34 AH march 2016
The runner-up in the VTOL competition, Con-
vair’s Model 200, was never built because it was
entirely new from the ground up, and therefore
would have been much more expensive than the
XFV-12A. It does, however, make an interesting
case study of what was wrong with U.S. VTOL
thinking during the 1970s. Resembling an F-106
Delta Dart with canards, the Convair 200 looked
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relied upon two additional jet engines mounted
vertically inside the fuselage, between the cockpit
and the wings, a propulsion arrangement similar
to that used in the Soviet Union’s operational but
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dead weight of two inoperative jet engines. Addi-
tionally, those two lift engines occupied a substan-
tial amount of internal space that could otherwise
have be used for fuel, armament or electronics.
It is interesting to note that Convair designed
two separate versions of the 200 for the Navy—one
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a tail hook and without the extra lift engines. The
VTOL version’s gross weight was to have been
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or electronics.
By 1980, the Navy had abandoned the idea of
the sea control ship, due largely to the failure of
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pressure from its aviation community to concen-
trate on building more supercarriers. Meanwhile,
however, Zumwalt’s brainchild was adopted else-
where in the world. Italy’s Giuseppe Garibaldi fol-
lows the sea control ship formula, as do Spain’s
Principe de Asturias and Juan Carlos I. Spain has
even built similar vessels for export: HTMS Chakri
Naruebet for Thailand, and HMAS Canberra and
Adelaide for Australia.
The Royal Navy’s Illustrious-class “through-
deck cruiser” proved very successful during the
1982 Falklands War. In addition, the RN’s rapid
and successful conversion of the container ship
Atlantic Conveyor to accommodate Harriers and
helicopters demonstrated that the WWII concept
of modifying a merchant vessel into a viable escort
carrier was still practicable. Nevertheless, the
modern “brown shoe” U.S. Navy, still infatuated
with its enormous supercarriers and showing little
interest in convoy protection, has learned nothing
from the success of foreign versions of the sea con-
trol ship or the Atlantic Conveyor conversion.
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War was that the VTOL Sea Harrier put up an
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and Mirages. While the U.S. Navy continued to
fault the Harrier—complaining that it was too
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Britain, Spain, Italy, India and Thailand seemed
to ex perience no problems operating it from their
smaller carriers. And after a poor introduction to
the McDonnell Douglas–built AV-8A Harrier,CLEAR FOR ACTION
Resembling an F-106
fitted with canards,
the sleek Convair 200
looked the part of a
Mach 2 fighter.GO! Convair also designed a version of the 200
without lift engines for conventional carrier ops.