Science Art: Avro Canada VZ-9AV Avrocar.

Scientific illustration of an Avrocar, a silver, disc-shaped aerial vehicle, gleaming steel and black vents, parked outside a shaded hangar.
Scientific illustration of an Avrocar, a silver, disc-shaped aerial vehicle, gleaming steel and black vents, parked outside a shaded hangar.

This is not a movie prop, but a working prototype of the Avrocar, a disc-shaped flying machine that graced the skies between 1959 and 1961.

It’s basically a giant fan sending a jet of air out of its rim to get lift and thrust, and should have been capable of flying saucer-style “impossible” maneuvers… but never quite delivered on that promise.

From Wikipedia:

Originally designed as a fighter-like aircraft capable of very high speeds and altitudes, the project was repeatedly scaled back over time and the U.S. Air Force eventually abandoned it. Development was then taken up by the U.S. Army for a tactical combat aircraft requirement, a sort of high-performance helicopter.[2] In flight testing, the Avrocar proved to have unresolved thrust and stability problems that limited it to a degraded, low-performance flight envelope; subsequently, the project was cancelled in September 1961.

Through the history of the program, the project was referred to by a number of different names. Avro referred to the efforts as Project Y, with individual vehicles known as Spade and Omega. Project Y-2 was later funded by the U.S. Air Force, who referred to it as WS-606A, Project 1794 and Project Silver Bug. When the U.S. Army joined the efforts it took on its final name “Avrocar”, and the designation “VZ-9”, part of the U.S. Army’s VTOL projects in the VZ series.

I found the image in the National Museum of the US Air Force.