For every military aircraft that makes it into service, a thousand projects only live on as tattered blueprints in filing cabinets, gung-ho artworks or sit silently as lonely prototypes in museums. To be sentimental over killing machines that never were may seem perverse, but the following ten aircraft inspire tantalising speculation of what could have been. War is Boring’s David Axe and Hush-Kit’s Joe Coles take a ghoulish stroll through the graveyard of cancelled military aircraft.

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11. Sud-Est SE.5000 Baroudeur

Aeroplane designers hate wheels. Wheels are for cars. The weight and complexity of a retractable undercarriage is a huge nuisance. Why not do away with them altogether? The wartime Germans were very keen on this idea and built a series of aeroplanes that took off from trolleys. The aircraft would simply uncouple itself from the trolley as it took off, the trolley remaining behind on the runway. The aeroplane would land on simple skids. A trolley take-off frees an aeroplane from the need for vast, vulnerable runways. In a war, airbases would be priority targets and however good a fighter was, it be would utterly impotent if it had no runway to take off from. Mindful of this problem, and fearing the technological hurdles of vertical take-off and landing, Sud-Est, turned back to the ‘trolley dolly’ concept to create the Sud-Est SE.5000 Baroudeur (‘adventurer’). The aircraft took its first flight on 1 August 1953. It was superb: trolley take-offs proved effortless, skid landings a delight (even in crosswinds). It could be rapidly rearmed and refuelled, and would have made a superb tactical fighter. If required, the trolley could even have be rocket-assisted! The ‘jet dirtbike’ never made it into service, usurped by a generation of concrete-loving fast-jets.

10. Bell XF-109

In 1955, the U.S. Navy and Air Force approached Bell Aircraft Corporation with a far-out idea: design a Mach-two fighter capable of launching and landing vertically. Bell dutifully drew up a design for what it unofficially called the XF-109.
Fifty-nine feet long, the XF-109 featured a startling eight J85 turbojets – four afterburning motors arranged two apiece in rotating wingtip nacelles, plus another two afterburners in the rear fuselage and a pair of non-afterburning J85s pointing downward behind the cockpit.The XF-109 was clearly ahead of its time. The Navy and Air Force both lost interest and the military cancelled the Bell jump jet in 1961 before the company could build any actual prototypes. The Harrier, the world’s first operational vertical-takeoff-and-landing fighter, flew for the first time in 1967. The Harrier is subsonic.

See the top ten jump-jets here.

8. Kamov V-100 ‘Боевой молот’

Image via rotorpedia.ru

Kamov’s long flirtation with twin wingtip-mounted rotors led to some truly startling ideas, one was a vast C-130-sized transport- and at the other end of the size spectrum was the V-100, an extremely fast battlefield helicopter. As well as the unusual rotor configuration, the V-100 was to have a single pusher propeller – this, combined withs its sleek aerodynamics, was expected to imbue with it a top speed of 400 km/h (around 250 mph) – which is a whole 100 km/h faster than the AH-64 Apache (itself no slouch). Armaments considered included two 23-mm cannon or a single 30-mm, and even the huge air-to-ground Kh-25 (X-25) missile. In the end, the design was considered too risky, and never flew. Russia eventually ended up with the Ka-50/52.

8. Yakovlev Yak-43

Russia (and the Soviet Union) is often accused of stealing US aircraft concepts and technologies. In reality there has been give and take (as well as similar design solutions resulting from parallel teams working to solve similar problems).

That Lockheed bought research from Yakovlev on the STOVL propulsion system of the Yak-41 (or 141 if you prefer) is pretty notable. The Yak-41, impressive though it was, was merely a stepping stone to the formidable Yak-43 fighter. The Yak-43 would have been far faster and versatile than the Harrier, with a performance comparable to the MiG-29. The tumultuous transitional period that made the collaboration with Lockheed possible also killed the Yak-43, but its DNA lives on today in the F-35B.

7. British Aerospace P.125

Image via http://forum.keypublishing.com

The long history of British expertise in stealth technology has not been discussed a great deal. Britain pioneered radar absorbent material for aircraft, working on reduced radar observability for nuclear warheads in the early 1960s and was able to create a world class stealth testbed in the Replica model. Prior to Replica, in the 1980s, Britain was working on an aircraft concept so advanced it was classified until 2006.
The BAe P.125 study was for a stealthy supersonic attack aircraft to replace the Tornado. It was to be available in both a short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) and a conventional variant. The conventional variant would feature a central vectored nozzle, the STOVL version would have three vectoring nozzles. In some ways the P.125 was more ambitious than the F-35, the aircraft was to have no pilot transparencies,with the reclined pilot immersed in synthetic displays of the outside word.
It is likely that this formidable interdictor would have been even less visible to radar than the F-35 (though the absence of planform alignment is noteworthy). Despite its 1980s vintage many of its low observable features are reminiscent of today’s latest fighters – others such as its unorthodox wing design, are unique. The project was quietly dropped when Britain joined the JSF programme in the 1990s.

It is likely that the absence of a cockpit transparency on the P.125 was to protect the pilot from laser dazzle weapons (a weapon inaccurately feared to be in widespread use by the soviet union). Even now a synthetic cockpit is considered a daunting technological prospect, why BAe didn’t opt for an unmanned configuration remains something of a mystery.

6. Convair YB-60

In the early 1950s, the U.S. Air Force wanted a turbojet-powered heavy strategic bomber to lug atomic bombs across oceans. Convair had built the piston-engine B-36 for the Air Force and decided simply swapping out the B-36’s prop motors for jets — among other modest changes — would suffice to produce a new bomber.
The result was the YB-60, a 171-foot-long monster of a warplane sporting eight J57 turbojets. The first of two prototypes took off on its inaugural flight in April 1952. The YB-60 could fly 2,900 miles at a cruising speed of 467 miles per hour while lugging a 36 tons of bombs.
Impressive, but not as impressive as the performance of the YB-60’s most direct competitor, Boeing’s B-52. The eight-engine B-52 cruises at 525 miles per hour over a distance of 4,500 miles while carrying 35 tons of bombs.
The Air Force cancelled the YB-60s’ test program in January 1953. B-52s remain in the U.S. inventory.

