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 guage on the wing to set adjustment for flight characteristics, included on all versions. 60(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 SuperSonic Jet. |
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A model display is seen in this A-J factory transparency. The colors may have faded but you can see the SuperSonic Jet proudly displayed. 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 |