The most beautiful airplane

[scottfromiowa]

Kudo's to those that get both...and a Mooney

[Marauder]

The Cessna 195-B Business Liner. Wish I had the talent to buy, own and even land one.

Chad over a KILG just bought a yellow one. Beautiful...

[fantom]

Two facts about Russian WW-II aerial ; one- they were fighting over their own country so when shot down they had a very high chance of being picked up to fight again another day; two - they were much better at multiplication than at addition.

 

Note you can't buy a gun on ebay, but with some pocket coins, this is possible: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/for-sale-on-ebay-one-lightly-used-soviet-bear-bomber-low-mileage/

 

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and there was nothing more lovely than this bird sitting on the ramp for my first flight.

 

[Dave Marten]

Dave,

The P39 and it's export version, the P400 were the most underperforming aircraft in our inventory. Even the casual reader will gleam this from fighter pilot accounts.

 

Only mentioned the P-39 for the driveshaft/engine configuration. Remote-mounted engines in aircraft, while a challenge, has been successful.

 

Just to be clear the little Airacobra is not on my top beauty or performance list. But in all fairness she found her niche and did her job. 

[Dave Marten]

 

 

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and there was nothing more lovely than this bird sitting on the ramp for my first flight.

 

 

Amen brother! Your first love is always the sweetest.

 

This one's for you Fantom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrNiA-_gF1A

 

Cheers!

[fantom]

Thanks, Dave. Good to hear the cleaned up PC version.

 

1972 and Linebacker....like it was yesterday. The best of times, the worst of times.

[scottfromiowa]

It is a bummer to be at your like limit for the day...In a Scott world Friday's would be a day when you had unlimited likes. Fantom, I have a cool Yankee Station poster. Do you possess? If not I will happily donate to a former driver. I loved the Thud and A4 Skyhawk of this era too. Really nice looking airframes.

[scottfromiowa]

Pretty awesome Jim. That would be a blast to fly.

[fantom]

........I'm not suggesting that their aren't more beautiful designs out there. But damn. For an airplane that I can afford? Hard to beat! Jim

Mega ditto, Jim! Can't even count the number of times I've pulled my plane out of the hanger over the years and just spent a minute admiring her fine lines. Happens with other Mooney's also, like the morning we walked the Panama Beach flight line last month. Thankfully happens with gorgeous women and beautiful cars also.

[Gone]

 

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and there was nothing more lovely than this bird sitting on the ramp for my first flight.

 

 

 

When I was growing up, there was this cartoon in the papers called Buzz Sawyer and he flew Phantoms.  I guess Phantom knows about the old saying that the F4 was proof positive that, with big enough engines, you could make a brick fly.  

 

But I liked it anyway.  Serious lines for a serious airplane.

 

And today, of course, the airforce is about to take away our favourite airborne tank busters, the Aardvark ("Go ugly early").  I remember sitting in my battalion command post during an exercise in 1983 with the Brigade Command Net in one earphone and the Battalion Command Net in the other when I was handed two A10s just clearing into the IP. 

 

"Where do you want it?"

 

"On the Lawfield road (this was a long straight road radiating from their IP on their initial heading plain as day) anything north of northing 08 is a target."

 

"Roger."

 

And that was that.    I like the look of A-10s too, but that is just me.

 

 

[fantom]

 

 

 

 

......the old saying that the F4 was proof positive that, with big enough engines, you could make a brick fly.  

 

But I liked it anyway.  Serious lines for a serious airplane.

 

 

Does that look like a brick to you?

 

We'll be sorry if we mothball the A-10. Should be an Army/Marine weapon, but we don't need no stinking military as we invest in social re-engineering

[DaV8or]

Here's another successful shaft driven plane from that era. The Dornier 335 Arrow. Fastest piston fighter of WWII. Had the Luftwaffe not been run by a mega maniacal moron and this plane pressed into service when it was first developed instead of carrying on with the BF-109 forever, we would have been in real trouble.

 

[aviatoreb]

Here's another successful shaft driven plane from that era. The Dornier 335 Arrow. Fastest piston fighter of WWII. Had the Luftwaffe not been run by a mega maniacal moron and this plane pressed into service when it was first developed instead of carrying on with the BF-109 forever, we would have been in real trouble.

 

 

In the theme of "most beautiful airplane" I cannot stand looking at any of those airplanes with the Swastika paint job.  Not beautiful. It always gives me shivers when I see one in a museum no matter how nice the lines or impressive the engineering.

