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There are countless books, dvds and websites about the great aircraft of World War Two. Almost everyone would recognize the Spitfire, P-51 Mustang, Me109 or Lancaster. However, there were hundreds of aircraft types used between 1939 and 1945, and, inevitably, some were abject failures. I’ve always enjoyed ‘worst of’ lists, and had an interest in aviation, so I thought it time to combine the two.

So what makes a bad aircraft? Is it the slowest, most outdated or poorest armed aircraft? It’s not that simple, as some aircraft massively overachieved despite being outdated (the Fairey Swordfish is a prime example.) So my criteria is simple: a bad aircraft is something that failed to do the job it was assigned to do. Some of the planes weren’t bad designs, just outdated. Others could have been great but were rushed into production and dogged by reliability issues. Others were simply bad full stop. Some you may know, but others have, quite rightly, faded into obscurity. There is a dark side to this list, as their deficiencies undoubtedly cost the lives of hundreds of young pilots. Although, on the other hand, you could also argue that in failing they could not inflict casualties themselves.

The first rule I had was that the aircraft had to have been used operationally, either for training or combat, as it’s pure speculation debating if a prototype would have been successful. The second was one entry from each of the major participants, if only for variety’s sake. There were still a surprising number of contenders for this list, so I have gone for those with an interesting story behind them, as reading “never saw combat and was used as a trainer” several times won’t be that interesting.