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At about the same time that Kenneth Arnold's account of flying saucers made headlines around the world, the May 1947 issue of Mechanix Illustrated devoted its cover to the US Navy's 'Flying Flapjack': a disc-shaped, twin-propeller aircraft boasting a bold new arrangement of cockpit and engines within a circular fuselage. 'It hovers like a helicopter: will it fly faster than the speed of sound?' the magazine wondered.
Painted bright yellow with a futuristic silver undercarriage, the aircraft's advanced 'discoidal' design was the brainchild of Charles H Zimmerman, who had originally conceived the idea in the early 1930s. Although awarded a prize by NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) in 1933, no further development took place after NACA rejected the shape as 'too advanced'.
The US Navy later picked up the design. In June 1947, a test model was flown along Long Island Sound for a Navy Day display, causing excited bathers to report seeing 'a flying saucer'.
It was the Flying Flapjack's first and only public flight; the navy soon dropped the project to concentrate on jet-propelled craft instead. Considered to be on the leading edge of aviation technology at the end of the Second World War, the jet plane and the helicopter offered new levels of speed and manoeuvrability. But it was the flying saucer shape, however, that really seemed to speak of the future; its smooth lenticular form recalling the progressive streamlined designs that typified post-Depression America.
At the same time, the flying saucer also marked the deep gulf opening up between the actual possibilities of technological progress and those who felt the future couldn't get here quickly enough. By the end of the 1950s, even though the navy had long since abandoned the project, an issue of Mechanix Illustrated was still carrying plans on how to build your own Flying Flapjack. 'Make Any Backyard An Airport,' its cover proudly proclaimed.
The Coming of the Saucers | Flying Flapjacks | Getting Saucers to Fly | Avro-Cars and Pluto Platters | Backyard Saucers | Secret Skies | Soaring into the Future | Find out more
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