In it someone mentions the saying ‘If it looks right it’ll fly right’ and another states that this is incorrect, that there have been aesthetically pleasing aircraft that have flown poorly and vice versa.
My question is do people have examples of this? ‘Aesthetically pleasing’ of course being somewhat subjective. In addition I would say its also not the same thing as ‘pretty’, no one would call the A-10 Thunderbolt II or the Mi-24 Hind pretty but I would also say they aren’t unpleasant to look at, they look in fact like exactly what they are, war machines designed to break things and hurt people and have a certain brutal visual appeal all of their own.
So that said, does anyone have any examples of pretty planes that flew like a dog, or awful looking aircraft that were sweet as a peach to fly?
The original F-102 was a classic delta-wing fighter from the mid-'50s, but was much slower than its design goals. It couldn’t even go supersonic. A redesign with an area-rule (the classic “coke bottle” shape) fuselage improved things.
There was also the X-3 research plane, known as the Stiletto. Even standing still it looks like it’s going 2,000 miles per hour. In actual fact it could barely go Mach 1, and it had some serious stability issues. In did conduct some interesting research, but probably not what the designers intended.
Without question one of the coolest looking mechanical contrivances of any kind ever built, and one of the most dangerous to fly. Renowned test pilot Joe Walker was killed when his F-104 struck another plane during a formation flight for a promotional photo; Chuck Yeager was was also almost killed flying one. According to Wikipedia, it had the worst accident rate of any of the “Century Series” fighters (F-100, F-101, F-102, F-104, F-105, and F-106.) Lockheed infamously had to bribe the German government to get them to buy the things, and the German pilots hated to fly them.
The Spanish never lost an F-104 in 17,000 hours of flying time. Yeager’s NF-104 was not a standard F-104. The crash occurred because the reaction control system (not a standard feature) did not perform as expected.
But yeah, the Starfighter’s service record is less than stellar.
I wouldn’t say the Boeing 727 “flew like a dog,” but when it first went into service, there were several quick incidents of the planes crashing on approach. Some pilots weren’t used to the handling characteristics of a plane with all its power in the tail. Some additional training solved the problem.
That’s the Super Guppy, but there’s a link there to the Pregnant Guppy. Anyway, are you categorizing that as aesthetically pleasing or unpleasant? And does it fly well? I know it’s still in routine use by NASA. (Though it’s still a rare sight at our NASA center people go out to watch it when it comes here.)
How about the Mig 25? I understand when Americans saw it in their spy satellite photos, they thought it was a highly capable combat aircraft and developed the F-15 in response. But when a Soviet pilot defected with it, it turned out to be much less capable than expected.
A plane I’ve always loved the look of is the P-39 Airacobra. It had a number of advanced for the time features, tricycle gear, all round view canopy and cannon armament and then it had its turbocharger removed and became a dog at high altitude.
The Soviets made it work of course but they did a lot of their fighting at low level and didn’t miss the turbocharger.
This is not a clear-cut case… but I’d nominate the VariEze family. It was supposed to be a safer aircraft due to its stall resistance, but depending on how you measure it, it was either mostly the same as any other general aviation aircraft, or put pilot (and passenger) at greater risk during a crash. Sure looks cool, though.
I had always assumed the F-104 was a terrible plane, but I’ve been doing some research into the CF-104, the Canadian variant, and honestly I cannot objectively defend the notion that it was especially dangerous. A lot of Cr-104s crashed, but
The accident rate was not unusually high for the time. Military planes crash a lot. F-104 losses tend to be proportional to how they were used; countries that used them as interdiction bombers, like Canada, had high loss rates. Countries that used them only as interceptors had very low loss rates. Spain’s small force never lost one; Japan had a large fleet of F-104s and had three accidents in over 20 years of service.
A lot of pilots seemed to like it. The complaints about it are talked about a lot but I’m surprised at the good reviews its operators gave it. The term “widowmaker” wasn’t used by anyone who flew it; it was a press invention. English-speaking pilots generally called it the Zip or the Zipper.
The evidence suggests the F-104 was actually really, really good at what it was intended to do. I had always assumed the use of the Starfighter as an attack and nuclear attack plane was weird and silly - but I am again surprised at the strong evidence that it was quite adept at such a role.
There was a serious bribery scandal involving Lockheed early in the F-104’s existence, and a lot of the negativity towards the plane was originally because of that. That doesn’t speak
It’s a training issue. Any plane with a high wing loading is going to have a high stall speed and a fast approach speed. Things happen faster when you’re landing, and it’s easy to get behind the airplane. But you can learn.
The B-26 presented the same problem to new pilots who were used to much slower approaches - you may have heard of “One a day in Tampa Bay”.
On the vice-versa end, I think few people would look at this and think “high performance”, and especially not “effective fighter plane”. Looks more like something put together (poorly) out of spare parts in someone’s backyard.
The F-104 was designed to intercept nuclear-armed bombers, and it would have been good in that role. Pressing it into a ground-attack aircraft in Vietnam… not so much.
As a fighter (as opposed to an interceptor), it didn’t do well. In 1965 Pakistani F-104s shot down an Indian Dassault Mystère IV (claim disputed). In 1971 Indian MiG-21s shot down four Pakistani F-104s without losses. In 1967, two Taiwanese F-104s shot down two MiG-19s with the loss of one F-104.
Or own, late, David Simmons flew B-26s in the ETO in WWII.
