Fairchild XC-120 Pack Plane First Flight

They called it the Pack Plane. Derived from the successful Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar, the XC-120 Pack Plane incorporated the wings, booms, and tail of the C-119B with a special cockpit in a slender raised fuselage with a flat undersurface. Beneath this, a large removable cargo pod made of aluminum faired into the design.
Special quad landing gear built into the flying airframe allowed the Pack Plane to fly with or without a pod attached.
It was argued that the use of pods that could be pre-loaded and unloaded independent of the airframe would speed up the process of delivering cargo. One presumes the plan would have called for the construction of more pods than airframes to maximize this utility.
The one Pack Plane built, serial number 48-330, first flew on August 11, 1950. Possibly due to the bulky nature of the design, it was said to have a cruise speed slower than that of a standard C-119. Both were powered by a pair of R-4360 engines.
The XC-120 underwent evaluation at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, in 1951. The program was canceled in 1952, with the prototype aircraft salvaged.
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