Real Life Transformer - The Navy’s Folding VTOL Jet

Visit to get started learning STEM for free, and the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium subscription. Discord: New Channel: Join this channel to get access to perks: It’s the 70s, and we need a solution for the problem mentioned before. So if we can make an aircraft land and take off from like a VERY small flat surface, that could make any ship an aircraft carrier. And that would be super cool, yes? Grumman said, fine we’ll do it and started working on a new project. The base for the design would be OV-1 Mohawk, THIS weird looking thing. But of course, turboprops would never be able to create enough power for this design to take off vertically, so first things first, let’s switch those engines for jet ones shall we? Now comes the fun part. How do we make it able to land pretty much anywhere? The Nutcracker G-674 was designed so the rear section of the fuselage would be able to rotate 90 degrees downwards along with the engines which would allow for the vertical take off and land to and from a platform placed at the aft section of a destroyer, frigate, cruiser, well basically any ship large enough to carry a helicopter at the time. The Platform would have a sort of a docking arm or crane which would connect with a probe on the aircraft before the final touchdown to provide extra stability when landing. Just like a Hummingbird feeding on a nectar of a flower. Wait, why didn’t they call this thing Hummingbird in the first place? Ahhh, let’s just move on. There was a landing gear somewhere tucked away, but the plans we find today make it unclear just how that would have worked. Now imagine all of this in even slightly rough seas - what a nightmare. But let’s humour the idea for a minute. Main task of these aircraft would’ve been anti submarine and recon missions, but also electronic warfare - such as jamming enemy communications. The Nutcracker G-674 was also conceived to have civil applications as well - certainly ambitious. Armament would be very limited because of the nature of the aircraft design itself and the take off weight limitations, so it’s more likely to imagine it in the aforementioned type of missions. This would give great flexibility to every type of ship it would be based on, and could create very effective submarine hunting task forces. Why is this so important you ask? Well, you see, Soviet naval doctrine during the cold war was not an offensive one, rather defensive, with the main offensive force being the, you guessed it - submarines. Soviets poured a lot of money in the development of different types of nuclear and non-nuclear powered subs with tasks of either delivering the end of the world or simply hunting and destroying US carriers groups. And they were good at it. At least theoretically. So the US faced the issue of covering extremly large territory of Pacific and Atlantic ocean somewhat efficently to track and assume positions of Soviet subs at any time. And this is where our Nutcracker friend comes in. Groups of smaller ships like destroyers and frigates armed with various anti submarine weaponry could cover vast areas of the ocean to detect and possibly engage the enemy if the need arises. But how far did the development actually come? Well, in 1975. Grumman applied for a patent of this new aircraft which was designated as G-674 stating Marshall J. Corbet and Robert W. Kress as the inventors. Several scale models were built and tested and before you say pics or it didn’t happen, here you go, and you know what, if it looks stupid but it works, it ain’t stupid. But this didn’t work, so…yeah… The thing is, the landing part would be extremly hard, pilot would have very hard time with limited visibility - no telling where the tail would be, and rough weather would make this a game of Russian roulette basically. And having the entire 2nd half of the fuselage hinging on a single point of failure is naive to say the least. So the Grumman went the logical way and started developing normal hortizontal VTOL aircr…NO THEY ACTUALLY doubled down and MADE A “SON OF NUTCRACKER” Sons should be better than their fathers, and Grumman G-698 was just that.