What are your five favourite aircraft in history?

[chkyr6]

P51 Mustang
F4 Phantom
F14 Tomcat
F111 Ardvark
B1B Lancer

[HaveBlue]

My top 3 haven't changed since I was a kid....

F-14
SR-71
XB-70

To add another 2, probably the Su-37 and F-4 Phantom.

[HaveBlue]

I'll elaborate...

The F-14 has always held a mystical, sexy appeal to me.. swing wings, everything angled (unlike the F-15 the vert stabs, engine inlets are not set at 90 degrees), and especially when they had the canards before they stopped using them...

The SR-71.. you know what our cars looked like back then? And there in the early 60's was this futuristic Mach 3+ god of the skies! To this day an air breathing manned aircraft has yet to best it.

The XB-70... like a Concorde on steroids... a 6 engined, twin tailed, folding wing ride its own shock wave DC-10 weighted goliath that could 'supercruise' at Mach 3+ and 70,000' way before we could get a fighter to do such. Simply gorgeous and a shame there's only one left, which I've sat under and had lunch btw.

The Su-37... I never had a Russian plane in my favorites til this beast, but holy crap what an amazing and dynamic machine! Take a regular Flanker and add thrust vectoring and canards and the thing just looks mean!

The venerable F-4 Phantom, nothing more needs to be said. Love it.

[Webmaster]

Welcome! No argument there, like you explained, each one has something. F-14 is one of the sexiest swing-wings, I think it's the way the engines are spaced out (like on the Flanker/MiG-29) and the resulting huge surface (lifting body) that make planes like these so great, for the F-14 add the swing wing and wow. SR-71 still looking futuristic today. XB-70... did your lunch taste better? Su-37... well they took a Su-27M, with already the canards, but also bigger wings and tails, they also help a lot to make it look more amazing than a regular Flanker. Just take a look at some Su-27M pictures, wow. Unfortunately that's what missing on the Su-30MK, they may have the tails, or canards and TVC, but not the big bigger wings, furthermore the new Su-35 totally ditched the Su-27M design features, making it look more like a regular Flanker. Just sad, we'll never see a "true" 711-style Su-37 setup again One thing against it... the TVC was only 2D, not 3D like they have nowadays. The F-4, indeed.

F-14s and F-4s are still high on people's lists, even with almost all of them gone.

[HaveBlue]

Thank you Webmaster! As for the lunch, you know it did! Would have liked to seen it back when they had it outside, much better for pictures and to get an overall view of the plane... which was tough to do when its sandwiched in between so many others... but for posterities sake I'm glad its inside and more importantly that at least one example survived.

I like the Su-30MKI's too, I like all the Flanker variants but canards and TVC tops it off. And I agree though I'm not surprised that the F-14 and 4 make most peoples list... much like Corsairs and Mustangs and Warhawks of WWII... some aircraft are just bound to be the most popular. Regardless of the F-15's amazing capabilities and air dominance, it never seems to make peoples list as much as its contemporary the Tomcat. Speaking of which, I have tried to get photos from the net of them 2 planes together in flight... think I've managed one so far and that was one each escorting a Bear. Very elusive photo to find of them together in flight.. unlike the 16/18.

[Webmaster]

Yeah figures, it was before the web "happened", not to mention digital cameras which help a lot of getting mixed formations to get online. If you mean air force F-4s... well, F-18/F-16 might be easy, but try Super Hornet and F-16... my point is there wasn't really a reason for a carrier group defender to buddy up with airforce strikers... right. USN F-4s, well it was replaced by the F-14, so there was only a brief period where they are operated alongside eachother. I guess there must be mixed formation from that time.

Anyway, a few exceptions to the rule: VX-4 and IIAF/IRIAF, see below. There must be plenty more of these floating around.

[shawn a]

Want a mixed formation?
Get thee to Edwards.

[HaveBlue]

Webmaster I meant it was almost impossible to get photos of the F-14 & F-15 together in flight... the one I have is of them intercepting a Russian Bear. As for the F-4 and F-14 from VX-4, yeah I've had that one forever and post it from time to time on A.net, 2 schmexy birds there!

Shawn a... Edwards AFB is on my ToDo list for sure... like Mecca for a pilot/enthuisiast like me!

[Webmaster]

Ow ok, then you are right. But what about this: http://www.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=3145

[shawn a]

I took this shot from an airliner on my way to Vegas in the early '70s.
YEAH, RIGHT!
Still looking for my Edwards formation shots, some of them are on film!

[HaveBlue]

Webmaster holy shit and thank you! Only the 2nd shot I've ever seen of them together, and I've never seen all of our 4th gen fighters together at once. Sweeeeet! Definitely saved that one.

Shawn a... nice shot! 2 of my favorite birds together... if the Valkyrie was in there it would be my top 3 planes of all time.

If you can dig out some of your pics that would be great, I'm very interested. I've got lots of cool shots of all the NASA planes on the tarmac together out at Edwards (from the net), I'll try to post some of my pics up later today.

[Webmaster]

I also have this one in my "from i-net" collection. Maybe it's one taken from a Bear, hehe, I cannot recall where I got this. It's poor quality though, so also have to keep it mind it may be fake.