5. Northrop Fang

Ed Schmued designed the North American P-51 Mustang fighter that helped the Allies win World War II. A decade later in 1952, now working for Northrop, Schmued outlined a simple, single-engine jet fighter. The N-102 Fang.
Forty-one feet long, powered by a single J79 turbojet and sporting a simple delta wing, the Fang bucked the trend toward bigger, heavier and more complex fighters. Northrop built a mockup and pitched the N-102 to the Air Force in 1953 and the Navy in 1954. Ultimately, both branches opted for bigger fighters such as the F-4, which was roughly twice the Fang’s size and boasted two J79s.
But Northrop didn’t entirely give up on the idea of a small, simple fighter. The company’s F-5 family of fighters, including the F-5A, the much-improved F-5E and variants and even the prototype F-20 all owe their design philosophy to Schmued’s N-102. F-5s remain in service all over the world.

4. Convair Model 49

In the 1960s the US Army were growing sick of dependence on inappropriate USAF aircraft for the close support mission. Aircraft like the Republic F-105 Thunderchief were simply too fast and too vulnerable to support troops on the ground effectively. Instead the US Army wanted the versatility and forward-basing possibilities of a vertical take-off platform with the ability to hover. To excel in the tough close support role the type would need to be heavily armed and armoured. This need was expressed formally as the Advanced Aerial Fire Support System or AAFSS.
Convair, a company famed for its adventurous designs, responded to the Army’s AAFSS requirement with typical ambition. Drawing on their experience with the tail-sitting XFY-1 ‘Pogo’ they proposed a two man ‘ring’ (or annular) wing ducted-fan design quite unlike anything else in service, though somewhat similar to the experimental SNECMA C.540 Coléoptère. The concept was bizarre in appearance but Convair believed it was the perfect configuration for an aircraft combining a helicopter’s unusual abilities with some of the offensive features of a military ground vehicle. One of the greatest challenges was creating a cockpit that tilted so the pilot was not facing the sky in the take-off/landing and landed support parts of its mission. This necessitated  a complex hinged forward fuselage giving the type its distinctly ‘Transformer’-like looks. More on the incredible Convair 49 here.

3. Lockheed CL-1200

In the late 1960s, Lockheed saw an opportunity. Anticipating worldwide demand for 7,500 advanced but – in the company’s own words – “reasonably-priced” jet fighters over the next decade, in 1971 it began circulating a proposal for an improved, safer “CL-1200 Lancer” version of the speedy but notoriously hard-to-fly F-104 Starfighter.
Lockheed’s Skunk Works division, with famed designer Kelly Johnson still at the head, enlarged the F-104’s wing and fin, shifted the tailplane lower in the fuselage, tweaked the engine inlet, added internal fuel capacity and replaced the F-104’s J79 engine with a TF33. The resulting CL-1200 was, in theory, more manoeuvrable and controllable than the F-104 and cost around $2 million per copy, assuming a large production run. At the time, a new F-4E cost at least $2.4 million.
Lockheed entered the CL-1200 into the U.S. military’s International Fighter Aircraft competition, which aimed to select an export warplane for America’s allies. But Northrop’s F-5E won the contest, and Lockheed scrapped the CL-1200 concept, having only ever produced a mock-up of the plane.

2. Dassault Mirage 4000

France’s Mirage 2000 has been described by many fighter pilots as the perfect flying machine. Its ferociously high performance and almost telekinetic responsiveness have left pilots of all nationalities giddy with love and respect for the ‘Electric Cake Slice’. So imagine a ‘2000 with twice the power and you have a pretty spectacular aeroplane; the 4000, which first flew in 1979 was a just such an aircraft, in the same heavyweight class as the F-15 and Su-27. The Mirage 4000 was one of the first aircraft to incorporate carbon fibre composites (to keep weight down)- and was probably the very first to feature a fin made of this advanced material. Thanks to its light structure and powerful engines it had a thrust-to-weight ratio that exceeded 1: 1 in an air-to-air load-out. On its sixth test flight it reached 50,000 feet at Mach 2 in 3 minutes 50 seconds. The 4000 would have been agile, long-ranged and able to haul an impressive arsenal. Its capacious nose could have held an advanced long-range radar. The French air force didn’t want it, Iran — another potential customer- had a revolution, and Saudi Arabia, also on the look-out for a heavy fighter, opted instead for the F-15. Despite its obvious potential, the Mirage 4000 failed to find a customer, which was an enormous kick in the nuts for Dassault, as the company had privately funded the type’s development.

1. Lockheed RB-12

In January 1961, Lockheed’s legendary aeroplane-designer Kelly Johnson delivered an unsolicited proposal to the U.S. Air Force. His idea was to take the Mach-3 A-12 spy plane – the predecessor of the iconic SR-71 Blackbird – that Kelly had designed for the CIA and modify it into a very fast strategic bomber. More or less in parallel, Johnson was working on a missile-armed F-12 fighter version of the A-12.
The Air Force liked the RB-12 Mach-3 bomber idea but counterproposed with a slightly altered design it called the RS-12. Take the A-12’s sled-like titanium airframe with its powerful J58 turbojets. Add a sophisticated, long-range radar and a nuclear-tipped air-to-ground missile based on the AIM-47 air-to-air missile that also armed the F-12.
The plan was for the RS-12 to penetrate Soviet air space at Mach 3.2 and 80,000 feet and fire a single missile from 50 miles away, striking within 50 feet of its aimpoint within a Soviet city.
The Defense Department ultimately cancelled the F-12 on cost grounds and opted not to proceed with the RS-12, as ballistic missiles were beginning to supplant manned bombers. The Air Force did ultimately acquire the SR-71 reconnaissance version of the A-12 and operated it into the 1990s.

Hush-Kit would like to thank Northrop Grumman’s Bill Sweetman and Combat Aircraft’s Thomas Newdick for their generous help in the researching of this article.

