Just a bit of fun. This stems from a topic in the General forum.

List the 5 worst aircraft ever built (in your opinion) & give the reasons why.

Mignet's Flying Flea - bit of a death trap really.

Fairey Albacore - so good that the aircraft it was to replace, the Swordfish, replaced it.

F-35 - we've proved for 45 years you only need one engine in a VTOL fighter - so it's got two, one of which spends 95% of the time as dead weight. Lightning II my bottom, I think "Dave" is better.

Tornado F3 - poor mans fighter as a 20 year stopgap for the ECA, EFA, EF2000, sorry, Typhoon. Can't turn, can refuel at height either. Can go very very fast at low level though. Just where the Bears are coming from Russia...

C150/2 - God-awful soulless spam can built for people who are under 6ft and 10 stone! Taught gazillions to fly though, people just like me.

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X-32 used one engine and was deemed INFERIOR to the X-35 approach.

The front 'engine' is a fan geared to the F-135 / 136 similar to a variable cycle jet engine ala GE-F-120 that was for all intents and purposes more powerful than the single cycle F-119.

Only a B model has the lift fan.

Ivan wrote on Jul 13^th, 2008 at 4:21am:


Well, it was the only glider they've ever stuck 6 radials on!

Mictheslik wrote on Jul 13^th, 2008 at 5:03am:


I was feeling sympathetic - and it's not that bad in the big scheme of things.

There is only one 'bad' aircraft in my opinion:

Boeing 747 LCF- DREAMLIFTER

Man that is ugly even if it can carry a lot 

It is the sort of flying machine I could see people feel embarrased about flying.

wow looked up the Ca60 on google....... i can see why it didnt work

DaveSims wrote on Jul 13^th, 2008 at 9:37pm:


Slingsby were very unfairly "scapegoated" by the USAF over those incidents - and it makes me deepely unhappy when I see so called "interlectual" US aviation magazines talk utter rubbish about the "deadly" Firelfly. Not to mention of course, the families were all steered by their leeching lawyers into sueing Slingsby.

Every other operator has had no major problems. The fact the USAF decided to operate them from an airfield at 6500ft AMSL, and the circumstances of on or two of the accidents has alway made me wonder if it was more the way they were operated - of the three fatal crashes, 2 were pilot error (relateting to poor spin recoveries I believe), and the third and unrecoverable stall (which, had it been carried out safely, should have been high enough to abandon the aircraft, otherwise would most likely have been poor aircraft handling). The engine failure issues could well be down to where the aircraft was operated from reading the issues involved.


Nothing wrong with the aeroplane at all.

DaveSims wrote on Jul 14^th, 2008 at 8:50am:


There are several verions of the Firefly with varying engine sizes. The T-3A was essentially a T67 M260, as used by the UK armed forces. The only difference I know of was that it was assembled by Northrop Grumman, rather than the Slingsby factory in Yorkshire.

Ivan wrote on Jul 14^th, 2008 at 1:36pm:


I'm not suggesting it is a bad plane....just hinting at C's rivalry with the tristar refuellers

.mic

C wrote on Jul 12^th, 2008 at 8:39pm:

I kinda like "FRED" (Foolishly Rediculous Economic Disaster) 
I think that was one the C-5 Galaxy's nicknames, but it works for the F-35 too as well as the F-22 

fighter25 wrote on Jul 16^th, 2008 at 12:58pm:

Why?

Per aircraft it's cheaper than the Eurofighter, Rafael, Super Hornet, and the obvious - F-22. Yeah... and for the most part a whole lot more capable too.

I don't think this would qualify as one of the five worst ever, but the F-104 had a particularly bad safety record, what other aircraft has a downward firing ejection seat? The alternative (being sliced to bits by the tail in an ejection) wouldn't have been any better had the seat been conventionally upward-firing. It also was not known for possessing a great capacity for weapon load. Last of all, with it's tiny wings it didn't live up to it's name of "Star" fighter too well, with regard to maneuverability. In spite of these comments I always liked the aircraft, it having been the first combat jet I saw flying by with burner engaged, and I did run a finger along the leading edge of the wing while visiting one at an aviation museum, drawing some blood in the process .

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from the F-104C it has a normal seat. Martin Bakers were only fitted on some export versions or during later upgrades (Italian F-104S, Scandinavian, Greek and Spanish CF-104)

And while not being a bad aircraft, its intended mission was a 'throw away fighter' with just enough fuel to intercept Tu-95s over the atlantic before they got into their launch range. Pilots were picked up by US Navy ships after ejecting

Why do people keep saying planes like the F-22 and F-35 are the worst aircraft ever built? which would you rather fly in, a F-104 or a RAF RE8?

