Martin Model 262 Convoy Fighter Book Review

By Michael Benolkin

Review

You might remember author Jared Zichek from some of his previous titles under the bannder of American Aerospace Archives. He's moved over to a new publishing banner but his work remains the same - digging through the archives and showing us some of the unique aircraft designs that might have been.

You might remember the distinctive VTOL fighter prototypes developed in the early 1950s? You'd know them as the Convair XFY-1 and the Lockheed XFV-1, both of which took off and landed on their tails. The intent was to develop a fighter aircraft that could defend naval convoys without the need of an aircraft carrier. Convair and Lockheed both won contracts to build and demonstrate their concepts. Martin developed the Model 262 which supported similar launch and recovery capabilities as the Convair and Lockheed demonstrators, but had growth potential with some interesting concept variations.

The author has put together the background, concepts, and even the engineering drawings of the Martin proposal. This makes for some interesting reading to see what might have been, looking at a VTOL design that had promise though the Navy ultimately abandoned their VTOL-based combat aircraft requirement. The Marines would later adopt VTOL, but that came with the advent of the Harrier and that is another story.

If you're an aviation enthusiast or modeler that enjoys looking at the 'what-if' side of aviation, this monograph is worth adding to your library!

You can order this title here and the website also tells you about electronic versions available as well.

My sincere thanks to Retro Mechanix for this review sample!