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Have a look at 10 worst British military aircraft, Su-35 versus Typhoon, 10 Best fighters of World War II , top WVR and BVR fighters of today, an interview with a Super Hornet pilot and a Pacifist’s Guide to Warplanes. Was the Spitfire overrated? Want something more bizarre? The Top Ten fictional aircraft is a fascinating read, as is The Strange Story and The Planet Satellite. The Fashion Versus Aircraft Camo is also a real cracker. Those interested in the Cold Way should read A pilot’s guide to flying and fighting in the Lightning. Those feeling less belligerent may enjoy A pilot’s farewell to the Airbus A340. Looking for something more humorous? Have a look at this F-35 satire and ‘Werner Herzog’s Guide to pusher bi-planes or the Ten most boring aircraft. In the mood for something more offensive? Try the NSFW 10 best looking American airplanes, or the same but for Canadians. 

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Have a look at 10 worst British military aircraft, Su-35 versus Typhoon, 10 Best fighters of World War II , top WVR and BVR fighters of today, an interview with a Super Hornet pilot and a Pacifist’s Guide to Warplanes. Was the Spitfire overrated? Want something more bizarre? The Top Ten fictional aircraft is a fascinating read, as is The Strange Story and The Planet Satellite. The Fashion Versus Aircraft Camo is also a real cracker. Those interested in the Cold Way should read A pilot’s guide to flying and fighting in the Lightning. Those feeling less belligerent may enjoy A pilot’s farewell to the Airbus A340. Looking for something more humorous? Have a look at this F-35 satire and ‘Werner Herzog’s Guide to pusher bi-planes or the Ten most boring aircraft. In the mood for something more offensive? Try the NSFW 10 best looking American airplanes, or the same but for Canadians. 

As someone born in the early 1950s, I find it thrilling to live in this future, which mostly exceeds the imagination of the Sci-Fi writers I read in my youth. Some aspects of the present seem designed to make it an unprecedentedly golden time to be old – as my memory fails, I have access to all the knowledge of the ages in a small gadget in my pocket – and suddenly the skills that time is taking away from me – the memory for names and other specifics, of where I was last Thursday, of how to cook meringues….seem obsolete, unfashionable. As my outward body decays, it seems less important to have one. Virtual Reality can give me experiences that are now too taxing for my physical body. Something as simple as a bus app can vastly improve my quality of life and, combined with the ubiquity and cheapness of Uber, has made getting from one place to another relatively quick and easy…but…where are the personal transportation miracles I was promised? Where is the jet-pack I need to get me from one place to another as quick as thought? To fulfil the promise of personal flight vouchsafed to me in my dreams? To let me bound across the miles as though weightless?

Things seemed so promising when I was a small child.

In 1955, Stanley Hiller presented the Hiller VZ-1 Flying Platform (the VZ-1E is pictured above), which included two Nelson H-59 engines, a fan, and two large propellers.

In 1958, Thiokol Chemical Corporation marketed a jump belt, a strap-on rocket fuelled by nitrogen tanks, not for the purpose of flying, but to enhance athletes’ ability.

In 1960, Wendell F. Moore of Bell Aerosystems developed the SRLD, the Small Rocket Lift Device. This used pressurized hydrogen peroxide as a fuel, processed through a decomposition catalyst to instantly expand into superheated steam, producing a few hundred pounds of thrust at the exhaust nozzles, which the pilot could control by means of hand grips. Unfortunately, the weight of the fuel required meant that it could only fly for about 20 seconds. Bell rocket belts turn up in movies and on television: Lost in Space, Gilligan’s Island, and memorably in the 1965 James Bond film Thunderball. But at this point, iron entered the soul – the inescapable mathematics of the limitations of flight time due to the weight of the fuel made the whole project a dead end for the aerospace companies, and subsequent developments have come from amateur inventors or small independent companies.

True, in 1994, NASA introduced the SAFER (Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue) a propulsive backpack for use in space when astronauts come untethered during space walks. But a jetpack that works in conditions of weightlessness gets me no closer to a personal jetpack that will take the weight off my arthritic knees.

In 2006 Swiss pilot Yves Rossy developed a kerosene burning pack with wings. This succeeded in crossing the Swiss Alps and the English Channel. But this was a suit comprising 4 jet engines rather than, strictly, a jet pack. It flew at 200 mph and was controlled by shifting his body.

In 2012, Jetlev developed a $99,500 jetpack that can launch people up to 30 feet high using water as a propellant. But the rider  of this device has to be tethered by a hose to a boat. It looks a lot of fun, but has no exciting practical applications.

Jetpack International tantalizingly offer two models of jetpack on their website

But they fly for a maximum of 33 seconds, and the release date is TBA

Thunderbolt Aerosystems’ model  is marked not for sale.

It looks like my best hope is the Martin Jetpack,  made by a New Zealand firm and inviting returnable deposits for packs which they claim will be available in 2017. It is pretty bulky, with a V-4 gas engine and two ducted fans, and looks more like a small personal aircraft than the backpack of my fantasies. It is certainly too large to be stowed in my hallway with the bicycles, and the videos online make me doubt whether it can by moved by one person – the engine alone weighs 60kg. But it claims to fly for 30 minutes – a great improvement on previous models. To quote their website, “The price has not been set yet while the jetpack is still in development. The Martin Aircraft Company is targeting a sales price of under US$150,000 for the recreational version of the aircraft but this may take some years to achieve.”

Maybe I’ll just keep saving for that trip with Virgin Galactic.

Ruth Lingford is Senior Lecturer in Animation in the Dept of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University 

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Have a look at 10 worst British military aircraft, Su-35 versus Typhoon, 10 Best fighters of World War II , top WVR and BVR fighters of today, an interview with a Super Hornet pilot and a Pacifist’s Guide to Warplanes. Was the Spitfire overrated? Want something more bizarre? The Top Ten fictional aircraft is a fascinating read, as is The Strange Story and The Planet Satellite. The Fashion Versus Aircraft Camo is also a real cracker. Those interested in the Cold Way should read A pilot’s guide to flying and fighting in the Lightning. Those feeling less belligerent may enjoy A pilot’s farewell to the Airbus A340. Looking for something more humorous? Have a look at this F-35 satire and ‘Werner Herzog’s Guide to pusher bi-planes or the Ten most boring aircraft. In the mood for something more offensive? Try the NSFW 10 best looking American airplanes, or the same but for Canadians. 

