Summary and Key Points: The XF-85 Goblin, designed by McDonnell Aircraft, was an innovative "parasite" fighter intended for deployment from "flying aircraft carriers."
-The concept was developed during the post-WWII era to provide long-range bombers with their own fighter escorts. Despite its unique design and successful test flights, the Goblin struggled with the turbulence created during re-capture by the mother ship's trapeze system, leading to several crash landings.
-The introduction of aerial refueling in 1949 rendered the need for flying aircraft carriers obsolete, and the XF-85 Goblin program was canceled after just seven test flights.
This was a crazy-looking fighter built for an idea that never came to fruition. Russia and China can thank the gods the U.S. military never built a flying aircraft carrier.
The McDonnell Aircraft Corporation’s XF-85 Goblin was to be a fighter unlike any other. It was tiny–so small it was often referred to as a “parasite” fighter–and instead of taking off from runways, it was intended to be deployed from the inside of flying aircraft carriers.
When the United States was plunged into World War II by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the nation was not the military powerhouse it is today. The Japanese and Germans were indeed aware of America’s potential strength, but that was really more a measure of the nation’s industrial infrastructure and population. In 1939, two years before the attack on Pearl Harbor, America had only 174,000 troops in the entirety of its military. Of course, within just six years, the United States would emerge as the most potent military power on the planet.
By 1946, America’s military had grown to over 16,000,000 troops, demonstrated the destructive power of its atomic weapons on the world’s stage not once, but twice, and was beginning test flights on a bomber with the largest wingspan in history. The combination of America’s nuclear weapons and this new bomber, the aptly named B-36 Peacemaker–with its 10,000-mile range–left America without equal in the days immediately following World War II.
But even then, America knew there would be challengers on the horizon. The Soviet Union, already positioning themselves for conflict with the West in the waning days of the second Great War,........