American Junior Aircraft Company History, the 1950's
The American Junior Super-Sonic Jet
was produced from 1954 to the early 1960's
as a high speed catapult launch glider.
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The Super-Sonic jet as packaged by American Junior in the mid 1950's, with aluminum ailerons for flight adjustment. |
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Later models came with instruction sheets, this one shows how to use the ailerons to control the flight path. |
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American Junior later modified the original Super-Sonic Jet to produce this straight wing version. Notice the gauge on the wing to set adjustment for flight characteristics, included on all versions. (Photo D. Pecota Collection) |
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Here you can see both versions side by side. (Photo D. Pecota Collection) |
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Magazine AD from the 1950's introducing the Jim Walker Super-Sonic Jet. |
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You can see the Super‑Sonic Jet proudly displayed in this A-J factory transparency. Also not the newly bagged "74" Fighter with red wings instead of the traditional blue. |
2013 Experimental Folding Wing Super-Sonic Jet |
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American Junior Classics experimented with creating a Super-Sonic folding wing glider, using all original metal parts and an original Super-Sonic Jet. The folding mechanism works well but the wing tip covered the rubber launching slot so the wing had to be trimmed for test flying. |
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The fuselage is the same thickness as the 404 Interceptor and the standard straddle wire was close to a good match in size. When the model was finally ready to test fly, the results revealed it to not be a great idea as the model needs a lot of speed to fly well and the folding wing design is best adapted for slower gliding flights. It was a fun experiment to do and reminded me of the many experiments I would do as a kid....Scott Griffith |