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Price - perfomance ratio for F-22
Jack-of-all trades, master of none for the F-35 (and that you are flying a slow speed airframe as there isnt a separate carrier version)

I fail to understand why people hate the F-35. Pessimistic price has been proved wrong. STOVL system inferiority has been proved wrong. Anti-Stealth claims have been proved wrong. Payload concerns have been proved wrong. Range concerns have been proved wrong... etc...

It's simply the best multirole fighter there is, for Australia particularly. And in the big picture it truely becomes a jack of all trades, master of all, aircraft. Maybe not to APA & Karlo Kopp, & Eric Palmer, who continually recycle the same vomit all over and over again, but as always, they are WRONG.



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The F-35C is designed for carrier ops. Strengthened airframe, larger wings, larger control surfaces, removed gun, & internal fuel capacity is increased to 9 tons which is about the same as the Su-27, F-22 & F-14.

One bad thing about the F-35 is the two versions...

By that, I mean the American version, and the foreign export version...

The foreign export version will without doubt be downgraded and (fact) the foreign nations won't be able to update the planes themselves, but must ship them back to the factory for that.

But with that said, the F-35 has the best avionics suite in the world.

Anxyous wrote on Jul 22^nd, 2008 at 12:37pm:

I'm almost 100% sure the JSF partners are getting the same F-35 as the USAF - there was a news article somewhere, but I cannot find it. The whole degraded stealth F-35 thing I beleive was started by Karlo Kopp in yet another one of his rediculous court hearings.   Needless to say he lost.

Three version of the F-35... A - CTOL   B - STOVL  C - Carrier Variant.

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Perhaps.

However, we have two aircraft flying, one of which is a production aircraft, and many more production aircraft on the assembly line. For it not to live up to standards is borderline impossible.

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/28/ind2exot4.jpg

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/5765/airf35leftwingoverrearvjw6.jpg

http://images.teamjsf.com/main.php?g2_itemId=10663

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/9816/f0838823lz1.jpg

BigTruck wrote on Jul 22^nd, 2008 at 11:57pm:


I wonder what people thought of the F-14, 15, 16, and 18 when they first came out.  I'm sure the F-35 will grow on us.

Myasishchev VM-T......... WOW!(and not in a good way)

DONTREADMYUSERNAME wrote on Jul 24^th, 2008 at 10:00pm:

Design a bad bomber, make it into a reasonable tanker and a mediocre cargo plane

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Rocket parts transporter and Buran carrier until the Antonv came

This is easy.

The Wright Flyer is the worst aircraft of all time! Everything after that was just an improvement!

Vuikag wrote on Jul 28^th, 2008 at 1:48am:


I saw it at CIAS last year....pretty damn impressive if you ask me...

Rich H wrote on Jul 31^st, 2008 at 1:05pm:


The 717 is nothing more than the next model of MD-80, since Boeing bought Douglas, they bought the aircraft too and renamed it.

Also, you do realize the C-130 came way before the C-17 and is still a premier military aircraft today.  The Starlifter was not designed to do what the C-130 can do.  A Starlifter is not known for its short field ability.

Rich H wrote on Jul 31^st, 2008 at 1:05pm:


As Vodka said, the Boeing 717 was a McDonnell Douglas plane built under the Boeing name after their buy-out. As far as design goes, it's not terrible. It's about the same speed as a MD-80, but both are slower than the 737. There has not been a hull-loss of a 717 either, though there aren't many flying. The only really bad thing about the aircraft was that it was not commercially successful. It's place in the market is easily served by larger regional jets or smaller 737s. It also doesn't "fit in" with the rest of the Boeing line as far as configuration and systems.

The C-130, C-17, C-5 (which fills the retired C-141 Starlifter's roll) have to entirely different missions, which they each excel at.

The C-130 is a pure-bread tactical airlifter, which means it's job is inter-theater transport. It's ability to fly low and slow and get into and out of tight spots make it one of the best tactical airlfters in the world.

The C-17 is a hybrid, capable of both tactical and strategic airlift. It has a much higher payload capacity and a much faster cruise speed, but sacrifices the low level and short/soft field capabilities of the C-130.

The C-5 is purely a strategic airlifter and is the aircraft of choice when you need to move a lot of equipment (or just very heavy equipment) into our out of theater. For that, it sacrifices any ability to do tactical airlift.