1946 was the zenith of piston-engined fighters. The bloody lessons learnt from the hundreds of thousands of dogfights fought in the War had been carefully noted by designers. This knowledge had been distilled into the creation of a generation of aeroplanes wildly superior to their peers from the recent past, but these perfected killing machines faced fierce competition from immature upstarts with an unfair advantage: the first generation of fighter jets. To make this list, aircraft had to have been in operational service during the year in 1946 – hence no Sea Fury, La-9, Twin Mustang or MiG-9 (likewise, also no Me 262 or Ki-84 for example). 

The order is somewhat arbitrary and cases could be made for aircraft that didn’t make the grade such as the Tigercat and Spitfire F Mk.22. Reality doesn’t confirm to the ‘top ten’ format – and war is not a sport with a league table. This list of ten supremely capable aircraft should however form a good basis for a discussion on the relative merits of ten extremely exciting machines at the cutting edge of mid-20th century technology. 

10. Vought F4U-4 Corsair ‘The Ensign Eliminator’

The Vought F4U represented a big improvement in performance over the previous generation of carrier fighters, even though it took a great deal of work to make it suitable for carrier operations. The F4U-4 variant saw active service in the last four months of the Pacific war. It benefited from a R-2800-18W engine which could produce 2,400hp with water-injection, and a four-bladed propeller as well as numerous detail improvements over the F4U-1. As a result, it could reach speeds of 446mph at 25,000ft while retaining its predecessor’s impressive manoeuvrability. By 1946, the engine had been upgraded to a R-2800-42W offering 2,760hp, and top speed pushed up to 451mph. Though it had impressive performance, and better range than the Grumman F8F, the F4U-4 was always marginal as a carrier aircraft, with an unpredictable stall in the landing condition, and on top of that NACA determined that it had a few unsavoury control characteristics. Nevertheless it deserves its place as one of the most effective carrier fighters in service in 1946.

9. Yakovlev Yak-3(VK-107) ‘Pебенок буре’

Much like Britain’s Tempest II, the Yak-3(VK-107 – there was no specific designation to denote the engine change) was the result of a long process of wartime refinement of a basically sound design, being the final production variant of a highly conventional fighter that had first flown in April 1940. The diminutive Yak possessed beautiful handling from the start but was hampered by its relative lack of power and pathetic armament. By the end of 1945, the Yak-3(VK-107) had addressed both these problems. Engine power, whilst still modest by the standards of other nations, was up by about 500 horsepower whilst the structural weight had been reduced by some 2000lb, mostly by replacing wooden components with metal. Armament was provided by three nose mounted 20-mm cannon offering a heavy concentration of fire without any of the detrimental aspects of wing-mounted weapons. The result was spectacular- a small, well-armed, manoeuvrable aircraft whose loaded weight was less than half that of a Tempest V yet was 10mph faster at 17,000ft. The authorities were delighted: ‘the experimental Yak-3 powered by the VK-107A engine and designed by Comrade Yakovlev appears to offer the best performance of all indigenous and known foreign fighters, being superior in horizontal speed, rate of climb and manoeuvrability‘ gushed the official report. The Yak was not faultless, its ceiling was low, its basic equipment primitive and its range was not exactly in the P-51 class but it was an outstanding fighter aeroplane at low to medium heights and, importantly, was straightforward to produce quickly in massive numbers.

(The Yak-3U that I was referring to derives from the Russian usilennyy which means ‘strengthened’ and is actually: усиленный. It would appear that the designation may be retrospective.)

8. Republic P-47N Thunderbolt ‘$83,000 Jugs’

In 1944 the ‘hot rod’ P-47M appeared, designed specifically for chasing V-1s, which mounted the latest R-2800-57 Double Wasp engine with an incredible war emergency rating of 2800hp. Meanwhile in the Pacific there was need for a very long-ranged aircraft to escort B-29s. Republic were keen to regain the escort mission that the upstart Mustang with its longer range had taken from them and the P-47N was the result. It combined the new engine with a larger wing designed to deal with the truly massive fuel load of 1226 US gallons (to put that into context the Spitfire XIV, when fitted with the largest available droptank, carried 308 US gallons), and featuring square cut tips to improve rate of roll. From the outset the P-47N was designed with provision for a 2500-lb bombload to fulfil the fighter-bomber role. The P-51H was faster but the P-47N outranged it and was more versatile. It was, apparently, a more comfortable aircraft to fly than the Mustang, was a better gun platform and had the edge on the P-51 in some manoeuvres. However, in 1945 a P-47 cost $83,000 compared to $51,000 for a P-51. The P-47N may have been superior to the P-51H in several respects but it wasn’t $32,000 better. Having said that 1816 were built and the P-47N is one of only two aircraft on this list to have seen meaningful service during the Second World War. Oscar Perdomo, the USAAF’s last ‘ace’ of the conflict scored all his victories on the type two days before the war ended.

