The R-40C Three: America's Failed "Pusher" Planes 

Probably the biggest set back was the cancelation of the engine they were designed for. That had the most impact on weight, speed, performance, and design. I find it interesting that they just didn't go back to the drawing board after that.

I must make you aware of this. "Army Air Corps.'" The 'p' and 's' are silent. 'Corps' is pronounced the same as 'core.'

And every fighter built after 1950 was a pusher aircraft… (Jets are inherently pushers). The Gloster Gladiator fighter entered service in 1937 (a year after the Swordfish). Gloster never built a monoplane piston engine tractor fighter, moving directly from the Gladiator to the Gloster Meteor. Gladiators remained in service into the Battle of Britain (although they were too slow to catch the German bombers). The Gloster Meteor was actually substantially faster than the Me262 and actually entered service before (in 1943) the Messerschmitt product (due to faulty German engines). The first American jet, the Bell P-59 entered service in 1943 but was a bit of a disappointment and superseded by the P-80 in 1944 with some being deployed to Europe during WW2.

This is a awsome video keep up the great work 👍

Interesting. Would love some three view drawings of these. It's giving me something to research. Thanks for making me aware of these strange birds

I like the XP-54 'Swing Goose' more than the 'Ass-ender' (Ascender) XP55 and the 'Black Bullet' XP-56.

THE XP54 HAD A DROOP SNOOT! ♥

Cool logo! 👍

Love it

They designed them in pusher configuration to get rid of the blade wash across the lifting surfaces of the main wing This allowed for much smoother airflow across the lifting surfaces The other reason is the weapon 's fire rate would no longer be constricted having to shoot through the propeller or if counter rotating propellers 🤩

I enjoyed this video and am now subscribed and hope for more! Interesting content and discussion. If I may make a suggestion, spaces (like the 3:40-4:19) would be more enjoyable if we saw less of the admittedly Cool Logo(tm) and you had simply left the photos of the three fighters on the screen. A small matter. Mahalo and Aloha!

IMO mono wing aircraft during WWI were beyond the "experimental" stage. There were many mono wing aircraft in service on both sides from very early on. The Fokker Eindecker series of the infamous Fokker Scourge (1915) was a mono plane and ruled the skies.

Bi planes..Gloster Gladiator and Fiat cr42 both entered service after 36 and served during the early years of the war. Mono plane.. The British and the French so feared the Fokker D8 (1918) , they made Germany destroy all of them in the armistice

When you're promised a 2400 HP engine, and what you end up with is a 1200 HP engine your kinda screwed... The US also never developed successful counter-rotating props (during the war) to a point where they were actually viable, and almost every design that incorporated this feature eventually dropped it in favor of conventional props resulting in a significant downgrade in performance. These "bad" designs were just designs that unfortunately picked a bad engine and in some cases a prop setup that took too long to perfect, counter-rotating props also killed the YB-49, they couldn't make the props work but when they removed them and replaced them with early jets it was found that the jets were too fuel hungry and range of the 49 was dramatically reduced, also the props and prop fairings gave the 49 yaw stability which was could not be replicated with jets, it was the primary reason (IMO) why the YB-49 failed.

It is amazing the A0scender had swept back wings. Which was a major wind design changed that improved the performance of jet fighters. Plus pusher plane design should have helped with the design of jets because jets are pusher planes.

Good video. The p and s in “corps” is silent, though. Like “core.”

Most failed designs of WW2 were killed by engine issues, regardless of aerodynamic configuration. If you wanted better performances than the current generation, you had to gamble on a new engine, which often had issues or didn't deliver, or even canceled. If you needed to change the engine, this would often delay testing to a point when your design was no longer needed, or outclassed by the competitors. A few new designs just got lucky: the Mustang was not designed for the Merlin engine, it fitted it by pure chance. But even if you happened to win your engine gamble, you had to compete with other lucky designs that used the same engine. This is probably why the Mosquito was not produced in much greater numbers: you could produce two Mustangs or two Spitfires with the engines of one Mosquito.

Cool logo

The Swedes had a pusher design that was re-engined as a jet. With the German use of swept wings on the ME-262, I wonder why they didn’t try turning the canard XP-55 into a jet.

I don't think it's fair to classify the XP-55 as a failure. I guess it depends on how you're defining failure, but the XP-55 was ready for production and was as safe as any other fighter then in production, but it's performance did not warrant introducing a new type so late in the war. It was no better than the P-51, so there was no need for it. Whereas the XP-56 never overcame cooling and instability problems that rendered it unsafe and completely unacceptable as a military machine.

Why does the Biplane line not start in 1903 with the Wright Flyer?

The Ascender was my first true love.

Pusher is faster than pulling because pulling the plane blows high speed air from the prop over the entire airframe pusher is faster because high speed air is free to blow out. You can prove it with radio control planes I have seen it

Canard is French for Duck and pronounced like Gerard, not Cay-Nard but Cuh-naaaaaard.

I cannot help but wonder what the performance would have been for those three planes if the engine would have been replaced with a jet turbine. After all the japanese planned to do that with their J7W Shinden Kai which never got realized.

The xp56 was used in Hollywood movies as Martian Rocket ships, and stood on their tails.

id say biplanes were still pretty viable, such as the i-15 chaika

1:30 your data is in error the last Biplane in active service was the Gloster Gladiator retired in 1953. 15:26 I would disagree with you on one point that would be powerplant the X-1800 had been successful and entered production at least one of these planes would have entered production.

"The Air Corpse."

Seems they might have tried to adapt these planes to jet.

wym the xp55 is great in war thunder, it must been op irl

Air 'Core', not 'Corpse'.

"Cool Logo" tm, lol

you forget the Fiat CR-42 which was made untill 1942.

I Wonder if bi or tri planes wuld make a grand return some day...

aren't all jets pusher planes ?

Today's pusher configurations are called 'jets". ;-)

คิดดูเอาละกันปูตินไม่เคยเห็นที่ไหนงานแรกเลยนะเนี่ย

Most prop-pushers fail. Physics.

lose the over use of the Cool Logo - It is so annoying to the viewer. Your goal is to create "Interest" not "irritation". Good video otherwise.

Your constant pounding your damn logo all through the video isn't cool at all. It's annoying AF.

These airplanes where not failed aircraft. These where Experimental to find out what worked and what did not. So, your head line is just BS. And, this has all been hashed out by others a thousand times.