Flying Bike

Short answer: From the footage, I identify the machine as the de Lackner HZ-1 Aerocycle, a one-man 'personal helicopter' built for the US Army in the mid-1950s. It grew out of work by Charles H.

Zimmerman of NACA on kinesthetic control: with the rotors below the pilot, the craft could be steered by shifting body weight, much like riding a bicycle or a surfboard. The Aerocycle had a cross-shaped frame with the pilot standing on a platform in a safety harness, above two contra-rotating 15-foot rotors driven by a 40-horsepower Mercury outboard motor. A motorcycle-style twist-grip throttle sat on the handlebars, and airbags on each arm plus a central rubber float served as landing gear. It made its first tethered flight on November 22, 1954, and its first free flight in January 1955 at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in New York. Early tests suggested untrained soldiers could learn to fly it in about 20 minutes, and the Army ordered 12. After testing moved to Fort Eustis, Virginia, in 1956, test pilot Capt. Selmer Sundby found it much harder to fly than expected. Two crashes, in which the rotors intermeshed and shattered, and the wider failure of the 'personal lifting device' concept ended the program. One HZ-1 survives at the US Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis.

In collections:The Arsenal