• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

XF-85 Goblin

After the Great War, when military aviation was first taking to the air, the United States Navy employed the idea of multiple aircraft flying together for mutual benefit when it hung pursuit planes from the dirigibles AKRON and MACON. The lessons learned during the air campaign over Germany during World War II, concerning the importance of fighter escort for strategic bombers, brought about research programs such as FICON (fighter conveyor) and wingtip coupling that attempted to physically attach fighters to bombers.

The conveyor aircraft was the massive B-36 outfitted with an elaborate trapeze mechanism to which the fighter was attached and then hoisted into the bomb bay. The fighter was the XF-85, an egg-shaped, jet-propelled, folding-wing, landing-gearless experimental aircraft that proved too unstable to consistently reattach itself to the conveyor after flying its mission. The TOM-TOM project followed up on the PICON idea, but this time the fighter, an F-84, had its wings remain outside of the B-36 fuselage.

McDonnell's diminutive XF-85 Goblin was to be the last attempt of the twentieth century to produce a dedicated parasite fighter. Work on the XF-85 started during the latter half of 1944 to meet a USAAF need for a fighter that could be carried and deployed from their B-29, B-35 and B-36 long-range bombers in order to protect them.

The McDonnell Aircraft Corp. developed the XF-85 Goblin "parasite" fighter to protect B-36 bombers flying far beyond the range of conventional escort fighters. The "parent" B-36 would carry the XF-85 within a bomb bay -- if enemy fighters appeared, the Goblin would be lowered on a trapeze and released to combat the attackers. Once the enemy had been driven away, the Goblin would return to the B-36, reattach to the trapeze, and be lifted back into the bomb bay.

Starting with a small, relatively conventional design, the tiny single seater evolved into its final, quite radical shape by mid-1945, under pressure to make it fully stowable within the bomber's fuselage.

Two test aircraft were ordered in October 1945, and flight testing with a modified B-29 began in 1948. First flown free of the trapeze-equipped Boeing B-29 mothership on August 23, 1948, the two XF-85s, 46.523 and 46.524 proved far too sensitive in their handling to permit routine launch and recovery. Test pilots could successfully launch the XF-85, but the turbulent air under the B-29 made recovery difficult and hazardous. About half of the Goblin flights ended with emergency ground landings after the test pilot could not hook up to the B-29.

No XF-85s were ever launched or carried by a B-36. Flight testing was abandoned in April 1949, after a meagre 2 hours, 19 minutes aloft. Powered by a 3.000lb st Westinghouse J34-W-7, the four .5 inch gunned XF-85's top level speed was never established. Combat endurance was estimated at 30 minutes. The program ended in late 1949 when aerial refueling of conventional fighter aircraft showed greater promise.