Convair XB-46
A medium jet bomber prototype built by Consolidated Vultee — Convair — for the 1944 Army Air Force competition that produced America's first jet bombers. Three prototypes and a static test airframe were ordered, but shrinking postwar budgets cut the programme to a single aircraft, completed without armament as a testbed after funds for the other two were redirected to the company's XA-44 project. It first flew on 2 April 1947 and handled well, yet the North American B-45 took the interim production contract and Boeing's swept-wing B-47 made the straight-wing design obsolete; the programme was cancelled in August 1947. The prototype flew on as a testbed until 1949, then served pneumatic-system trials in 1950. No example survives: the nose section sent to the Air Force Museum in 1951 apparently did not survive there, and the rest of the airframe was scrapped in February 1952.