The VZ-9V Avrocar Flying Disc was perhaps one of the strangest projects to come out of the Cold War era.

It all began with a fellow by the name of John Frost, chief designer with A.V. Roe Canada--the company most famous for the Avro Arrow supersonic fighter project in the 1950s. He began work on the flying saucer with a select group of engineers, designers, and technicians in 1952 and began to show prototypes in 1953 to attract funding. In 1954, an official report was finally released entitled:

Project Y2: Flat Vertical Take-Off Supersonic Gyroplane

This report described a "circular craft using conventional engines for power, with a cockpit in the center of the craft. Intakes for forward flight were located at the top and bottom of the craft, forward of the cockpit. For vertical takeoff, intakes were located in an inner ring on the upper surface. Exhausts were located on the perimeter of the craft." Also, amazingly, it was "expected to attain speeds of between 1,720 and 2,300 mph and reach a maximum height of between 71,000 and 80,600 feet, with a capability to hover as high as 18,000 feet." (!!!)

Some recently declassified CIA documents now indicate that the U.S. "was concerned that the Soviet Union was developing a secret weapon based on the 'flying discs' that the [Germans] had been rumoured to have constructed in the last months of the Second World War." To their surprise, a CIA study group subsequently discovered that British and Canadian engineers were already building a flying saucer of their own in Canada. That's when CIA agents decided to pay a little friendly visit to the facility just outside of Toronto. A.V. Roe welcomed U.S. Air Force funding with open arms, as they were unable to obtain funding from the British government and the Canadian government was very reluctant to continue to support the project.

The beginning of the end of the project came with the misfiring of one of the Avrocar's engines in the late 1950s, leading to an evacuation of the entire testing facility and a new proposal from A.V. Roe for a simpler 18-foot-diameter model. This smaller Avrocar, despite being funded to the tune of $12 million by the U.S. military, never really took off (both literally and figuratively), as the vehicle became unstable at heights of more than five feet off the ground. Of course, once the Canadian government cancelled A.V. Roe's premier project--the Arrow--in 1959, there were massive layoffs and the flying saucer was essentially doomed. Surprisingly though, John Frost did manage to convince the U.S. to continue testing it until 1961.

Today there are only 2 Avrocars left in existence: one in exhibit storage at the Smithsonian's Paul Garber Facility in Suitland, Maryland; the other in the collection of the U.S. Army Transport Museum at Fort Eustis, Virginia.

Some great pictures and diagrams of "Avro Canada's Flying Saucer", as well as of many of the other famous A.V. Roe projects, can be found at:

http://tsw.odyssey.on.ca/~dmackechnie/

A neat anecdote I heard today from my control theory prof (who inspired this writeup):

He actually worked at A.V. Roe on the Avrocar Flying Disc project as a summer student, back during the company's heyday in the mid 50s. Of course, this was before glorious Matlab, so he basically spent the whole summer with many other students, crunching numbers to calculate the eigenvalues of the 11-dimensional system model the saucer's designers were faced with. After about 4 months(!), they finally completed their gruelling work and had a huge celebration, which included champagne and all the trimmings. With a serious, nostalgic look in his eyes, he ended the story saying: "it's kind of sad that they don't have parties for finding eigenvalues anymore."