-173 \u201cFlying Pancake\u201d \u2014 one built<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Primer vuelo<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">23 November 1942, from Bridgeport, Connecticut, with Vought chief test pilot Boone Guyton at the controls<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Dise\u00f1ador<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">Charles H. Zimmerman, an aerodynamicist who came to Vought from NACA<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Shape<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">A circular wing 23.3 ft across using a symmetrical NACA 0015 section \u2014 almost no conventional wing at all<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Motores<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">Two Continental A-80 four-cylinder engines, 80 horsepower each<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Propellers<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">Three-bladed and wooden, 16.5 ft in diameter \u2014 enormous relative to the aircraft<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Actuaci\u00f3n<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">Max speed 138 mph, gross weight 2,258 lb, climb to 5,000 ft in about seven minutes<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>Flights<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">190, with no crashes. Charles Lindbergh flew it and found it easy to handle<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 12px 5px 0; color: #666; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;\"><strong>The successor<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<td style=\"padding: 5px 0; color: #222;\">The all-metal XF5U-1, roughly five times heavier with two Pratt &amp; Whitney R-2000 radials. It never flew<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">Why a disc?<\/h2>\r\n<p>Zimmerman was chasing one thing: the ability to fly extremely slowly without stalling.<\/p>\r\n<p>A conventional wing sheds vortices at its tips that spill lift and create drag, and the shorter and stubbier the wing, the worse the penalty. The usual answer is a long, thin wing. Zimmerman went the opposite way \u2014 make the wing so short it is essentially circular, then put a huge propeller at each tip turning <em>against<\/em> the vortex, cancelling it out.<\/p>\r\n<p>The propellers were not there merely to provide thrust. They were part of the wing's aerodynamics. That is why they are so absurdly large and mounted exactly where they are.<\/p>\r\n<p>It worked. The V-173 could fly at speeds where a conventional fighter would have fallen out of the sky, and in a 25-knot headwind it could take off with essentially no ground roll at all. For an aircraft intended to operate from a pitching carrier deck, that was the entire point.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin: 0 0 24px; width: 100%;\"><img data-opt-id=925970805  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: auto; max-width: 100%; display: block; border-radius: 6px;\" 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\/vought-v-173-naca-langley-full-scale-wind-tunnel.jpg\" alt=\"Vought V-173 mounted in the NACA Langley Full-Scale Wind Tunnel\" width=\"1024\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" \/>\r\n<figcaption style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #777; text-align: center; margin-top: 6px; font-style: italic;\">The V-173 in the NACA Langley Full-Scale Wind Tunnel. The propellers were part of the aerodynamics, not just the propulsion. NASA \/ public domain<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">Flying it was reportedly bizarre<\/h2>\r\n<p>Those huge propellers, spinning fast, gave the aircraft handling closer to a rotorcraft than a fighter.<\/p>\r\n\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; display: flex; gap: 20px; align-items: flex-start;\">\r\n<div><em>\u201cBy having the propellers so very large and spinning at not-inconsiderable velocities as well, you wind up with very large gyroscopic forces. So it starts to actually behave a bit more like a helicopter, or in a modern sort of parlance, a V-22 Osprey. V-22 guys would totally relate to the way this particular aircraft operates\u201d<\/em>\r\n<div style=\"margin-top: 10px; font-size: 14px; color: #555;\"><strong>Al Bowers<\/strong> \u2014 Associate Director of Research, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n<p>The airframe itself was pure 1942 improvisation: wood and tube covered in doped fabric. When the Vought Aircraft Heritage Foundation restored the surviving aircraft decades later, volunteers reproduced that covering by hand.<\/p>\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; display: flex; gap: 20px; align-items: flex-start;\">\r\n<div><em>\u201cWe calculated about 81,000 hand stitches to do the whole airplane. One fellow said he left his DNA all over the airplane\u201d<\/em>\r\n<div style=\"margin-top: 10px; font-size: 14px; color: #555;\"><strong>Dick Guthrie<\/strong> \u2014 42-year Vought veteran, head of the Vought Aircraft Heritage Foundation V-173 restoration<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">The fighter that never flew<\/h2>\r\n<p>The Navy liked what it saw enough to order a combat version: the XF5U-1, sometimes called the Flying Flapjack. It was a completely different animal \u2014 all metal, 32 ft 6 in span, two Pratt &amp; Whitney R-2000 radials in place of the V-173's pair of 80-horsepower engines. Empty weight went from just over a ton to more than six.