Business: Vertical Take-Off

A vertical take-off jet plane has been under development for eighteen months at the Buffalo plant of Bell Aircraft Corp., and last week word leaked out that it has been successfully test-flown. Bell has worked out a mechanism that tilts the plane’s two jet engines from the horizontal to the vertical, thereby making it possible to take off and rise straight up, then level the engines again for forward flight. To land, the pilot slows the plane, tilts the engines vertically and eases to the ground. Since tail and rudder are useless while the plane is hovering, compressed-air jets are used to keep the plane in balance and under control.

Bell’s new craft uses the same lift principle as Britain’s new “Flying Bedstead,” of which the Ministry of Supply released the first picture last week (see cut). The Bedstead has two engines, mounted end-to-end, with right-angle exhaust pipes to shoot the jet blast downward, thus cause the Bedstead to rise. From a seat on top, the pilot steadies and controls the contraption by shooting compressed air through nozzles mounted on outriggers. When the Bedstead is tilted forward, the jet stream thrusts it ahead. Similarly, pulling the nose up causes the jets to drive it backward. The Bedstead is strictly an experimental device, has gone only 25 feet in the air. But Bell believes that its new swivel-jet plane, with wings, tail and rudder, can be developed into a practical plane.