Well, I’ve just done simulated flying, myself, but I’ve had a hard time warming up to pretty much anything with a delta wing. They liked to tumble.
I have already mentioned the Camel which was difficult to fly.
I think the Manchester was also pretty bad, but that is more to engine difficulties rather than being difficult to control.
In the mid-'90s, I made quite a few trips to Angola to work offshore. Whenever I went through Luanda, I’d see several 727 cargo conversions there, apparently contracted for UN relief flights to the interior. Most of them seemed to have dried mud coating their tailplanes, indicating they were routinely landing on wet dirt strips. Given your comments, that must have been fairly interesting. Ever done anything like that?
I cannot remember where I heard the quote (probably a movie so may be inaccurate) that the F-4 Phantom was proof that if you gave something a big enough engine even bricks can fly.
IIRC some modern fighters are inherently unstable. They need computers to make input corrections for stable flight…if the computers stopped working the pilots likely would not be able to fly them (I think the F-117 is like this).
The way I remember it is:
With a big enough engine anything will fly. . .
They gave the F-4 two.
Not to mention (if discussing WW2 planes) the SB2C Curtis Helldiver dive bomber. Called, not so affectionately, the “Son of a Bitch, 2nd Class” by its pilots.
This would have been my candidate as well.
In his autobiography Flights of Passage, Samuel Hynes recounts how his squadron (which normally flew TBM Avengers) was given SB2Cs for a time. Everything on the aircraft was electrically operated, and apparently the wiring was installed by gremlins. One might flip the switch to extend the flaps, and only one would lower (always good for a laugh on final approach); or turning on the bombsight might cause one wheel to drop.
What finally did the Beasts in with Hynes’ squadron was an incident when the XO was sitting in his cockpit with the engine going full blast and sucking on the oxygen mask (said to be good for hangovers). All of a sudden the tail assembly broke off and went skittering down the tarmac. Hynes vividly recalled the XO standing next to the plane and contemplating what would have happened if that had occurred in flight.
The later variants of the SB2C were much improved, but it never really recovered from its initial reputation: it seems that virtually every pilot who flew both the SBD and the SB2C preferred the “Slow But Deadly” hands down.
The Wright Flyer was almost uncontrollable. But only almost. That was the breakthrough.
I couldn’t find the exact quote but I remember reading that one of the pilots who flew it said something like “I flew it for an hour, and for an hour it tried as hard as it could to kill me”.
A database check shows 13 fatal 727 accidents in the airplane’s first 6 years of operation. Ten of them happened on approach or landing.
I remember reading somewhere that because of the rear engine configuration, sometimes the nose would dip even when power was applied. It was relatively easy to compensatefor, but pilots had to learn the technique. Was that the case?
The winner has to be the Me163 Komet, hands down.
Of production planes that is.
“Furthermore, due to the volatile nature of its rocket fuel, flying the Me 163 proved to be more dangerous to the pilots than to the enemy. Not counting aircraft built specifically for kamikaze attacks, the Me 163 thus remains the war plane most deadly to its pilots.”
What part of “red fuming nitric acid” didn’t they understand? 
I’d be interested to hear about experiences in the F-105 Thunderchief, because I’ve seen mixed reviews.
On the one hand, it was pretty fast.
On the other, according to my Air Force friend, they were called “The Thud” because that’s the sound they often made upon impact. He has further remarked that they were apparently sent to Vietnam in the hopes that enough would crash on the enemy to cause their capitulation.
I’ve wondered if the noise people heard from the plane was the engine or the pilot screeming as it went by.
60% failure/fatality rate.
How about the Ohka?
The ME-109, especially the early models, was a killer of novice pilots. If I understand it, the design goal of marrying the most powerful angine available with the smallest airframe made for a plane that was not only hot, but also subject to one wing dropping due to prop torque.
Approach and landing is where most accidents happen anyway.
The Dash 8 is a docile old duck in the air, but very unforgiving when landing. My instructor told me, “do it by the numbers and you’ll eventually get good enough to be consistently mediocre, try and do ‘nice landings’ and you might grease one on every now and then but you’ll also get some shockers.” After four years of trying I’ve finally resigned myself to the goal of “consistently mediocre.”
It’s not uncommon for an FO to express some dissatisfaction at their landing, I just look at them and say “hey, it’s a Dash 8, that one wasn’t so bad.” I like to show them a bad one of my own every now and then just to keep their confidence levels up :D.
A quick note, maybe I can give details later.
RAF gyrocopters. Or any gyrocopter without a horizontal stabilizers. Note RAF is/was a company, its not Britians Royal Air Force. RAF stands for Rotary Air Force.
Anyway, RAFs have a very nasty flaw. If you get into a zero G or low G situation the thing will flip foward in about a second. Once its gone even a little ways into to the flip there is nothing you can do to stop it. Once its flipped its basically going to rip apart/self destruct, leaving you to fall to your death.
Of course the pilots say well “dont get into a zero G situation”. Thats hookum. Thats like having a plane design that if it stalls, you CANNOT get out of it. Well, just dont stall! The aeroplane community would never accept such a flaw, at least not without damn good reason. And there is no good reason to no have a horizontal stabilizer on a gyrocopter, besides sheer laziness and or stupid engineering.
A former DC-10 captain I know says that plane would do it, because the center engine was so high. In fact, one could trim the pitch using the center throttle. The 727’s center engine’s thrust line was no higher than the outboard engines, so you wouldn’t expect that, but I’ll ask him.
He also tells me the 727’s landing issue was due to the main gear being farther aft of the CG than optimal. A “normal” flare could push the wheels down onto the runway too soon, slamming the nose down hard. The trailing-link suspension helped smooth that out a bit, but still, the flare involved putting the nose *down *to hold the mains off. Judging when the energy was low enough after a nose-high attitude had bled it off so the time was right to transition to nose-low was just not consistently repeatable.