25 Bizarre Aircraft That Don’t Look Like They Should Fly

Vought V-173, the "Flying Pancake", an American experimental fighter aircraft for the United States Navy (1942).

Lockheed XFV, "The Salmon," an experimental tailsitter prototype escort fighter aircraft (1953).

De Lackner HZ-1 Aerocycle flying platform, designed to carry one soldier to reconnaissance missions (1954).

Snecma Flying Coleoptere (C-450), a French experimental, annular wing aeroplane, propulsed by a turbo-reactor, able to take off and land vertically (1958).

Dornier Do 31, a West German experimental VTOL tactical support transport aircraft (1967).

Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar, a VTOL disk-shaped aircraft developed as part of a secret U.S. military project (1959)

HL-10, one of five aircraft built in the Lifting Body Research Program of NASA (1966 - 1970).

Alexander Lippisch's Aerodyne, a wingless experimental aircraft. The propulsion was generated by two co-axial shrouded propellers (1968).

Hyper III, a full scale lifting body remotely piloted vehicle, built at the NASA Flight Research Center in 1969.

Bartini Beriev VVA-14, a Soviet vertical take-off amphibious aircraft (1970s)

Ames-Dryden (AD)-1 Oblique Wing, a research aircraft designed to investigate the concept of a pivoting wing (1979 - 1982).

Blohm & Voss BV 141, a World War II German tactical reconnaissance aircraft, notable for its uncommon structural asymmetry.

B377PG - NASA's Super Guppy Turbine cargo plane, first flew in its outsized form in 1980.

X-36 Tailless Fighter Agility Research Aircraft, a subscale prototype jet built by McDonnell Douglas for NASA (1996 - 1997).

Beriev Be-200 Seaplane, a Russian multipurpose amphibious aircraft (1998).

X-29 forward swept wing jet plane, flown by the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, as a technology demonstrator (1984 - 1992).

Proteus, a tandem-wing, twin-engine research aircraft, built by Scaled Composites in 1998.

Stipa-Caproni, an experimental Italian aircraft with a barrel-shaped fuselage (1932).

North American XF-82. Stitch together two P-51 Mustangs, and you get this long-range escort fighter (1946).

Douglas XB-42 Mixmaster, an experimental bomber aircraft, designed to have a very high top speed (1944).

Libellula, a tandem-winged and twin-engined British experimental plane which gives the pilot an excellent view for landing on aircraft carriers (1945).

Northrop XB-35, an experimental flying wing heavy bomber developed for the United States Army Air Forces during and shortly after World War II.

Martin XB-51, an American "tri-jet" ground attack aircraft. Note the unorthodox design: one engine at the tail, and two underneath the forward fuselage in pods (1949).

McDonnell XF-85 Goblin, an American prototype jet fighter, intended to be deployed from the bomb bay of the Convair B-36 (1948).

Douglas X-3 Stiletto, built to investigate the design features necessary for an aircraft to sustain supersonic speeds (1953 - 1956)