If I had to choose a worst of the 3, I'd have to say it is the C-5, because of its heavy maintenances requirements. Though you still can't knock it too much because the C-5 has the second highest payload capacity of any military transport ever produced. And there were only 2 An-225s ever made. By contrast, there were well over 100 C-5s built.

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Which is in some ways quite perverse, as the RB211 has proven to be an excellent engine on the Tristar, 747 and 757 amongst others.

love the wikipedia page about the christmas bullet, "Dr." as it quotes, and ya think after the first one crashed from a wing failure youd put strutts on it

SR-71... It leaks 

machineman9 wrote on Aug 17^th, 2008 at 10:37pm:



Its not a real airplane unless it leaks.

we really need a defined characteristc.... like why is it worst besides the looks and cost

My mind wanders towards Howard Hughes Sprucegoose. Most expsensive in its era, unlikely from the planning to succeed, and is more a piece of military jewelry than most other planes.

http://www.sprucegoose.org/aircraft_artifacts/exhibits.html

Not sure I agree on the Brewster Buffalo. Apparently it was a delight to fly before all the extra equipment was added. Not the first promising design to be ruined by trying to meet unrealistic government specifications.

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We discussed this at length some time ago. Not sure I believe that it would have met the specifications with the best engines available at the time. It might have done so with more powerful engines if they had been produced in the future. This might have been one reason for keeping it in so-called airworthy condition for all those years. From reading several accounts of his life Howard Hughes was an odd character & not above fiddling anyone when it suited him, including the government. In fact I suspect he enjoyed it.

That first "flight" was enough to have the desired effect but it was a basic shell & far from finished. I'm not convinced the finished aircraft would have left the water with any sort of payload.

i have to say the origonal de Havilland Comet. it failed because it had square windows resulting in explosive deconpression

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http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=2668113119001888697

From another forum...
"And those guys call themselves ENGINEERS?"

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Yeah but the point is, it wasn't well designed. 

Not going to take the time to read thru all to see if it's mentioned.
But, and I'm not sure it even qualifies as an aircraft, considering the limited flight, but Spruce Goose comes to mind.

expat wrote on Mar 15^th, 2009 at 1:16pm:


I think the Lightning, Harrier and Meteor (plus the Starfighter) might top losses per number built!

My 4:

The GeeBee Z

All racers are death traps to start with, but this one more so than most.  It was almost totally uncontrollable in the air and suffered from wing flutter that took out both the plane and pilot.

F-105 Thunderchief

Great plane, if you can ignore it's nasty little habit of breaking in half during flight.

B-2 Stealth bomber

It has no mission, can't fly in the rain, isn't totally invisible to radar, and is probably the most useless plane ever built.

YB-49 Flying Wing

Cousin to the B-2, it would pitch up uncontrollably without warning

About what was said a few pages ago "Some airlines refuses to buy any engines except Pratt & Whitney engines or General Electric engines".

Now this is a stupid thing by the airlines. I've never flown on any aircraft powered by PW engines, but during the four flights of my life ( ) I have flown on two 737-300s, one A330, and one 737-800. That means i've flown on two aircraft that were powered by two GE CFM56-3s, one aircraft that was powered by two GE CFM56-7Bs and one aircraft that was powered by two Rolls Royce Trent 772B engines. The A330 trip was far more pleasant than any of my three 737 trips.

And I would far prefer a TriStar before a DC-10 - Actually, I don't know why as the DC-10 has grown to an extremely safe aircraft after all the troubleshooting that's been done with it - Probably because the TriStar got a waaaaaay better start to its life than the DC-10.

Okay, 5 worst in my opinion..

Airbus Beluga. Seriously Airbus, it looks ten times worse than the Dreamlifter. You can do better than this. The A300 actually was a good looking aircraft

Boeing Dreamlifter. A 747 looks weird enough already.

Antonov 225. 6 engines, a high-mounted wing and that fuselage? If it wasn't flying already, i'd call it a joke.

Hmmm.. now that the oversized cargo aircraft are out.. hmm..

The A318. The A319 is shortened enough already, and not many airlines have bought it. It's still a treat seeing Air France A318s coming into ENGM though

And last but not least, the MD-8x. Not McDonnell Douglas' fault, but I wish there was another engine choice for it than the PW JT8D. I have SAS MD-8xs flying over my house every day (Around 7,000-10,000 feet over the ground) and I can by far say they are the noisiest that flies over here. Not MD's fault, but I just wish they could use another engine type. The MD-8x is actually a beautifully designed aircraft.

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My head hurts.

