There are some really cool photos of planes from Korean War, for instance, where pilots would feet a tad warm so they would simply open their canopies and fancy some fresh air. Now, I know that this would be not very wise to do on a faster plane. But… which is the fastest-with-open-windows-or-canopies-or-maybe-none-of-those plane out there?
I can think of old-time racing planes that were basically a huge engine with a propeller attached to a pair of wings and a tiny chair for the pilot and not much more…
The only thing I can remember reading about is the vought f4u corsair, pappy boyington flew with the canopy open, so he could smoke a stogie, so about around 300 mph.
Actually, that photo of an A1-D Skyrider is from the Vietnam war, not Korea; either way the Skyrider was not a particularly fast aircraft, even by WWII standards.
For what is worth, early naval jet fighters took off and landed with their canopies open, as was standard practice for propeller driven airplanes.
Now, going to your question, I would guess the title could go to the Macchi M72, top speed of 709km/h and an open cockpit.
Aerodynamic streamlining doesn’t matter so much when you’re nowhere near the vehicle’s top speed.
Two guesses on why they kept the canopy open:
Canopy closed = personal greenhouse. I’ve sat in a glider on a warm summer day with the canopy closed, waiting for takeoff, and it gets fucking hot in there before you get any air moving through the cockpit. It would have been far more comfortable to sit there with the canopy open, and even to keep the canopy open during takeoff roll and enjoy a violent cooling blast, but alas, in our case the canopy was hinged at the side; if it had slid to the rear or hinged upward at the rear with a hydraulic ram, then it might have been safe to have it open while taking off. In my case, I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt; woe to the fighter pilot who likely wore a coverall flight suit and helmet under the same circumstances.
Easier to bail out if something goes wrong during ascent. I’m guessing this would only be necessary if the aircraft were not fitted with an ejection seat. The OP is citing pics from the Korean war; the Skyraider in his referenced pic was not fitted with an ejection seat until the Vietnam war, so this is one possible answer.
I think most (all?) jet fighters were equipped with ejection seats from the outset, so for them, the likely answer is #1.
When you gotta go, you gotta go; it’s better if you don’t have to fight with the canopy in case the plane doesn’t quite make it on take off or falls of the side of the boat on landing.
Machine Elf, I’m pretty sure they did have ejection seats, but they would have certainly not been zero-zero seats, and would have required a minimum airspeed and altitude to work, not the kind of situation found when a plane is sinking, for example.
US jet fighters as late as the F-86 had canopies that could be partly opened in flight. So that’s an airplane with a top speed near, but just below, Mach 1. I do not know for sure whether there was an established max speed for flying with the canopy open, but I’d bet there was, and I bet it was around 200 knots. So much slower than the aircraft’s max speed.
IIRC the barely supersonic F-100 always flew with the canopy closed, even at low speed.
By the late 50s & early 60s the main reason to do ground ops, takeoff, and landing with the canopy partly opened was cooling. What little air conditioning the aircraft had was just ineffective at low power settings & at low altitude or on the ground. It could get stupid-hot, like 140 degrees, in there on a sunny day.
The propeller-driven Navy had required takeoffs and landings to be done with canopy open to improve the odds on clambering out of a sinking airplane after a mishap near the carrier. So they carried that forward into the early jets. So safety was primary, cooling secondary.