7. Grumman F8F-1 Bearcat ‘The Bastard Bear’

In 1942, Grumman had markedly improved on its earlier F4F Wildcat with the F6F Hellcat. The new aircraft did much to turn the tide of war in the Pacific, but was significantly bigger and heavier than its predecessor. Rather than continue this trend, Grumman set about designing a follow-up to the F6F that would be as small and light as the Pratt & Whitney R2800-34 engine would allow, and they achieved a power-loading of 3.5 lb/hp (compared with 5.5 for a P-51). This would allow even better raw performance, particularly rate of climb and short take-off. Like the P-51H the F8F had reached squadrons in 1945 but did not see frontline service before the end of the war. Shortly after the Second World War, the US Navy evaluated the P-51H as a possible carrier fighter, and instigated a mock carrier launch and dogfight between the two aircraft. Legend has it that the F8F had taken off, circled tightly and ‘strafed’ the Mustang before the latter had left the ground. The F8F-1 in service in 1946 was capable of 424mph, remarkable agility and a climb-rate that gave allegedly it the record from brake release to 10,000ft until the ‘century series’ came along. Unlike the Corsair, the Bearcat’s visibility for deck-landing was superb, and it flew ‘as if on rails’, making it practical as well as a hot rod. An innovative ‘failsafe’ wing-fold was incorporated, where the outer panels were supposed to snap off if the G-limit was exceeded, leaving the pilot with enough aerodynamic surface to get home. Unfortunately, though, this failed to work as advertised, leaving the Bearcat unable to fully exploit its impressive manoeuvrability in service. Even then, it could sustain a 7G turn without trouble due to the engine’s high power.

6. Hawker Tempest Mk.II  ‘Sundown over Empire’

The best British fighter in the last months of the Second World War was the Hawker Tempest Mk.V, which matched high speed with heavy armament and surprising agility for such a large aircraft. Combat reports from late 1944 and 1945 give little doubt that the Tempest Mk.V generally made short work of the Fw 190s and Me 109s it encountered over Holland and Germany, at the low and medium altitudes where most air combat took place at that time. The Mk.II (its lower mark number reflecting the fact that designations were issued according to engine fit during the type’s development rather than a progressive development) replaced the Mk.V’s complex and sometimes temperamental Napier Sabre H-24 engine with a reliable 18-cylinder Bristol Centaurus radial. The change of engine resulted in an improvement in the already impressive performance, being up to 20 mph faster than the Mk.V at all altitudes (top speed was just shy of 450mph at 12,000ft, and did not begin to fall away seriously until 20,000ft) with a better rate of climb, while leaving the handling unaltered. Acceleration was astonishing – the Tempest Mk.II could pull out an initial lead on a P-47D even at high altitudes, despite turbo-equipped Thunderbolt having a higher top speed. At low levels, the Tempest was a barely-believable 80mph faster than the P-47. At altitudes up to 20,000ft, not many fighters could live with the Tempest Mk.II in 1946, while it also made an effective ground-attack aircraft. It served with the RAF in Germany and India until 1951, and with the Indian Air Force.

5. de Havilland Hornet F Mk.I ‘The Spiffing Super Hornet’

Designed for a Pacific island-hopping campaign that was over before it entered service, the Hornet was the finest twin piston-engined fighter ever to see service, boasting superlative range, speed, firepower and handling. ‘Handed’ (the left propeller turning the opposite direction from the right one) engines and airscrews removed the torque that plagued the highest powered piston-engined aircraft and, unburdened by the colossal nose-mounted motor of single-engined fighters, the Hornet pilot enjoyed an exceptional view forwards and downwards from his bubble canopy in the extreme nose. Armament was the standard and effective British fit of four 20-mm Hispano cannon mounted below the pilot. With 4000hp available the performance in the vertical plane was described as ‘rocket-like’ and ‘even with one propeller feathered the Hornet could loop with the best single-engine fighter’. As the fastest ever operational piston-engined British warplane, the Hornet supplied performance that was only marginally inferior to the Meteor and Vampire and combined it with an endurance the thirsty jets could not match. The late-model Merlins that powered the Hornet were highly developed, reliable engines at the end of a decade long process of refinement and improvement and still had advantages over the first turbojets. Not least was their ability to rapidly increase engine speed, useful for a fighter but essential for a carrier aircraft, which the Hornet was being developed into during 1946. In the words of Eric Brown, who flew all but one of the aircraft on this list and conducted the carrier qualification trials of the Sea Hornet, it was ‘a truly outstanding warplane… ranks second to none for harmony of control, performance characteristics and, perhaps most important, in inspiring confidence in the pilot. For sheer exhilarating flying enjoyment, no aircraft has ever made a deeper impression on me‘.

4. North American P-51H Mustang ‘Mustang Harry‘

The North American P-51 was one of the outstanding fighters of the Second World War, and one of the few to have a genuinely strategic impact due to its ability to escort bombers all the way to Berlin. Surprisingly, Edgar Schmued and the design team at North American believed their superb aircraft could be improved upon significantly. Although the P-51B-D models comfortably outpaced and outranged the Spitfire Mk.IX, despite using a similar powerplant, the Mustang was significantly heavier, compromising its rate of climb and potentially holding back even better performance. Schmued asked for a complete weight breakdown of the Spitfire, searching for any areas where the Mustang could be lightened, and using lower British load factors. In addition, the aerodynamics were completely revised, to create a series of prototype ‘lightweights’ that knocked on the door of the magic 500mph. The production version was designated the P-51H, and featured a lighter structure, new wing planform and aerofoil. It improved on the P-51D in every respect, being capable of over 480mph at 25,000ft, with an impressive climb rate and manoeuvrability to boot, and was more forgiving to fly than the earlier models. The ‘H’ just missed the war in frontline service (despite some erroneous suggestions that a few made it to the Far East by VJ Day) though the first squadrons were formed in mid-1945. It could certainly give any contemporary jets a run for their money.

3. Gloster Meteor F Mk.3 ‘A-10 before drug use’

Britain’s first jet fighter still looked like pretty hot stuff in 1946, the staggering leap in capability of Soviet and American jets had yet to occur and Britain appeared to lead the world in the brave new world of jet aircraft. In its Mk 3 version the Meteor utilised the Derwent engine, a marked improvement over the Welland with which the Mk I was (under)powered. The considerably superior Mk.4 had flown in 1944 but would only enter service in 1947 and in the meantime the RAF made do with the still highly capable Mk.3. The Meteor’s great advantage was, of course, its speed. Manoeuvrability was not brilliant in the lateral plane, the ailerons (and the pilot’s arm) had a lot of work to do to overcome the inertia of two Derwents hanging halfway out on those huge wings and rate of roll was pedestrian, but the Meteor could use its obvious speed advantage to engage or disengage any other aircraft at will and four 20-mm cannon in the nose was considered ‘the ideal’ in 1946. In contrast to its state-of-the-art engines the airframe was, in comparison to the Me 262 for example, extremely conservative and blessed with truly massive dimensions. This would ultimately prove to be an advantage as the Meteor was able to absorb requirements for a second crewman, radar, more fuel, better engines, disposable stores and so on with ease. Unfortunately by the time it got engines of really decent thrust the MiG-15 had rendered it an anachronism as an air-superiority fighter, as RAAF experience in Korea would bear out, but in 1946 this was all in the future and the big Meteor could bask in turbojet glory in a piston-powered world.