The F-35 has an engine that is about as powerful as both engines combined on the Eurofighter or Super Hornet. In terms of thrust to weight ratios it's about the same as the F-15 & F-16 with a wing loading similar to that of the F-16, F-18, F-14 & F-18E/F. However, let's not forget that it carries munitions internally, as well as 9 tons of fuel (as much as the Su-27 & F-14). T/W ratio is superior to all operating Flanker variants, and has the added advantage of DAS (with AIM-9X and HMD) when WVR. And the sensors, sensor integration, avionics are without a doubt the BEST of any fighter.

It goes with the U.S Arsenal just fine... it can carry anything. The main issue is a price that has increased dramatically, price uncertainty, design compromises from making VTOL / CV variants, no gun on VTOL / CV unless carried externally which although is in a stealthy pod still compromises stealth, and kinematics that are 'only' similar to the BLK 52 F-16.

They should have some kind of sponsored competition, like the Olympics, where planes and other weaponry are pitted against one another to see who is the best.

I know we have war games and all, but something a little more designed to answer questions such as these would be awesome. Our best pilot in our best planes against yours.  Who is really better?

Just dreaming,


F-107, and most of the other Delta Dagger series of jets.  Not for design or function, but for purpose.

At a time when we were obsessed with speed, we started to forget about the dog fight, this plane is a good example of that.
Aside from that, I thought they were pretty bad-ass for their time.

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A clean block 52 F-16 with a centre tank can keep with a Raptor subsonic and transonic in acceleration. The late F-16 is no slouch.

F-35 has twice the AoA envolope of the F-16 though.

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It is overweight (30,000lb's, vs 24,000) in the same way the Raptor is overweight (43,000lb's vs 30,000's). The whole aircraft has grown with this and now is similar in wing loading and t/w ratio to most 4.5 generation aircraft. Why is glide ratio worse than any other fighter, like the Super Hornet, and F-16? Why don't we slap a radar and missiles on the U-2? Good glide ratio, right?

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I love modern avionics. The GAO compared the capability of various fighters versus a baseline JSF. AV-8B got 0.111, F-14D got 0.195, F-18C/D+ got 0.193, Super Hornet block 1 got 0.316, and you know what SUPER HORNET BLOCK 2 got? 0.65. Why? Modern avionics.

www.gao.gov/new.items/d04900.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRkpFsXz9yk&feature=channel_page

http://www.avtoday.com/av/categories/military/1145.html

http://integrator.hanscom.af.mil/2007/October/10252007/10252007-21.htm

http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-9268.html

Modern avionics also means the Block 60 F-16 radar outranges the F-15C radar by over 300%. The F-35 has, AESA, DAS, EOTS, VLO, DIRCM, best CNI/IFF, best datalink, sensor fusion, and best HMD. It has been suggested that the radar on Wedgetail, if upgraded, could jam enemy datalinks, insert false targets into enemy datalinks, and hack enemy datalinks. On the early F-16, it took 8 seconds for the engine to spool up from idle to full afterburner, with newer avionics it takes less than 2 seconds...

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The F-35 can carry almost anything internally. Only things I can name which it cannot carry is current HARM (fine, use the one in development instead), mk-20, and Aim-9X (fine, wait for block II). Them, and JASSM which is not exactly required to be internally carried.

http://www.air-attack.com/MIL/jsf/f35weaponsbay_20090320.jpg

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You keep claiming the F-35 is not manoeuvrable, but it's not substantiated. F-35 far exceeds the ordinary Flankers t/w ratio, and is still better than the MKI's t/w ratio. TVC doesn't help a whole lot unless very slow. On top of that when WVR the F-35 still has DAS, & a far better HMD.

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I think your idea of WVR is warped. WVR is when you can see them outside the window and does not necessarily refer to dogfights. If DAS picks up an enemy jet, then all the pilot has to do is look at it and fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiNMio9zN2Q

Even in a dogfight the F-35 will be at minimum, parity with newer Flankers...


If it were the worst aircraft ever built then I highly doubt 10+ nations would be going to buy it...

Jordan,

Yes, I've heard about numerous gear issues with the Q400 around the world. Certainly strange. 

DaveSims wrote on Aug 1^st, 2008 at 9:05am:


C-130 on a carrier, on all 7 continents(Antarctica too), super STOL(credible sport), Fulton Recovery System, radio controlled drone recovery, recon, close air support, bomber(MOAB and some huge cluster bome), seaplane, civilian cargo, civilian transport, tanker, weather research, search and rescue, ballistic missile interceptor(under development), one of the longest serving military aircraft in history, and I can keep on going.  Name a single airframe that's done all that and then tell me the C-130 is one of the worst aircraft ever built.