<\/p>\r\n<p>It was completed. It ran. It taxied and made short hops. But it never made a genuine flight, and by the time it was ready the war was over and the Navy had committed to jets. Both airframes were scrapped. The V-173 survived and is now in the Smithsonian's collection.<\/p>\r\n<p>One caution for anyone browsing this subject online: because the two aircraft look superficially similar, footage of \u201cthe pancake flying\u201d is constantly captioned as the XF5U. It is not. <strong>Every image of a pancake in the air is the V-173<\/strong>, without exception. The XF5U never got there.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin: 0 0 24px; width: 100%;\"><img data-opt-id=1310562089  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"width: 100%; height: auto; max-width: 100%; display: block; border-radius: 6px;\" 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\/vought-xf5u-1-flying-flapjack-on-the-ground.jpg\" alt=\"Vought XF5U-1 Flying Flapjack sitting on its landing gear around 1946\" width=\"1024\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" \/>\r\n<figcaption style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #777; text-align: center; margin-top: 6px; font-style: italic;\">The XF5U-1 on its gear, showing the extreme nose-high sitting angle. It taxied, it hopped, and it never flew. US Navy \/ public domain<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 22px;\">What it was actually for<\/h2>\r\n<p>It is tempting to file the Flying Pancake under aviation curiosities and move on. That undersells it.<\/p>\r\n<p>Zimmerman was solving a real and enduring problem: how do you build an aircraft fast enough to fight and slow enough to land on a boat? Every carrier aircraft since has been a compromise on exactly that axis, and the industry's eventual answers \u2014 swing wings, blown flaps, vectored thrust, ski jumps, and now tiltrotors \u2014 all attack the same question from different directions.<\/p>\r\n<p>The V-173 was the strangest answer anyone came up with, and in its own terms one of the few that actually worked. One hundred and ninety flights, no accidents, and a test pilot roster that included Charles Lindbergh.<\/p>\r\n<p>It just arrived at the exact moment the propeller stopped being the future.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; margin: 24px 0;\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: 0; border-radius: 8px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LfpTDOAfj7Y\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-no-lazy=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"font-size: 14px; color: #777; text-align: center; margin-top: -8px; font-style: italic;\">Period test footage of the V-173 actually flying.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; margin: 24px 0;\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: 0; border-radius: 8px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DZoMMt1e2MM\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-no-lazy=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"font-size: 14px; color: #777; text-align: center; margin-top: -8px; font-style: italic;\">A fuller account of the design and why the shape made sense.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"display: flex; justify-content: center; margin: 2em 0;\">\r\n<blockquote class=\"reddit-embed-bq\" data-embed-height=\"500\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/aviation\/comments\/703dfu\/the_vought_v173_flying_pancake\/\">The Vought V-173 \"Flying Pancake\" on r\/aviation<\/a><\/blockquote>\r\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/embed.reddit.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\r\n\r\n<p><em>Sources: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum; Smithsonian Air &amp; Space magazine; NASA; Wikipedia.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background: #f0f4ff; border-left: 4px solid #5C91FF; padding: 16px 20px; margin: 32px 0 8px; border-radius: 0 8px 8px 0;\">\r\n<p style=\"margin: 0 0 8px; font-weight: 600; color: #333;\">Publicaciones relacionadas<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"margin: 4px 0;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/es\/rockwell-xfv-12-vtol-fighter-that-couldnt-hover\/\">The VTOL Fighter That Couldn't Lift Itself<\/a><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"margin: 4px 0;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/es\/curtiss-xp-55-ascender-pusher-canard-fighter\/\">Curtiss construy\u00f3 un caza que volaba de cola.<\/a><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"margin: 4px 0;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/es\/miles-libellula-libelula-de-ala-en-tandem-luchador\/\">El luchador construido como una lib\u00e9lula<\/a><\/p>\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A flat disc with two enormous propellers, flown 190 times without a crash. Its pilot couldn&#8217;t see forward and looked through windows in the floor instead.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":6569111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6569901","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>Vought V-173: The Flying Pancake That Flew<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A flat disc with two enormous propellers, flown 190 times without a crash. 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