The Air Force Built a Fighter With No Wheels. Its Only Way Home Was a Trapeze.

In 1948 the US Air Force flew a jet fighter with no wheels. The McDonnell XF-85 Goblin was a 14 ft 10 in egg-shaped fighter with wings that folded, built to ride inside the bomb bay of a Convair B-36 bomber, be lowered on a trapeze, fly off to defend the bomber, and come home by catching the trapeze with a hook in its nose. Its only other way down was a steel skid.

Correction up front: the flight tests did not use a B-36. They used a modified Boeing B-29 (EB-29B), nicknamed “Monstro”, because the B-36 was not available; the Goblin never flew from a B-36. The film shows the B-29 as the carrier and a B-36 only passing high overhead at the end. On its first free flight, 23 Aug 1948, McDonnell test pilot Ed Schoch was released at 20,000 ft. The bomber’s turbulence made hooking back on very hard, and during one of the attempts the jet’s nose hit the trapeze so hard that the canopy was smashed and his helmet and mask were torn off. He belly-landed on the dry lake. The first successful hook-up came on 14 Oct 1948; on 22 Oct the nose hit the bar and the hook broke. Of the seven free flights, only three ended hooked on; the other four ended in belly landings on the skid. Total flight time was 2 hours 19 minutes. The Air Force canceled the program on 24 Oct 1949, as aerial refueling of conventional fighters looked more promising. The idea survived only as FICON, which used conventional fighters on B-36 bombers and was phased out in 1957.

Both prototypes survive: 46-523 is at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, and 46-524 is at the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum in Ashland, Nebraska.

Where numbers differ: sources disagree on how many hook-up attempts came before the canopy strike on the first flight, so the video gives no count for them. “Seven flights, three hook-ons, four belly landings” is given by the NASA, Wikipedia and Defense Media Network accounts.

Stylized 3D illustration, not documented footage: the Goblin’s finish (the prototypes’ real paint is not documented in the sources we read; bright aluminium with USAF roundels and stripes is our rendering), the bomber’s trapeze and bay, the loading, the wake, the pilot silhouette, the lake, the range equipment and the on-screen labels are illustrations. Dates and numbers are from the sources below.

Sources (read 2026-10-14):
– J. W. Kelly, C. E. Rogers et al., “Motivation for Air-Launch: Past, Present, and Future”, NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center / AIAA (NTRS 20170007919), section on the XP-85 and FICON:
– J. L. Johnson, “Stability and Control Characteristics of a 1/10-Scale Model of the McDonnell XP-85 Airplane While Attached to the Trapeze”, NACA RM L7J16, 17 Nov 1947:
– National Museum of the USAF, fact sheet “McDonnell XF-85 Goblin”:
– Air Force Test Center, “August 23, 1948: XF-85 Goblin Aircraft Debuts”:
– Robert F. Dorr, “The XF-85 Goblin”, Defense Media Network:
– Wikipedia, “McDonnell XF-85 Goblin” (cites Jenkins and Landis, Experimental & Prototype U.S. Air Force Jet Fighters, 2008):

3D model credits (all CC BY 4.0; the models were modified: re-textured and re-lit, USAF markings added, the Goblin’s hook, canopy and skid animated, the B-29’s bomb bay cut open and a trapeze, airflow deflector and instruments built, scaled to size):
This work is based on “XF-85 Goblin [Animation]” ( by esenin27 ( licensed under CC-BY-4.0 (
This work is based on “B29” ( by manilov.ap ( licensed under CC-BY-4.0 (
This work is based on “B36” ( by manilov.ap ( licensed under CC-BY-4.0 (
Other credits: HDRI, textures and range-equipment props: Poly Haven (polyhaven.com), CC0. Font: Poppins (OFL). Narration: Qwen3-TTS (Apache-2.0), AI-generated voice. Sound effects synthesized for this video.

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#shorts #history #aviation #engineering #xf85

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