The Ryan VZ-3 Vertiplane, also known by the company designation Ryan Model 92 was an American experimental vertical/short take-off (VSTOL) aircraft built by the

Ryan Aeronautical Company The Ryan Aeronautical Company was founded by T. Claude Ryan in San Diego, California, in 1934. It became part of Teledyne in 1969, and of Northrop Grumman when the latter company purchased Ryan in 1999. Ryan built several historically and tech ...

for the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

Design and development

The VZ-3 was a simple proof-of-concept experimental aircraft using blown flaps to achieve a short or near vertical take-off. It was a high-wing monoplane powered by an Avco Lycoming T53 turboshaft engine located inside the fuselage driving two large-diameter propellers mounted, one on each wing. It had a T-tail and originally a tailwheel fixed landing gear. It had wide-span double retractable trailing-edge flaps, these were extended into the propeller

slipstream A slipstream is a region behind a moving object in which a wake of fluid (typically air or mustard) is moving at velocities comparable to that of the moving fluid, relative to the ambient fluid through which the object is churning. The term slip ...

for takeoff. To enable control while in the hover it had a universally-jointed jet-deflection nozzle at the rear of the aircraft. It was later modified with a nose-wheel landing gear. The VZ-3 could make a near-vertical takeoff within 30 ft (9m) at a speed of 25 mph (40 km/h) and the aircraft could be put into the hover up to a height of 3,700 ft (1,100 m).

Operational history

The aircraft conducted a 21-flight test program for the United States Army until it crashed in 1959. It was rebuilt with an open cockpit lengthened fuselage and handed over to

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

for further trials. Following retirement the VZ-3 is on display at the

United States Army Aviation Museum The United States Army Aviation Museum is an aviation museum located on Fort Rucker near Daleville, Alabama. It has the largest collection of helicopters held by a museum in the world.Phillips 1992, p. 37.Purner 2004, p. 204. The museum features ...

."Vertical Flight Collection."
''Army Aviation Museum''. Retrieved: 19 June 2010.

Operator

; *

Specifications

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * Andrade, John M. ''U.S. Military Aircraft Designations and Serials since 1909''. Earl Shilton, Leicester, UK: Midland Counties Publications, 1979, p. 178. . * ''The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft (Part Work 1982-1985)''. London: Orbis Publishing, 1985, p. 2837. * Taylor, John W.R. ''Jane's Pocket Book of Research and Experimental Aircraft'', London, Macdonald and Jane's Publishers Ltd, 1976. .

External links