2. Lockheed P-80A Shooting Star ‘Kelly’s Tip-Tanker’

While the definitive Shooting Star, the F-80C, didn’t arrive until 1948, the P-80A in squadron service in 1946 was formidable by the standards of its time. The speedily designed jet had gone from drawing board to flight in a period only a few weeks longer than that of the North American Mustang, despite the many unknowns associated with jet power and the transonic region of flight. Unlike the first US stab at a jet fighter, the ponderous Bell P-59, the P-80 was right almost from the off. The 1946-standard P-80A had a top speed in tests of 536 mph at 25,000ft, and could top 500mph at a range of altitudes, even with tip tanks fitted, remaining controllable up to Mach 0.82. The Air Force’s Flight Test Division considered that the P-80A was ‘superior in manoeuvrability in most respects, especially at high speeds’, and that ‘a high rate of roll is possible at all speeds, and precision aerobatics can be accomplished with ease’. Furthermore, the Shooting Star had ‘the most excellent lateral manoeuvring characteristics of any fighter of today’ thanks to its powered ailerons. Moreover, visibility was superb thanks to a forward-placed bubble canopy and slim nose. The P-80A wasn’t perfect as a fighter – at certain heights, it suffered from longitudinal instability that compromised its utility as a gun-platform and could be irritating for the pilot. But by 1946 standards, the P-80A was up there with the very best.

1 .de Havilland Vampire F Mk.I ‘The ferocious Spidercrab’

Despite its partially wooden construction and cuddly appearance the Vampire was a force to be reckoned with in 1946. In terms of speed, climb and range the Vampire and Lockheed’s P-80A (its only serious rival) were virtually identical. In terms of armament the quartet of 20-mm cannon was rather more potent than the Shooting Star’s increasingly irrelevant .50 cal machine guns but it was in agility that the Vampire really shone. When both were at their normal loaded weight the Vampire was a ton and a half lighter than the Lockheed and could outmanoeuvre it with ease. Indeed the Vampire was so agile that it could best a Spitfire Mk XIV, itself a fighter noted for its excellent manoeuvrability, in every respect (except rate of roll) whilst at the same time being considerably faster at all altitudes. Given pilots of roughly equal ability the Vampire could never be beaten by the Spitfire. Had the Vampire been in action sooner it would have been a serious problem for the Me 262, combining sufficient performance to match the German jet with both engine reliability that the Luftwaffe could only have dreamed of, and a manoeuvrability the 262 could not rival, all the while being a much smaller target than the Messerschmitt. The key to this sparkling agility was the Vampire’s relatively enormous wing for its dainty weight which also, helpfully, blessed the Vampire with brilliant high altitude abilities – as late as 1949 the USAF’s massive B-36 was deemed to be immune from attack at its operating altitude by the vaunted F-86 Sabre or any other known fighter – except the de Havilland Vampire, which set a new world altitude record of 59.446 ft that very year. Inexplicably, though perhaps inevitably, given that in the Vampire the RAF had the world’s preeminent air-superiority fighter and in the larger Meteor an ideal jet powered fighter-bomber, it was the Vampire that was developed for the ground attack role and the Meteor for air defence. Despite the world-beating performance the Vampire was relatively simple and cheap, ultimately serving with 32 air forces, more than any other British post-war aircraft.

Want to see more stories like this: Follow my vapour trail on Twitter: @Hush_kit

The best fighters of 1946 were selected by: 

Matthew Willis writes about naval and other kinds of aviation. His runs the Naval Air History website and can be found at @navalairhistory on Twitter. His book on the Fairey Flycatcher, one of the top ten British naval fighters of 1926, is available soon from MMP Books. 

 Ed Ward is the co-writer of the new musical ‘Every Day is Like Skyray’, a celebration of the life and work of Ed Heinemann featuring the songs of Morrissey. He is also a freelance illustrator

Joe Coles is the Editor and creator of Hush-Kit

The basic running of the Hush-Kit blog (which makes no profit) costs money. Help us carry on – without adverts. If you’ve enjoyed an article you can donate here or here .Thank you lovely reader! 

Have a look at 10 worst British military aircraft, Su-35 versus Typhoon, 10 Best fighters of World War II , top WVR and BVR fighters of today, an interview with a Super Hornet pilot and a Pacifist’s Guide to Warplanes. Was the Spitfire overrated? Want something more bizarre? The Top Ten fictional aircraft is a fascinating read, as is The Strange Story and The Planet Satellite. The Fashion Versus Aircraft Camo is also a real cracker. Those interested in the Cold Way should read A pilot’s guide to flying and fighting in the Lightning. Those feeling less belligerent may enjoy A pilot’s farewell to the Airbus A340. Looking for something more humorous? Have a look at this F-35 satire and ‘Werner Herzog’s Guide to pusher bi-planes or the Ten most boring aircraft. In the mood for something more offensive? Try the NSFW 10 best looking American airplanes, or the same but for Canadians. 

In a move long anticipated by industry insiders, Indian’s Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar announced today that Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) will produce a radically modernised version of the 1950s-vintage Hawker Hunter jet fighter.

