Thread: What is your favourite combat aircraft?

Originally Posted by longway

Not mentioned yet to my knowledge, but certainly worth an honalabun mention is the

Mitsubishi A6M Zero, which was an extremely effective fighter aircraft until the yanks captured one and found out its flaws.

Fast and powerful, in 1942 over Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) 36 zeros took on 60 British fighters and shot down 27 of them suffering only a single loss.

The float-plane version was known as the Rufe and was used for harassing US patrol boats at remote pacific island locations without airstrips.

Originally Posted by Seekingasylum

30 Sqdn. lost 23 Hurricanes and the RN lost 7 Fulmars - the alleged 60 RAF aircraft comprised a variety of planes including Fulmars

Strange looking beastie the Fulmar. Not super-manoeuvrable but sturdy and ended up as the leading Fleet Air Arm fighter for WWII in terms of kills.

US Navy's A-5/RA-5C

The mother of all modern fighters...

Originally Posted by CSFFan

The mother of all modern fighters...

It was actually a bomber...

Lockheed F104 Starfighter - one of the fastest aircraft ever built, first came out in the 1950s.

Originally Posted by CSFFan

US Navy's A-5/RA-5C

The mother of all modern fighters...

|I think that honour belongs to the F4 -Phantom. Here is one with a F-22 Raptor.



More cool pix of the F-4

I have stood at the end of a runway watching the dawn departure of a couple of Phantoms take off on escort duty. Awesome power projection.

^Is Looper actually making those Airfix models?

Or just huffing the glue?

Originally Posted by Looper

Originally Posted by CSFFan

The mother of all modern fighters...

It was actually a bomber...

The Last Gun Fighter , was then as Phantom didn't have guns.

Douglas A-1 Skyraider. Used last in the Vietnam war. The last of the WW2 era turboprops in service..



These planes actually shot down MIG-17's and is the last piston engined aircraft to shoot down a jet. Interesting article;

https://theaviationist.com/2015/01/1...amese-mig-17s/

Originally Posted by VocalNeal

Originally Posted by Looper

Originally Posted by CSFFan

The mother of all modern fighters...

It was actually a bomber...

The Last Gun Fighter , was then as Phantom didn't have guns.

This was a problem for the F-4 in Vietnam as the missile tech in those days was not good enough to make up for a lack of a gun.

Originally Posted by longway

More cool pix of the F-4

Ohhh ... my pants just twitched a little then.

Great photo

As a side issue (damm I'm liking this thread) ... when did the first couple of drop (fuel) tanks come into play?

Not just the first ... the first few please.

Found a photo of XM651, in 9 Sqn colours, with a good view of the TFR nipple. Imagine flying this at 50ft using terrain following radar...



The Bristol 188, which, I fancy, has seen more tins of Brasso than any other aircraft.

One of the most lethal combinations.

Originally Posted by longway

Lockheed F104 Starfighter - one of the fastest aircraft ever built, first came out in the 1950s.

Curious thing about the F-104 was that the horizontal stabilisers were so high and the plane went so fast that they decided to make the ejector seat fire downwards.

http://www.ejectionsite.com/f104seat.htm

Originally Posted by kmart

^Is Looper actually making those Airfix models?

I have to confess to not having the time or the patience to sit at a craft desk with all the tools and paint shop. It takes 10-20 hours to do a pro-build of even a small model. You can watch builds done at 50x speeded up on youtube if you are interested). So I buy them from builders who sell them already built on ebay.

Another one that impressed me a lot when I was younger was the SR-71 Blackbird. I guess technically it wasn't a combat plane. But then again neither are some of Storekeeper's aircraft he's posted in this thread...right?



I notice in some of the pics of the Blackbird they have NASA insignia, some have US Air Force insignia and some are just plain black, like these in this pic.

I use to buy the kits and build/paint them as a kid. Well not really a kid, more like being around 12 or 13 and having a deep fascination with old Aircraft at that time. Many of the models I assembled have been in this thread already but a few favourites that I made and can remember:














Was lucky enough to go for a 20 minute joy flight in one of ^these^ with some aerobatics thrown in. Brilliant!!



Many moons ago my Mum told me her neighbors kids loved the planes and use to play with them when their Mum would come over for a cup of tea. She asked if it would be ok to let them keep them and I said sure!.

SHOWOFFS !

Lots of different planes, a Raptor @ 1.50 mark


If you liked that ^ you will probably appreciate below ...

^Nice video but the acrobatics are really circus tricks for air shows these days.

In the age of the network centric stealth F-22/F-35 aerial warfare if you are within visual range before you know your adversary is there it is already a long way too late and no show pony aerobatics are gonna save you.

More than likely you will never even know your enemy is there when your fate is sealed and you are already toast in the post.

Originally Posted by longway

Lockheed F104 Starfighter - one of the fastest aircraft ever built, first came out in the 1950s.

The Widowmaker

Lookswise this my favourite aircraft as the design was so futuristic for its time, especially with the sweptback wings. The UK did have an equivalent jet aircraft which looked almost as good. Here is the Gloster meteor.

^Here is the glorious Gloster Meteor. But for innovative nazi jet engineering you cannot go past the Horten 229 on the left.



The flying wing stealth design was captured in 1945 and taken to USA where Northrop studied it for years and built many prototypes and this expertise was the DNA for Northrop's brilliant B-2 Spirit