 

No doubt they were designing some pretty amazing technology during WWII in Germany.  Including of course the jet.  And the mono wing.  And this thing above.  No doubt it was so fast in part because look at it - its like a rocket with wings.  Just pure narrow pointyness - and the tail is like a rocket too, two horizontal surfaces and two vertical surfaces on the tail.  Not to mention that pusher puller design is nice.

 

The Bugatti was described here as looking a bit like a Bonanza v-tail because of the v-tail - but I don't see a v-tail - I see a 3 bladed rocket tail like the above 4 bladed rocket tail.

 

 

Seems to me, truth be told, the SR-72 and several other planes are actually pretty ugly to look at ... Aesthetically ... NOT pleasing to the eye! But knowing they PERFORM makes them suddenly look very good. The F4U Corsair is another example. It's ugly, but it looked way better than a P-39 to a pilot launching to meet some Zeros coming from Rabul.

You can LOOK at the Bugatti, but I'll FLY something that performs, starting with our wonderful Mooney M20C!

 

 

Aha - do you mean the SR72 or the SR71?  The SR72 has not yet even been built but it is now officially in design:

 

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170463-lockheed-unveils-sr-72-hypersonic-mach-6-scramjet-spy-plane

 

They claim it will make >Mach6 or >4500mph using the new scram jet concept (not new - just newly feasible - it has been imagined for at least 30 years).  That's fast enough to do JFK->LAX in under 30 minutes!  It is supposed to be twice as fast the SR71.

 

This has been such a fun thread to read!  Keep rolling buddies!  I am still enchanted by the Bugatti - but I forgot about the Beech Staggerwing - that is beautiful too.

 

For $2M you too can own this particularly stunny polished P51:

http://www.controller.com/listingsdetail/aircraft-for-sale/NORTH-AMERICAN-P-51-MUSTANG/1945-NORTH-AMERICAN-P-51-MUSTANG/1147803.htm

[fantom]

On the ramp today a Baron and an A-36 looked quite stout, even in a group of Mooney's.

[scottfromiowa]

Werner Von Braun WAS a Nazi Party member...do you shiver when you look at A Saturn V Rocket? Come on, it was a symbol of a party that was awful, but we are 60+ years beyond. I can look at the German's that were engineers, pilots, engine builders etc. and respect what they created...end of thought. We won, next....

Not telling you how to think, but a little tired of the obvious being stated over and over again. Now if we are talking Bonds Home Run record the asterisk is easily a symbol that identifies what he is...a cheater.

My response is not meant to be hostile...just how I feel. I do not subscribe to my mother's feelings of distrust toward ALL German's to this day.

[David Mazer]

but we are 60+ years beyond.

My response is not meant to be hostile...just how I feel. I do not subscribe to my mother's feelings of distrust toward ALL German's to this day.

Ah, are we really 60+ years beyond the Nazis?  Just this week Swastikas were emblazoned on the Jewish temples in Crimea.  There seems to be no end or time limit to humans’ ability to hate some other group – women, Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Christians, Muslims.  The list seems endless.  While Nazi Germany was defeated I fear we have a very long way to go before we defeat the ideals for which it stood.

[scottfromiowa]

Yes. War in ETO ended in May of '45. By my math that is 60+ years ago...and you make my point. There are some that can't separate the symbol from those that perpetrated the acts...I get that they can't, but I don't put the evil on a swaz...I put it, evil on those that perpetrate it...where and when it occurs.

Yes to your statement.

My statement is: It is kooky to see evil in an object...gun, plane, ship etc...

Actions and beliefs are the problem, not the symbols.

[aviatoreb]

Yes. War in ETO ended in May of '45. By my math that is 60+ years ago...and you make my point. There are some that can't separate the symbol from those that perpetrated the acts...I get that they can't, but I don't put the evil on a swaz...I put it, evil on those that perpetrate it...where and when it occurs.

Yes to your statement.

My statement is: It is kooky to see evil in an object...gun, plane, ship etc...

Actions and beliefs are the problem, not the symbols.

 

I hear what you are saying, and actually I respect your perspective.

 

To answer your question, yes, if there was a Swastika painted on the side of a Saturn V rocket, it would make me shiver. I would call the rocket ugly.

