My favorite aircraft

For fixed wing the X-29 is by far my favorite. A really cool experiment in forward swept wings.



Got to see it and touch it at the Air Force Museum.


My Father in law was one of the engineers on the X29 project. He still has memento’s of it in his home office.
 
I was there at the ripe old age of 9. Dad was flying refueling missions in a KC 135 out of Kadena. We lived in Ishikawa in 1970, then moved on base in '71 & came back Stateside in '73.

Probably a different kind of memory than yours... but good ones, nonetheless!

I can't say I have one favorite, but I've always like the can opener.
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I can remember seeing these flying over when I was a kid (early 1950's).
 
B58 bomber. Build this model in the early 70s and it had a button to drop the bomb. Good times.

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Cramped, tight cockpit:

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I remember when they were stationed at Seymour Johnson in Goldsboro. You could see that thick, black smoke from 20 miles. When they came over 70 on final they were only maybe 100 feet off the deck. Great AC.

I’ve talked to a couple of folks who’ve driven them in some pretty nasty weather and said that even if it was shot all to sh*t, it’d get ya back home.
 
Military = P-51, F-16, F-22 Raptor...

I'm partial to the F-16... A very good friend of mine was an F-16 pilot out of Shaw AFB. He participated in the first daylight raid on Baghdad in Desert Storm.
The mission is mentioned in the book " Skunkworks" by Ben Rich.



My favorite "airplane of all time" is Mike Manary's Walther Turboprop Glasair III. 750hp+ in a 1,500lb. airplane. Mike brought his plane to Darlington Jetport ( UDG) back in 1998 and gave me a ride. We went wheels up long before mid -runway and Mike raised the gear and flew level about 40 ft off the runway. When we got to the end of the asphalt, Mike jerked the stick back and that MoFo went Straight UP with the 6000fpm VSI pegged... We went through 10,000ft in less than 2 minutes. He rolled the plane through an Immelmann to his cruise heading and leveled out at 11,500ft. The airspeed indicator only went to 300mph and it was also pegged through most of the flight. It would cruise easily at 400+mph on less than 30gph burn rate. When it was time to come down, he lined up directly over UDG, cut the power, and pushed the nose over. Straight DOWN at 10,000 fpm. "Steep Decent" took on a whole new meaning.


My friend who piloted the F-16 also rode that day and said it literally flew like a point and shoot jet fighter, and the plane was the closest thing to flying a jet he had been in since he had retired.

Mike's plane was featured in KITPLANES magazine in late 1998. I told Mike his plane was the only plane qualified to be on the cover of HotRod Magazine.. :D I'll look for my copy of KitPlanes and take some pics and post up later.

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Mike flew the thing to Oshkosh and slept in a hammock strung up between the landing gear.

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Military = P-51, F-16, F-22 Raptor...

I'm partial to the F-16... A very good friend of mine was an F-16 pilot out of Shaw AFB. He participated in the first daylight raid on Baghdad in Desert Storm.
The mission is mentioned in the book " Skunkworks" by Ben Rich.



My favorite "airplane of all time" is Mike Manary's Walther Turboprop Glasair III. 750hp+ in a 1,500lb. airplane. Mike brought his plane to Darlington Jetport ( UDG) back in 1998 and gave me a ride. We went wheels up long before mid -runway and Mike raised the gear and flew level about 40 ft off the runway. When we got to the end of the asphalt, Mike jerked the stick back and that MoFo went Straight UP with the 6000fpm VSI pegged... We went through 10,000ft in less than 2 minutes. He rolled the plane through an Immelmann to his cruise heading and leveled out at 11,500ft. The airspeed indicator only went to 300mph and it was also pegged through most of the flight. It would cruise easily at 400+mph on less than 30gph burn rate. When it was time to come down, he lined up directly over UDG, cut the power, and pushed the nose over. Straight DOWN at 10,000 fpm. "Steep Decent" took on a whole new meaning.


My friend who piloted the F-16 also rode that day and said it literally flew like a point and shoot jet fighter, and the plane was the closest thing to flying a jet he had been in since he had retired.

Mike's plane was featured in KITPLANES magazine in late 1998. I told Mike his plane was the only plane qualified to be on the cover of HotRod Magazine.. :D I'll look for my copy of KitPlanes and take some pics and post up later.

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Mike flew the thing to Oshkosh and slept in a hammock strung up between the landing gear.

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Yeap, remember seeing that one years ago in Darlington
 
Having worked on A-4 Skyhawks and A6 Intruders and flown in a lot of C-130 Hercules and other assorted aircraft
I still think my favorite aircraft is the Continental Airlines Boeing 707 that flew my ass out of Vietnam back to the World.

Were you at Cherry Point? I remember the A-4s and A6-s out of there, both a couple of my favorite aircraft...
 
That's a great read.

Amazing what they did with sliderules in the 50's and 60's.

Sent from my SM-J320V using Tapatalk

Amazing that The Skunkworks formed a dummy company and bought Russian titanium to build the SR-71 Blackbird to be used to spy on the Russians...

Skunkworks is a fantastic read for aircraft buffs and manufacturing buffs as well..!
 
