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What is your favorite aircraft of all time?
- Thread starter Jerekson
- Start date
R-2000
Who ever said that? I would love one, expecially, one of the early mark with a Pratt & Whitney R-2000 like a few that are flying now. Fast and maneuverable, and an easy engine to live with. Plus, the Zero had a wide undercarriage that made it easy to land! Just ask the low time pilots they put in the cockpit at the end of the war.thsiao1 said:
Diamondback
I'll Lock Up
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You mean the ones that were actually ALLOWED the opportunity to come back, right? 
Sakae Engine
No, I am talking about Zeros that were salvaged off Pacific Islands, and the corroded hulks painstakingly rebuilt, hence the wrong engines! I think the Planes Of Fame have the only airworthy Zero A6M5, [or any other mark] with the correct Nakajima Sakae 31 engine in it. It was brought back at the end of the war and ended up in a park before being rescued. They fly it sparingly, in deference to the engine!Diamondback said:You mean the ones that were actually ALLOWED the opportunity to come back, right?
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Diamondback
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Stearmen, I think we got a crossed wire--my snark was "as opposed to one-way missions". (Technically the D3A Val was a better choice for kamikaze missions in terms of damage-expectancy, the A6M would lose controllability in a high-speed dive--just that there were more Zekes available and they were easier to teach rookies to fly.)
--my snark was "as opposed to one-way missions". (Technically the D3A Val was a better choice for kamikaze missions in terms of damage-expectancy, the A6M would lose controllability in a high-speed dive--just that there were more Zekes available and they were easier to teach rookies to fly.)
Aristaeus
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Naval Air Museum in Pensacola FL.
DanielJones
I'll Lock Up
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One of my favorites is a cargo/troop carrier. It is the Fairchild C-82.
Partly because of its unique look at the time and partly because of all the stories that my Pop would tell me about flying around in them as he was being transported around Germany in the early 1950's. He even got some nice shots of a few at one of the airfields over there. I managed to look the planes up by their Buzz Numbers. One of them had a long history of flight finally being scrapped in 1989. The other that my Pop had flown on had crashed in France less than a year after him taking a photograph of it. The C-82 was also the aircraft used in the movie, 'The Flight of the Phoenix'.
The other aircraft that came after the C-82 Packet was the C-119 Flying Box Car. Equally impressive. This is the model that eventually became a gun platform named Spooky.
Cheers!
Dan
Partly because of its unique look at the time and partly because of all the stories that my Pop would tell me about flying around in them as he was being transported around Germany in the early 1950's. He even got some nice shots of a few at one of the airfields over there. I managed to look the planes up by their Buzz Numbers. One of them had a long history of flight finally being scrapped in 1989. The other that my Pop had flown on had crashed in France less than a year after him taking a photograph of it. The C-82 was also the aircraft used in the movie, 'The Flight of the Phoenix'.
The other aircraft that came after the C-82 Packet was the C-119 Flying Box Car. Equally impressive. This is the model that eventually became a gun platform named Spooky.
Cheers!
Dan
Diamondback
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There was also a C-82 derivative, don't recall designator, that basically chopped off the entire lower fuselage and would have used aerodynamically-shaped containers--sorta like a fixed-wing Sikorsky Skycrane. IIRC it was called the "Pack-Plane", and there was only one prototype--which was considered a failure.
Diamondback
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Nice, but a fully armed and operational F-12B would've been even better...
(YF-12A shown, -B would have had full A-12 or more likely SR-71-style chines)
(YF-12A shown, -B would have had full A-12 or more likely SR-71-style chines)
Gilboa
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For its sheer size and capabilities: the Sunderland Flying Boat
Everytime I see it take off (in movies) I am amazed!
For its sheer elegance: the Concorde
What a beautiful shape and perfect proportions.
Everytime I see it take off (in movies) I am amazed!
For its sheer elegance: the Concorde
What a beautiful shape and perfect proportions.
Diamondback
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Gotta say this on the Sunderland, anything that can fight off three Ju88's with gunship-packages has to be doin' something right...
Aside from the weird double-hinge nose, though, we gotta disagree on SST's: maybe it's a "Home Team" thing since the intended plant for 'em is practically in my back yard, but my money's with the stillborn Boeing 2707, particularly the swing-wing -200 model (which was quickly discarded, the version finally selected for sales offering was the 2707-300, which had 125 on the order books before the EPA killed it). It would've been a widebody with 2-3-2 seating for 30 first- and 247 tourist-class; if my eye for scale is correct those seats would have been more like a regular airliner than Concorde. (When they did a "members' preview" on exhibiting the Concorde up here, I was two seats wide and I'm only 5'4"! )
Perhaps, if Concorde had been allowed to evolve to a second generation, it would've seen 2707 interior features on a slightly upscaled version of its basic planform; either way, we are all the poorer for the fact that these two magnificent speedbirds never had a chance to compete and evolve to their fullest potentials... and we will probably never see the likes of them again.
