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The World's Worst Planes: Aircraft Designs That Failed
dryriver (1010635) writes in with an interesting look at some aircraft that should have stayed on the ground. "It's more than 110 years since mankind first took to the air in a powered aircraft. During that time, certain designs have become lauded for their far-sighted strengths – the Supermarine Spitfire; Douglas DC-3 Dakota; or the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic airliner, to name a few. But then there are planes like the Christmas Bullet. Designed by Dr William Whitney Christmas, who was described by one aviation historian as the 'greatest charlatan to ever see his name associated with an airplane', this 'revolutionary' prototype biplane fighter had no struts supporting the wings; instead, they were supposed to flap like a bird's. Both prototypes were destroyed during their first flights – basically, because Christmas's 'breakthrough' design was so incapable of flight that the wings would twist off the airframe at the first opportunity. Just as many of the world's most enduring designs share certain characteristics, the history of aviation is littered with disappointing designs."
Successful people are those who fail and don't give up. The same is true for aeronautical design. If you don't fail a couple of times, you won't win either.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
You see any flying today? Too expensive, too niche, too fragile. Let's face it, the future is more efficient and less showy. The high-energy future we thought we'd have in the 1960s never materialized.
They include the DeHaviland Comet - a fantastic aircraft which set the standard in the airliner industry for decades to come. It did suffer from a design flaw which caused several crashes, but those crashes helped us learn a lot more about metal fatigue and the structural integrity of aircraft, and lead directly to improved safety in later designs. It was also fixed as soon as it was identified. Suggesting that the Comet was one of "the worst planes" - or that it should have never have flown - is just plane ignorant.
Anyone like to repost the content for us poor UK residents who aren't allowed to see the BBC's own content!?
So the MiG 23 wasn't as popular as the MiG 21. That doesn't really make it a failure. Their first two examples were definite failues ( Fairey Battle and Douglas TBD Devastator): easy to shoot down.
I went through the slideshow but didn't see my favorite, the XF-85 Goblin parasite fighter. At the time, jet fighters had very limited range and in-flight refueling hadn't been developed yet, so there was a great concern about how to protect long-range bombers from enemy jets when your own jet fighters can't escort the bombers very far, and long-range piston engine fighters (i.e. the P-51) would be outclassed by enemy jet fighters.
So they designed this tiny jet fighter to be carried under the B-36, and if you saw enemy jets approaching, release the Goblin which would fight off the enemy and then return to the B-36 and dock with it via a trapeze. Good idea in theory, but two things killed it off: 1) You needed superhuman piloting skills to successfully land on the mothership... maybe Chuck Yeager could do it but most pilots couldn't, and 2) in-flight refueling became possible.
I always thought it was pretty cool though, like an aircraft carrier in the sky.
As long as we learn anything out of it, it was a success.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It did suffer from a design flaw which caused several crashes, but those crashes helped us learn a lot more about metal fatigue and the structural integrity of aircraft, and lead directly to improved safety in later designs.
Yes, but people died.
Was it utterly impossible to learn this lesson without putting that flying time bomb in the air?
If Mig 23 was a failure because it couldn't replace Mig 21 then let's see how that will work out for F35 vs F15/F18
SCNR!
Has not flown with a human, ever. And he's been pushing this silly concept since the 1970s at least.
The article is a list of mediocre airplanes. The article is titled "World's worst planes: The aircraft that failed". The article's title is incorrect. I recommend completely ignoring it.
At least most of these actually got off of the ground and some really don't belong in a list of bad aircraft - the example of the Comet has already been raised, the MiG-23 wasn't a bad plane by any means - unforgiving of inexperienced pilots, but so was the F-104 and *that* one gets included in a lot of "best planes ever" lists. Total production of the MiG-23 family is over 5,000 - bad planes don't get built in that sort of numbers.
Throw in planes that were pretty adequate in their time but verging on obsolete when they had their 15 minutes (the Devastator), those that weren't actually bad but had the misfortune of being the successor to something so successful it wouldn't go away (the Albacore). It's difficult to call the Me 163 a bad plane - it was a desperate measure that made it very dangerous, but it's a very significant type. The He 162? Another desperation measure, but one of the more trusted opinions on the merits of aircraft (Eric "Winkle' Brown) found it a downright joy to fly, although again it was (again) unforgiving of inexperienced pilots, which perhaps wasn't the best quality for something intended to be flown by pilots with minimal training.
Besides, there are so many things that can ruin otherwise good designs - how many 50s US jets are considered jokes because the DoD decided they were to be powered by the Westinghouse J-40? Not bad planes, but a bad engine. Some planes that escaped from the J-40 and had alternate power plants suggested (F4D, for example) ended up being considered classics.
OK how about this one. From memory, it killed just about everyone who owned it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gee_Bee_Model_R
I think Howard Hughes Spruce Goose could fit in this category. It only had one flight and never got out of ground effect.
So you're saying I should stop flying my Christmas Bullet over populated areas?
Look like the biggest aircraft flop of the world AREN'T there. But the articles is slashdoted so who knows?
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
http://www.amazon.com/Worlds-W...
My favorite is the Blohm and Voss Bv-141. Symmetry is for weenies.
How dare they include the Me163 Komet in a list of "worst planes" -- it was a groundbreaking craft (in more ways than one -- get the pun?) which highlighted the innovation (and desperation) of the Germans near the end of WW2.