Were you at Cherry Point? I remember the A-4s and A6-s out of there, both a couple of my favorite aircraft...

Yes, I was unfortunate enough to be stationed there in 1968 when I returned from Vietnam. After my wife left me and took our son I volunteered for a second tour in Vietnam in 1969 just to get the hell out of there.
 
Douglas SBD Dauntless

At Midway the turning point in the entire Pacific war, four squadrons of Navy SBD dive bombers attacked and sank or fatally damaged all four Japanese fleet carriers present, disabling three of them in the span of just six minutes (Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū) and, later in the day, Hiryū.

Merica, Nuff said!


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A lot of good old airplane shows from the 90s etc for free on YouTube. Wings, Wings Over Vietnam, Wings of the Red Star, Great Planes... the list goes on and on.

All that good old stuff from Discovery Channel, A&E and others... back when my satellite dish was the size of a swimming pool.
 
A1E Skyraider.. they are in my blood!
Uncle Sugar’s Air Force saw fit that I was to become a Munitons Tech (46130) circa 1965 and later Assigned to weapons load crew (46250). “Sandys” and “Spads”in Thailand and later Vietnam.
If it went “bang” “boom” or“whoosh” I handled, built , hauled uploaded/downloaded it on “Spads” .,,,..,20 Mike-Mike, dumb bombs,
2.75 rockets (HE & Willie-Pete) ,CBU Clusters,and the crowd-pleaser..Mr. Naplam

A durable workhorse with fantastic loiter time and payload ... the grunts loved them.
Warheads on foreheads!!
 
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Yes, I was unfortunate enough to be stationed there in 1968 when I returned from Vietnam. After my wife left me and took our son I volunteered for a second tour in Vietnam in 1969 just to get the hell out of there.
A1E Skyraider.. they are in my blood!
Uncle Sugar’s Air Force saw fit that I was to become a Munitons Tech (46130) circa 1965 and later Assigned to weapons load crew (46250). “Sandys” and “Spads”in Thailand and later Vietnam.
If it went “bang” “boom” or“whoosh” I handled, built , hauled uploaded/downloaded it on “Spads” .,,,..,20 Mike-Mike, dumb bombs,
2.75 rockets (HE & Willie-Pete) ,CBU Clusters,and the crowd-pleaser..Mr. Naplam

A durable workhorse with fantastic loiter time and payload ... the grunts loved them.
Warheads on foreheads!!

That was a Bad-Motor-Scooter!

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe it carried more ordnance than it.weighed?
 
Growing up, one of my big brothers (13 years older than me) joined the Air Force. This was around 1969. He was a Loadmaster on C-130s.

He used to send me all kinds of pictures of air craft, and was always happy to tell me stories and tidbits of information about them.

When he left home, he left behind several models, including some still in the box (which I put together).

And Mom & Dad, and several uncles, served in WWII so I had a lot of stories about planes from that era as well. And another brother flew the F-4 in the Marines.

Hands down, my all time favorite is the Blackbird to this day. But a lot of others rank up there, too. Exotic aircraft, high performance aircraft, experimental aircraft, aircraft that almost-but-never-went-into-production, high tech aircraft, historical aircraft, you name it.

For high tech, experimental aircraft (for its time), I love the Japanese J7W1 Shinden. It was a canard design, pretty radical for its time. With a 6 bladed prop mounted behind the plane to push it. Armed with 4 30mm cannons.

The concept evolved late in the war (1943) and was later pushed as a response to Doolittle's bombing of Japan with B-29. It was expected to be exceptionally maneuverable based on design and testing results.

Unfortunately for the Japanese, it was too little, too late. It was another example of "if they had these earlier...". It's maiden flight was August 3rd, 1945.

It was one of the war prizes we packed up and took back to the States.

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World War I - SPAD:
https://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=NASM-NASM2016-01774&max=3000 Not this one, but type flown by Eddie Rickenbaker with the 94th 'Hat in the Ring' squadron, and later president of Eastern Airlines.

World War II - Corsair, as previously posted, a truly graceful, beautiful aircraft (had some serious teething problems getting carrier certified, but finally was resolved). And, flown by ace Ira Kepford: http://acepilots.com/usn_aces2.html , et al.

Jet Age: The first jet to sustain supersonic flight (barely) in level flight: The 'Hun', F-100 Super Saber. https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/north-american-f-100d-super-sabre/nasm_A19781577000 < This particular aircraft is at the Udvar-Hazy facility at Dulles, of which I have pictures from a visit several years ago. The F-100 was flown by the Thunderbirds for almost, if not over a decade, competing with the F-16 for the longest tenure aircraft with the team. A truly remarkable aircraft, but sadly, with a long history of death and carnage in inexperienced hands. The F-100F 2-seat model formed the basis for the fledgling 'Wild Weasel' SAM hunting program in Vietnam, they were called Misty flights (helping to relieve the tired and vulnerable Skyraiders in the FAC role). https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/V...act-Sheets/Display/Article/195816/misty-facs/


Cool aircraft, one and all! :cool:
 
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