And these apparently were somewhat linked, in the sense that some Air Forces were prevailed upon to buy the F-104 when they were on the market for a multipurpose aircraft rather than an interceptor. One look at the thing and you know it was not built to go low and slow or for tight nimble maneouvering.
Though not really in the scope of the thread as that involved a structural design defect.
Its even uglier cousin, the Airbus Beluga.
A search on ‘varieze’ in the FAA database shows 797 VariEzes registered. Aviation Safety Network shows 88 have been involved in accidents. Seventy-five of those were written off, so I presume they are not included in the 797 that are currently registered. I don’t have time to go through each one, but the two I did randomly look at did not appear to be design flaws. In one, the canopy disengaged and it looks like CFIT. In the other, the engine failed, possibly to to a faulty throttle cable. Neither were fatal, and neither were stall accidents.
I see what you did there.
Are you saying those are good-looking planes that fly like crap, or ugly planes that fly well? Because I think most of them look good and am not aware of anything of them having bad reputations for flight characteristics.
Those are all pretty planes that were difficult to fly well.
The descriptions I’ve read of the Starfighter’s handling characteristics include “demanding” and “unforgiving”. Like a high-strung war horse that performs well provided you keep it absolutely 100% in hand.
I don’t know about that. I always thought the P-38 was well regarded in terms of its appearance. I think the XF-11 invented by Howard Hughes looked even cooler, but alas, that one met an early demise.
Indeed, the P-38 Lightning is always mentioned in “favorite fighter” and “most beautiful airplane” discussions. I once proposed a SDMB “elimination game” for “most beautiful machine of war” or some such language. It did not become a thread, but the very first response I got was “P-38 Lightning!”
The Northrop YB-49 was an early flying wing design. For those that aren’t familiar with it, it was a jet powered flying wing developed shortly after WWII.
This was long before fly by wire technology though, and the plane had a reputation for being difficult to fly. For example, it tended to go into yaw oscillations when coming out of turns or when going through turbulent air. The plane was cancelled before going into production, due mostly to the unsolved stability issues and partly due to poor overall range performance due to it being an early jet design.
It was a cool looking plane though, especially for something that first flew in the late 1940s.
On the Soviet side of the world, the TU-22 was a sleek nuclear bomber and was the first Soviet supersonic bomber, entering service in about 1960. While the aircraft looked impressive, and anything that carries nuclear bombs is certainly due some respect, the plane had a horrible reputation. Like some of the other planes mentioned in this thread, it was designed for high speed operation, and its low speed performance was horrible. The poor low speed aerodynamics combined with a center of gravity that was too far aft gave the aircraft a tendency to pitch up and strike its tail when landing. When flying supersonic, the heat generated from flying that fast would cause issues with control rods and cables, making the plane very difficult to control. The design of the wings and tail also interacted in such a way that you could often end up with rudder reversal, where if you turned the rudder too hard the plane would start to turn in the opposite direction from what you were commanding it to do. If you forced the rudder further, the plane would then tend to want to turn even further in the wrong direction. If the pilot didn’t quickly figure out what was going on and center the control stick, the plane would go out of control and crash.
The NASA AD-1 Oblique Wing aircraft just never looked right to me – you wanted to fix the wings before it went any further, or something. But evidently it flew well enough
If you want weird-looking aircraft, many of which look as if they shouldn’t work, look here:
Any list that includes the Beech Staggerwing can not be of ugly aircraft.
If I may say, GusNSpot, you have exceptionally good taste. But you left out the Northrop Gamma.
The Saab J-29 was a first generation fighter jet, generally regarded as a fast and agile for its era. Now, it wasn’t extraordinarily fugly looking, but wasn’t going to win any prizes for beauty, either. It wasn’t called the “flying barrel” for nothing:
Compare to the aesthetics of the F-86, which was contemporary with it:
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So, just for the record, you’re putting that in the ‘aesthetically pleasing’ category?
Yeah, I think its awesome.
The F-104 starfighter had one job, and that was to get to a really high altitude and intercept Russian Bombers. It was the first jet fighter to carry the Aim 7 radar guided missile, and the 20 mm gatling gun. It was also the first western fighter that was finally on par with soviet designs. Great, but time moves on and the design gets dated. So whats a country to do with military aircraft, when you can’t afford to scap em.
Thats right, you turn them into a ground attack bird, what could go wrong with that. I’m not sure about the luftwaffe’s experience with the widow maker, but ground attack was attributed to a lot of the Canadian RCAF crashes. Instead of bailing out like every other fighter, where the canopy would pop off and you would ride a rocket upwards, the Starfighter was designed to blow down and out. This in a fighter that was being used for ground attack, so if something went really wrong, bailing out was heavily problematic.
Iven Kincheloe was killed in an F-104 with, I believe, a downward-firing seat in 1958. Sometime after that, the F-104 was fitted with an upward-firing seat. I think the F-104G was the version intended for ground attack. Unfortunately my F-104 book is in storage and I can’t get to it to find out when F-104G production started.
Personally I think Boeing’s version is uglier, mainly because of the discontinuity between the standard 747 nose/cockpit area and the widened cargo hold.
Airplanes that look like airplanes are supposed to look and fly great also. IMO