Concept art of a 2707-200 demonstrator:
Model of "final" -300 design:
Aside from the weird double-hinge nose, though, we gotta disagree on SST's: maybe it's a "Home Team" thing since the intended plant for 'em is practically in my back yard, but my money's with the stillborn Boeing 2707, particularly the swing-wing -200 model (which was quickly discarded, the version finally selected for sales offering was the 2707-300, which had 125 on the order books before the EPA killed it). It would've been a widebody with 2-3-2 seating for 30 first- and 247 tourist-class; if my eye for scale is correct those seats would have been more like a regular airliner than Concorde. (When they did a "members' preview" on exhibiting the Concorde up here, I was two seats wide and I'm only 5'4"!
)Perhaps, if Concorde had been allowed to evolve to a second generation, it would've seen 2707 interior features on a slightly upscaled version of its basic planform; either way, we are all the poorer for the fact that these two magnificent speedbirds never had a chance to compete and evolve to their fullest potentials... and we will probably never see the likes of them again.
Concept art of a 2707-200 demonstrator:
Model of "final" -300 design:
Gilboa
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The final "300" design, what a beauty!!
Berlin
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I ab-so-lute-ly lóve the spitfire and the F16! (L)
Argee
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look at my wall and take a wild guess.
Diamondback
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Berlin, ever seen the F-16XL prototypes? Another bird that triggers thoughts of "what might have been"... especially if you combined the XL's "cranked arrow" delta wing with the Israeli "Viper" variant's dorsal fuel-tank and stuffed a bigger engine into it.
F-16XL:
Second-generation "Super Viper" (developed for India, as Israel's upgrading to F-35 JSF):
Problem is, the XL was in direct competition with the F-15E Strike Eagle for the "light-bomber adaptation of an air-superiority airframe" budget, and The Fix Was Already In for McDonnell, much as MacNamara had The Fix in for his beloved F-111 and killed every single program that he thought might threaten it, including all armed Blackbirds. (And even terminating production of the recon version by destroying the tooling, despite that Congress had repeatedly allocated money for the Blackbird and specifically ordered him to BUILD IT. "Contempt of Congress", anyone? IMO, this one's past "contempt" and its fallout should place it in the "treason" category... but that may just be my frustration with the fact that we will be forever stuck paying the price for his lack of vision talking.)
That weird double-hinge nose I referred to:
Of the full-scale mockup, only the first 100' or so are accounted for, preserved at Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos (SFO Bay Area), California. the complete mockup used to reside in a museum in Florida; what happened to the rest of it is unknown. Oh, just for one-upsmanship, BTW, 2707 would've cruised at Mach 2.7, the fastest "production" aircraft with a usable load is the F-15 at Mach 2.5. (Yeah, the MiG-25 makes 3.1-3.2, but that's with no load and stripped down.)
F-16XL:
Second-generation "Super Viper" (developed for India, as Israel's upgrading to F-35 JSF):
Problem is, the XL was in direct competition with the F-15E Strike Eagle for the "light-bomber adaptation of an air-superiority airframe" budget, and The Fix Was Already In for McDonnell, much as MacNamara had The Fix in for his beloved F-111 and killed every single program that he thought might threaten it, including all armed Blackbirds. (And even terminating production of the recon version by destroying the tooling, despite that Congress had repeatedly allocated money for the Blackbird and specifically ordered him to BUILD IT. "Contempt of Congress", anyone? IMO, this one's past "contempt" and its fallout should place it in the "treason" category... but that may just be my frustration with the fact that we will be forever stuck paying the price for his lack of vision talking.)
That weird double-hinge nose I referred to:
Of the full-scale mockup, only the first 100' or so are accounted for, preserved at Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos (SFO Bay Area), California. the complete mockup used to reside in a museum in Florida; what happened to the rest of it is unknown. Oh, just for one-upsmanship, BTW, 2707 would've cruised at Mach 2.7, the fastest "production" aircraft with a usable load is the F-15 at Mach 2.5. (Yeah, the MiG-25 makes 3.1-3.2, but that's with no load and stripped down.)
