Convair Model 49

The Convair Model 49 was an unbuilt tail-sitting coleopter that Convair proposed for the United States Army Advanced Aerial Fire Support System competition, which asked for a new high-speed helicopter-type design for attack and escort work. Three turbines drove counter-rotating propellers inside a ring-shaped shroud, with exposed areas armoured against 12.7 mm fire and a two-man crew in an articulated capsule that pointed forward when the craft was horizontal and at right angles to the shroud when it was upright. Like the earlier XFY Pogo, it was meant to take off vertically and then tilt into horizontal flight, and its turret and hardpoint weapons were to be fired remotely by the gunner. The Army judged it overly complicated and chose the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne and the Sikorsky S-66 instead, and only scale models of the Model 49 were built.