Aeronautics: The Plane That Can Fly Like a Helicopter

The two planes that took off from the Dallas Naval Air Station last week looked like a pair of elephants doing a mid-air pas de deux. Their wings were tilted vertically, while their four turbo prop engines blasted so much prop wash straight downward that they kept pieces of trash flying in all directions around the field. Back and forth they rocked, 50 ft. above the ground, when suddenly they stopped and hovered in the 10-m.p.h. wind. Ungainly as they looked, the pair of XC-142As were the first large U.S. military transports to demonstrate a helicopter-like capability for...

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