Yes, the choice of fuel components made it horrendously dangerous and the limited flight-times did reduce its utility but it was undoubtedly *the* fasted aircraft of WW2.
...
One of my favorite treeware magazines is Air & Space Magazine published by the Smithsonian. They have a frequent series of articles on the theme, "Some ideas will never fly." Definitely a much more creative and well reasoned critique of a number of airplane ideas that, well, will never fly.
Several of the planes singled out by the BBC article really weren't all that bad when they were initially in service (Brewster Buffalo, Douglas TBD Devestator, Fairey Battle). They were just kept in service long after they should have been retired and their pilots and crews paid the price. That's not a fault of the airplane; it's a fault of the politicians who decided to spend the money to modenize elsewhere.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
http://www.lanemotormuseum.org/
My own candidate would be the Boulton-Paul Defiant. It was a WWII fighter that could only shoot backwards. The idea was to fool Luftwaffe pilots into thinking it was a Hawker Hurricane and attacking it from behind - a plan that worked for about a week. But apparently it was something of a success as a night fighter, so perhaps it wasn't quite the worst ever.
Enough of these flops (though, as others have said, the list kinda sucks).
http://www.solar-flight.com/su... The sunseeker duo is the most innovative design I've seen in a while. Solar plane!
Miyazaki's new movie about a Japanese airplane designer frequently features the fanciful designs of Caproni. While watching the movie I kept thinking how odd it was that they made a biopic about real people and had such unreal planes, but I was wrong every strange plane in the film was real.
This one crashed on it first test flight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Anyway it is a fantastic film. If you love aeronautical history it just cannot be missed.
-- QED
Daytime disaster
The Fairey Battle was a 1930s-era daylight bomber; by the time it saw service against the Germans in 1940, it was hopelessly outclassed. Nearly 100 were shot down in a week. (RAF)
No wonder! It has 3 giant targets painted on it!
The original fail
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
The article calls a lot of sound aircraft designs failures because they were employed improperly (wrong tactics) or the weapons they were designed to carry weren't ready by the time the war started. An example, the TBD-1 losses at Midway were the result of attacking Japanese battle ships without fighter escorts and by the outdated torpedoes that couldn't be dropped at high speed without breaking up when hitting the water. The Grumman TBF-1 Avenger was "successful" because by the time it entered service, more modern torpedoes were available and military planners knew that torpedo bombers needed fighter escort.
The parallel in Europe is in 1939, both the British and the Germans tried sending daylight bombers without fighter escort into battle. Every time, they suffered unacceptable losses. The point is in 1939 to 1940, aerial warfare was so new that most military planners did not know how to properly employ their air forces, or what the capabilities and limitations of their aircraft were. At the time, Bomber Generals saw fighter production as competition for resources, i.e. aircraft. The Bomber people at the time believed Stanley Baldwin's quote from 1932, "the bomber will always get through."
Have you ever had Sex right after eating cornflakes?
Or even wanted Sex right after eating cornflakes?
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Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
In the 1980s, Discover Magazine (I think it was) ran an article on genetic algorithms. One of the researchers they interviewed was using them to help come up with new plane designs. The researcher talked about how the algorithms were leading them in design directions they had never considered before. The article included some sample pictures of algorithm-developed plane designs, including one where the wings had winglets at the end, which then turned into a smaller wing above the main wing. The researcher seemed rather excited about that one, saying it could allow the construction of larger aircraft when maximum wingspan is limited by runway width or gate spacing.
I did a facepalm, and shot off a letter to the editor. "What your algorithm has 'discovered' is the biplane."
...a book by Bill Yenne has lots of "nominations." Recommended, with the qualification that there something macabre about the whole thing.
Not a unique title, there is at least one other book by the same title.
Have you ever had sex WITH cornflakes?
...is posting an article with broken links.
We're low on fuel, on fire, and almost out of runway.
"
BBC Worldwide (International Site)
We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com."
what the fuck????
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Now that I come to think of it...
Not to mention the unfounded and cruel rumours the Yanks spread about so-called 'sonic booms'.
The MiG-21 and 23 were also designed for totally different jobs, and weren't direct competitors.
The 21 was, by the time the 23 was actually entering service, evolved into a dogfighter (though, like most Soviet fighters it was originally intended to intercept US bombers). The 23 was never intended to be a dogfighter by any stretch, HOWEVER it still had great performance for it's generation. It's record in combat is average-at-worst, and it's performance compares not-horribly against contemporary western aircraft. Copy/pasted from it's wikipedia entry:
Dutch pilot Leon Van Maurer, who had more than 1,200 hours flying F-16s, flew against MiG-23MLs from air bases in Germany and the U.S. as part of NATO's aerial mock combat training with Soviet equipment. He concluded the MiG-23ML was superior in the vertical to early F-16 variants, just slightly inferior to the F-16A in the horizontal, and had superior BVR capability......The Israelis tested a MiG-23MLD flown to them by a Syrian defector, and found it had better acceleration than the F-16 and F/A-18.
Let's not forget that the Mig-23 was developed into the highly successful Mig-27 ground attack fighter. The reason the 21 is still flying is mainly that China got a license to produce it - and does so, in quantity, and cheaply. The huge majority of Mig-21 derived fighters still flying are of Chinese origin.
... and being a BBC licience payer - this is all I get from within the UK
We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You can find out more about BBC Worldwide and its digital activities at www.bbcworldwide.com.
Yes.
Yes.
Next question?