The original Hunter, a British design, first flew in 1951 and was widely exported. It proved popular with the Indian Air Force, which ordered the type in 1954. The Hunter’s proven airframe will provide a low-risk basis for the new design, the name of which will be ‘Langoor’ in air force service. The Langoor is intended to solve India’s fighter shortage with the minimum of cost and risk, while embracing the national ‘Make in India‘ initiative to develop indigenous weapon systems and technologies. The Swedish aero-company Saab, with its proven track record, will be the partner nation for the Langoor’s testing phase. Lessons learned from the painfully slow Tejas programme, and the mired MMRCA fighter acquirement will inform the project which is intended to emphasise modest and realisable goals. According to Parrikar, the type will enter service in 2022 and will offer reliability alongside operating costs 25% that of the Sukhoi Su-30, with a unit cost at least 70% lower than that of Tejas. The design will prioritise long range and ‘rugged’ reliability over high performance, and will feature proven systems to ensure a high level of combat effectiveness. Parrikar noted that “Mach 1.5+ performance is not necessary for the vast majority of combat missions, yet this requirement has until now dominated our search for future fighters. The use of heavily networked slower assets within a force that includes faster aircraft, like the Su-30, will prove more effective, far cheaper and will give the Indian Air Force what it most needs: larger, safer and more reliable forces. Langoor will be a game-changer.”

The Langoor will differ from the Hunter in many respects-

• The original engine Rolls-Royce Avon will be replaced by the Eurojet EJ200
• Sensors will include the Swedish PS-05/A radar
• New lightweight helmet cueing system
• Internal armament of one GSh-23-mm cannon
• New wing to be designed with BAE Systems
• Glass cockpit
• Weapons to include R-73 short range air-to-air missiles

India is expected to order between 250-400 aircraft. Most of the design work has been completed and a prototype is expected to fly in 2019, with service entry scheduled for 2022.

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Have a look at 10 worst British military aircraft, Su-35 versus Typhoon, 10 Best fighters of World War II , top WVR and BVR fighters of today, an interview with a Super Hornet pilot and a Pacifist’s Guide to Warplanes. Was the Spitfire overrated? Want something more bizarre? The Top Ten fictional aircraft is a fascinating read, as is The Strange Story and The Planet Satellite. The Fashion Versus Aircraft Camo is also a real cracker. Those interested in the Cold Way should read A pilot’s guide to flying and fighting in the Lightning. Those feeling less belligerent may enjoy A pilot’s farewell to the Airbus A340. Looking for something more humorous? Have a look at this F-35 satire and ‘Werner Herzog’s Guide to pusher bi-planes or the Ten most boring aircraft. In the mood for something more offensive? Try the NSFW 10 best looking American airplanes, or the same but for Canadians.

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“Everybody
Bermuda Triangle
It makes people disappear
Bermuda Triangle
Don’t go too near
But look
At it from my angle
And you’ll see why I’m so glad
Now Bermuda Triangle
Not so bad!”

— Barry Manilow, Bermuda Triangle

An area of the Atlantic Ocean off Florida is home to unexplained forces that regularly cause aircraft (and ships) to disappear in very large numbers.  Emergency radio calls are never made from the lost machines and no trace of them, or those aboard, is ever found. Hush-Kit dispatched Canadian car lot attendant Stephen Caulfield to get to the bottom of this alarming mystery. 

The Bermuda Triangle was one of the major conspiracy theories of the era between the end of the Second World War and the invention of the Internet. This mystery was right up there with Kennedy assassination theories, Bigfoot and Jack the Ripper. It was featured in every one of those lurid books of the ‘unexplained’ beloved by children and idiots in the 1960s onwards. (‘Conspiracy’, as a prefix for ‘theory’, should not be used as a synonym for delusional: many fringe ideas turn out to be true – in the early 20th century the idea that the Mafia was an extremely powerful organisation was dismissed by most respectable people and authorities as hogwash)

This patch of the Atlantic Ocean would occupy the popular culture throne of bullshit until the attacks of 9-11 on the Pentagon and World Trade Center altered the fundamental scale and nature of conspiracy theory.

Loose lips

A large cargo ship the SS Cyclops, under contract to the United States Navy, disappears in 1918 along with the 306 people aboard. Other vessels follow.  A flight of five Grumman TBM-1C Avenger torpedo bombers disappears in December 1945 while on a training mission from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  Ditto the large seaplane sent to look for them.  Light aircraft, airliners, military jets – all have disappeared there by the dozens, hundreds, thousands.

Were Communist forces (perhaps based in Cuba) behind the losses? Aliens or hidden civilizations with advanced technologies were also earned blame for the long string of disappearances which began to occur in numbers around the time of World War I and appeared to peak in the 1970s.  It scared people.

Swiss cuckoo

 A German named Erick von Däniken was also hovering near the top of a cockeyed pyramid of writers and “researchers” popularising a plethora of whacked-out ideas about the world back then.  Maybe he was Dutch, though.  Sometimes you can’t tell. (Note from Editor: you can’t put “researchers” in quotation marks while not even Googling facts — he is Swiss, he’s also alive so his lawyers can contact you directly, Stephen)

Von Däniken and his ilk had ideas about aliens mating with monkeys, resulting in advanced civilisations which had then either fallen under the oceans or deep into the Earth’s molten core (the civilisations that is, not just the horny monkeys).  This, right after building the pyramids and scraping out the Nazca lines of Peru so that flying saucers could come back and get them.  They also dumped odd sculptures, monumental buildings and even jewellery shaped like delta-winged jets all over the ancient world.  

Deathrays. bestsellers and horseshit
Missing aircraft were being death-rayed clean out of the sky by these powerful entities and hidden societies keen on their Atlantean privacy.  Von Däniken sold sixty-three million copies of his string of occulty-ey alternative history books – with nary a chat room in sight.  Via some twenty million copies of a single book on the subject, travel guru Charles Berlitz and his magnum opus of horseshit The Bermuda Triangle made the titular area a household name in the 1970s. Before the Internet, you really had to work it to participate in conspiracy theories. You couldn’t just load up on skunk, and post to an online forum or retweet some creepy shit on Twitter.  No, you had to watch TV documentaries and go to matinees at theatres in dying second rate shopping plazas.  You had to borrow seven or more yellowed paperbacks from that crazy dude at the pub.  You read tabloid newspaper articles in the papers that got left in the cafeteria at the plant you worked nights in when you first got back from Vietnam.  It wasn’t as easy as now. 

