Fieseler-Skoda FiSk-199

Essentially a Bf-109 with a very, very, very large tail wheel (kind of a reversed tricycle gear), so it could carry large bombs. Apparently not suited for rough-field operations.

How can we make this thing even slower…

Here’s the Devastator on floats.

B-29 and Goblin

XF-85 Goblin and B-29 mother ship. The McDonnell XF-85 Goblin program sought to provide the B-36 Peacemaker with a fighter for self-defense that the bomber could carry entirely within its bomb bay. An EB-29B replaced the B-36, which was not available for flight-testing. Because of turbulence, only three of seven flights resulted in successful captures.

…and it does windows, too…

Stole this one from the “Herc” thread- a C-130 on floats. It would have field installable amphibian floats replacing the landing gear on C-130E/H/J models allowing open ocean, beaching, and hard surface operation without the need for a dedicated seaplane.

Asymmetric Aircraft

A great site on asymmetric aircraft:

http://cmeunier.chez-alice.fr/

Plus one example- the Lockheed XH-51A Compound. In an attempt to significantly increase the speed of helicopters, a single large turbojet was added laterally on a standard XH-51 (with the rotor, a classical additional dorsal jet was not possible). The first flight occured in 1964, and the World Speed Record for rotorcraft was established at 272mph.

Equator Testbed

The first Equator testbed P-300 A1 is a 6-seat research and development engineering airplane.

Lockheed 737 CATBird

Ah, so many wonderfully weird planes, and we’ve just gotten started! Let’s keep this going- it’s great fun!

The Lockheed Martin CATBird is a highly modified Boeing 737-330 designed as an avionics flight testbed aircraft. The name is an adaptive acronym, from Cooperative Avionics Test Bed. The aircraft was modified in order to provide an economic means of developing and flight testing the avionics suite for the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II.