The XFY was also slated to carry a similar armament load to its rival - 4 x 20mm cannons fitted to two wingtip pods or 48 x 2.75" aerial rockets in their place. The wingtip pods allowed for the weapon's firing clearance of the large, broad spinning propeller blades.
A prototype example completed its first tethered flight on April 19th, 1954 and managed a first flight (a vertical take-off and landing action) on August 1st, 1954 (the Lockheed submission was "first-to-fly" on June 16th of that year). On November 2nd, 1954, the aircraft completed its first vertical take-off to horizontal flight transition - something not accomplished by the Lockheed entry.
The sole flyable XFY example managed 60 hours in the air before the VTOL program was cancelled by the USN. The major deficiencies in the CONVAIR design were a lack of an effective air braking measure when attempting to transition to vertical landing and the inherently difficult -and dangerous - landing action altogether which itself required a steady and experienced hand "at the stick". Beyond these factors, the aircraft's estimated performance would never match that of the newest enemy fighter jets coming online. As such the final flight of the XFY occurred during November of 1956 ending several years of useful testing.
Like the Lockheed XFV, the CONVAIR XFY was saved from the scrap heap and currently (2016) resides in storage at the National Air and Space Museum in Maryland. Reported performance specifications included a maximum speed of 475 miles per hour, a range out to 500 miles, a service ceiling of 37,500 feet, and a rate-of-climb of 9,980 feet-per-minute.
Content ©MilitaryFactory.com; No Reproduction Permitted.