The Horton Wingless aircraft was invented by William Horton of Huntington Beach, California in 1952. He called the strange-looking plane “wingless” because he claimed the entire craft was a simple air foil with vertical fins and utilized all surfaces for lift. Unfortunately, Horton did not have the money to develop it, but was able to get into a partnership with billionaire Howard Hughes and Harlow Curtis.

The plane had a successful, but short, test flight. The venture failed not because the airplane didn't fly, but because Hughes wanted to take full credit for the patents and production rights, which Horton refused to allow. Hughes sued Horton which effectively stopped any further development of the aircraft.

Hughes managed to have the prototype and partially-constructed production version destroyed. One aspect of the law suit was a statement that the aircraft could not fly, which witnesses, photographs and video obviously show not to be true. At one point, Horton served jail time for selling stock in a company for an airplane that "couldn't fly" and had several violent confrontations with people associated with Hughes and Curtis because of the law suit and resulting injunctions." 

Link to the collection's Descriptive Finding Guide.