 

If that nice airplane, The Doriner 335 had a nice racy fire engine red paint job, then I bet it would be beautiful to my eye.  I said quite clearly that I was impressed with the engineering there in, and the engineers who built it.  The emblem over shadows its appearance.  

That Swastika represents specifically the Nazis and the memory of the Nazis represents something they did and represented in WWII, and a sentiment that lives on today, as David said, in many places in the world, including Crimea.  The emblem painted on the side of an otherwise lovely airplane overshadows the airplane in my eye.  It is almost the only thing I notice (as I said, indeed I do notice the airplane but not mostly).  There are plenty of nasty bits of history.  And the emblems that represent that history reminds of bitter pieces of history - even the usually nice Olympic rings are ugly if I think of them in the Sarajevo Olympic stadium torn apart by an ugly civil war.  In that case it is sad to remember.

 

Paint a Swastika on the side of a Saturn V, or paint a KKK burning cross on the side of a Saturn V, and well - it ruins it for me.  I am not broad minded enough I guess to see past the emblem and remember what it represents.  That ugliness of the worst side of humanity what those emblems represent lives forever, or it SHOULD or we will just repeat that ugly history.  I will not look at the aircraft with those ugly emblems and call them beautiful like I would if you paint a nice American flag on the side, or a British flag, or heck almost any other national flag.  Or even a nice plain red paint job.

 

[David Mazer]

To show the degree to which the ugly use of a symbol can change its percepetion, here is some Wikipedia information about the origins of what once was a nice symbol:

 

The swastika (卐) (Sanskrit: स्वस्तिक) is a symbol that generally takes the form of an equilateral cross, with its four arms bent at 90 degrees. The earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization as well as the Mediterranean Classical Antiquity and paleolithic Europe. Swastikas have also been used in various other ancient civilizations around the world including Turkic, India, Iran, Armenia, Nepal, China, Japan, Korea and Europe. It remains widely used in Indian religions, specifically in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, primarily as a tantric symbol that invokes Lakshmi - the Vedic goddess of wealth, prosperity and auspiciousness.

 

I'm not as influenced by the symbol itself as Erik is especially as my understanding of the Nazis has evolved over time.  A definition of fascism - One common definition of fascism focuses on three concepts: the fascist negations of anti-liberalism, anti-communism and anti-conservatism; nationalist authoritarian goals of creating a regulated economic structure to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture; and a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth and charismatic leadership – sounds very much like the direction we are following here in the US recently aside from the promotion of masculinity of course.  The fascist symbol of the swastika may not be used but the ideas behind it certainly seem as fresh as ever to many.

 

Sorry, probably a lot deeper than appropriate for a thread that started with the most beautifuyl plane.

[scottfromiowa]

I have said my piece. I "get" why you feel the way you do and I respect it. The Mustang, a British design is WAY more beautiful than any Luftwaffe aircraft. Had the Germans had the Mustang, B-17 AND the MP-44 in 1940 THEN I agree with Dave that history may have been quite a bid more ugly. A British Roundel or U.S Stars & Bars ARE more attractive than the German National Socialist Party Hackenkruz....But I like the different and "mean" looking over beautiful so a TA-152 would be in my hanger if money were no object...and I owned a time machine.

[DaV8or]

But I like the different and "mean" looking over beautiful so a TA-152 would be in my hanger if money were no object...and I owned a time machine.

 

<Thread creap> I'm with you here partially. My favorite fighter of WWII is the Focke Wulf 190a8. Similar, but light, quick in the turn, excellent design for the mission, given resources and you gotta love the sound of a radial engine! A no nonsense, practical Bulldog of a plane.

[HartParr]

I place Italian planes and cars in the same category as the spaghetti westerns of the '60s-too foreign.

Boeing Monomail

Beech Staggerwing

B1 Lancer

B2 Spirit

[aviatoreb]

I have said my piece. I "get" why you feel the way you do and I respect it. The Mustang, a British design is WAY more beautiful than any Luftwaffe aircraft. Had the Germans had the Mustang, B-17 AND the MP-44 in 1940 THEN I agree with Dave that history may have been quite a bid more ugly. A British Roundel or U.S Stars & Bars ARE more attractive than the German National Socialist Party Hackenkruz....But I like the different and "mean" looking over beautiful so a TA-152 would be in my hanger if money were no object...and I owned a time machine.

 

This sounds like an agreeable - "agree to disagree" respect of differing perspectives.