The Vought F7U-3M Cutlass was one of the strangest and most ambitious U.S. Navy fighters of the early jet age: a tailless, swept-wing carrier aircraft with twin fins mounted out on the wings, a high nose gear, and a futuristic profile that looked more like a prototype than a fleet fighter. The F7U-3M was the missile-capable version of the Cutlass, adapted to carry four AAM-N-2 Sparrow I air-to-air missiles, one on each outer-wing pylon, while retaining the Cutlass’s basic fighter-bomber role. What makes it interesting is the contradiction: it was genuinely advanced, the Cutlass was the U.S. Navy’s first swept-wing jet and among the first designed around afterburners, but it was also badly flawed, underpowered, maintenance-heavy, and dangerous enough to earn the nickname “Gutless Cutlass.” In service, the F7U looked dramatic on carrier decks but had a poor safety record; Smithsonian notes that across roughly 55,000 flight hours, Cutlasses suffered 78 accidents, with about one-quarter of the airframes lost. So the F7U-3M is cool because it represents the Navy rushing into the missile age before the technology was really mature: radical shape, early Sparrow missiles, carrier operations, and huge ambition, but wrapped in an aircraft pilots often respected less than they feared.