A tailsitter is a type of VTOL

VTOL

A vertical take-off and landing aircraft is one that can hover, take off and land vertically. This classification includes fixed-wing aircraft as well as helicopters and other aircraft with powered rotors, such as cyclogyros/cyclocopters and tiltrotors...

 aircraft

Aircraft

An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...

 that launches and lands on its tail. One of the most famous examples of this type of aircraft is the Ryan X-13 Vertijet. Among the propeller

Propeller (aircraft)

Aircraft propellers or airscrews convert rotary motion from piston engines or turboprops to provide propulsive force. They may be fixed or variable pitch. Early aircraft propellers were carved by hand from solid or laminated wood with later propellers being constructed from metal...

-driven versions were the Lockheed XFV

Lockheed XFV

-See also:-References:NotesCitationsBibliography* Allen, Francis J. "Bolt upright: Convair's and Lockheed's VTOL fighters". Air Enthusiast , Volume 127, January/February 2007, pp. 13–20. ISSN 0143-5450....

, and the Convair XFY

Convair XFY

|-See also:-References:NotesCitationsBibliography* Allen, Francis J. "Bolt Upright: Convair's and Lockheed's VTOL fighters". Air Enthusiast Volume 127, January/February 2007, pp. 13–20. ISSN 0143-5450....

 Pogo. Studies and wind tunnel models were made of a tail-sitting version of the F-16 that would be ship based. It had a hinged nose section.

The Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe

Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....

 had a tailsitter project as well, the Focke-Wulf Triebflügel (wing-driven) fighter. This project was peculiar insofar as the wings were mounted diagonally on a rotating section of the fuselage and driven by small jet engines on the wingtips. The aircraft was supposed to be propelled by this wing rotation. In fact, it was more akin to a helicopter, generating lift by rotating winglets or blades, than to an airplane, which generates lift from the forward speed pushing air over the wings of the plane. It could not make conventional landings, and the entire body of the aircraft shifted from a vertical to a horizontal orientation and back again for standard flight.

The downfall of the tailsitter configuration was the lack of ability to transition the pilot to a comfortable position from which to control his descent. This inability led to the concept being abandoned as soon as the experiments that led to the development of the Hawker Siddeley Harrier in the 1960s began to bear fruit.

List of Tailsitters

• Focke-Wulf Triebfluegel
• Lockheed XFV-1
  Lockheed XFV
  -See also:-References:NotesCitationsBibliography* Allen, Francis J. "Bolt upright: Convair's and Lockheed's VTOL fighters". Air Enthusiast , Volume 127, January/February 2007, pp. 13–20. ISSN 0143-5450....
  
  
• Convair XFY-1 Pogo
  Convair XFY
  |-See also:-References:NotesCitationsBibliography* Allen, Francis J. "Bolt Upright: Convair's and Lockheed's VTOL fighters". Air Enthusiast Volume 127, January/February 2007, pp. 13–20. ISSN 0143-5450....
  
  
• SNECMA Coléoptère
  SNECMA Coléoptère
  The SNECMA Coléoptère was a VTO aircraft developed by the French in the 1950s. It was a single-person aircraft with an annular wing designed to land vertically, therefore requiring no runway and very little space to take-off. There were several prototypes developed and tested, however the design...
  
  
• Ryan X-13 Vertijet
• McDonnell Douglas DC-X
  McDonnell Douglas DC-X
  The DC-X, short for Delta Clipper or Delta Clipper Experimental, was an unmanned prototype of a reusable single stage to orbit launch vehicle built by McDonnell Douglas in conjunction with the United States Department of Defense's Strategic Defense Initiative Organization from 1991 to 1993...
  
  
• Rotary Rocket
  Rotary Rocket
  Rotary Rocket, Inc, was a rocketry company headquartered in a facility at Mojave Airport that developed the Roton concept in the late 1990s as a fully reusable single-stage-to-orbit manned spacecraft. Roton was intended to reduce costs of launching payloads into low earth orbit by a factor of...
  
   Roton ATV
• Puffin personal aircraft
  Puffin (aircraft)
  |-See also:- External links :*NASA.gov: , 2010-02-08.*, Charles Q. Choi, Scientific American, 2010-01-19*, Discover Magazine, 2010-01-20.*, Jason Paur, Wired, 2010-01-21.*, computer graphic video....
  
  
• Armadillo Aerospace Quad
  Quad (rocket)
  In rocketry, the Armadillo aerospace Quad vehicle is a computer controlled VTVL rocket that is used to compete in the Lunar Lander Challenge.-General description:...
  
  
• AeroVironment SkyTote
  AeroVironment SkyTote
  The SkyTote is an unmanned aerial vehicle , tailsitter Vertical Take-Off and Landing -fixed wing hybrid plane, which attains the advantages of both airplane designs...
  
   UAV