All this fervent activity fed content producers like Von Däniken and Berlitz whose mark can still be discerned in the popular culture.  Some of this rubbish has made it onto the Internet, much of it is forgotten.

Aurora and chemtrails investigated by  former MoD expert here.

The Myth of the Widowmaking F-104 here

It wasn’t all bad.  For example, Flight 19, the Avengers mentioned earlier, or at least a representation thereof, made it to the back cover of a Talking Heads album.  Two other British musicians dedicated songs to Flight 19, the best-known single aerial disappearance into THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE.  Both latter efforts are only remembered on Wikipedia. 

Flight 19’s five Avenger crews probably did what many a rookie formation might do, fly a reciprocal course by mistake or fail to identify the Bahamas. This probably led them to run out of gas and crash as darkness was falling and in the panic totally fuck up on established radio procedure for emergency ditching.  The Atlantic off Florida is practically carpeted with World War II aircraft wrecks.  All lost nowhere near an enemy.

This particular photo (main image at the top) has adorned pulpy book covers and accompanied tabloid newspaper articles or trashy magazine features over and over for decades.  Usually on the anniversary of the disappearance of Flight 19 it is used to introduce some new vanishing, to restate that the myth has not been disproven by any particular authority and that “something” was basically devouring aluminium and people out there south of Bermuda, east of Florida and north of Puerto Rico.  These black and white Grumman TBM Avengers became one of the inescapable images of the mid-to-lower-end of popular culture in English-speaking countries in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

Mostly, THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE appears to have had balanced, if middle-of-the- road, taste in aircraft.  These types were swallowed up by it:

Grumman TBM Avenger
Martin PBM Mariner
Douglas C-54
Douglas DC-3
Junkers Ju-87 Stuka (navalized Kriegsmarine version)
Avro Tudor IV
Lockheed Super Constellation
Lockheed C-130
Avia BH-7A
McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II
Hansa-Brandenburg W.29
Boeing B-29
Boeing KB-50
Boeing 737
Grumman F9F Cougar Jet
Britten Norman Trislander (some accounts indicate “Islander”)
Piper PA-23 Navajo
Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-15 (Nato reporting name “Fagot”)
Dassault Falcon 900LX
and that one “a private Cessna”

Conclusion: THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE is weapons grade junk mythology bordering on pseudoscience.  Or it would be if there was any science to attach the prefix pseudo to. 

It’s bullshit.

Why?

Methane.  Vast pockets of it release from the seabed on an irregular basis.  These unpredictable emissions blow out the buoyancy of even the largest ships causing them to smash instantly onto the seabed.  As the rising methane enters the atmosphere it causes aircraft to stall violently after bursting into flame because their engines have ignited it. (Note from Editor: Methane has been shown to sink ships, but I’m not sure if tests have been conducted for aircraft, nor how it could affect aircraft that are not at extremely low altitude. Note this gas comes from undersea craters. Interesting article here– also no aircraft losses related to biggest recorded methane release here). 

Geophysics kids.  No aliens, secret Nazi redoubts, no paleocontact with ancient astronauts.  No Cuban death rays made in the CCCP are involved.  Flying reptiles?  Crystal pyramids.  Nope.  None of that nonsense.  The Avengers were not found in the desert somewhere and their crews repatriated alive by peaceful aliens, either.  That only happened in the 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

As it turns out, methane has come to be identified as a primary agent of anthropocentric climate change.  Methane releases are considered extra-deadly drivers of what looks set to destroy humanity.  Perhaps THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE was some kind of dim, twilight lit premonition of our own extinction at the hands of an atmosphere we altered and which all our science, engineering and industry turns out to be as useless against as our poetic spirit does?

More importantly the Bermuda Triangle is very big, according to John Reilly, a historian at the U.S. Naval Historical Foundation (speaking to the National Geographic)- ”The region is highly traveled and has been a busy crossroads since the early days of European exploration….To say quite a few ships and airplanes have gone down there is like saying there are an awful lot of car accidents on the New Jersey Turnpike — surprise, surprise.” For years no ‘control area’ – a similarly big and busy areas of sea- was compared  to the Bermuda Triangle –when it was the numbers were similar.

There’s also the small matter that some of the accounts of missing aircraft and vessels were just made up by writers. Those wishing to procrastinate from sorting out bills or putting out the recycling can easily spend a happy hour cross-checking the popular reports against official records.

Aurora and chemtrails investigated by  former MoD expert here.

The Myth of the Widowmaking F-104 here

Stephen Caulfield used to work around the corner from the old Avro plant near Toronto, Ontario, Canada (the one they didn’t bother building the CF-105 Arrow in).  He toils closer to home now, at a car dealership in a sprawl called Mississauga.  The brand his employer sells includes a sporty model named after the Mustang fighter.  He has a serious blog called suburban-poverty.com.  Follow his chemtrails on Twitter.

Want to see more stories like this: Follow my vapour trail on Twitter: @Hush_kit

Have a look at 10 worst British military aircraft, Su-35 versus Typhoon, 10 Best fighters of World War II , top WVR and BVR fighters of today, an interview with a Super Hornet pilot and a Pacifist’s Guide to Warplanes. Was the Spitfire overrated? Want something more bizarre? The Top Ten fictional aircraft is a fascinating read, as is The Strange Story and The Planet Satellite. The Fashion Versus Aircraft Camo is also a real cracker. Those interested in the Cold Way should read A pilot’s guide to flying and fighting in the Lightning. Those feeling less belligerent may enjoy A pilot’s farewell to the Airbus A340. Looking for something more humorous? Have a look at this F-35 satire and ‘Werner Herzog’s Guide to pusher bi-planes or the Ten most boring aircraft. In the mood for something more offensive? Try the NSFW 10 best looking American airplanes, or the same but for Canadians. 

At least there is a model kit.  You could buy five of them and hang them up in your washroom.  It would be funny if it weren’t for the terrible lightning illustrated on the front cover- oh, and the ghoulish horror of it all.