What is your favorite aircraft of all time?

[aswatland]

P51 Mustang and B17 Flying Fortress.

[locobuster]

Hands down, the P-38 Lightning & the B-17 Flying Fortress, to me both symbolize American airpower in the era.

[Jerekson]

I'm extremely happy to be hearing so many Flying-Fort-related comments. Before this forum I was sure that I was the only one who had a love for that plane

[Absinthe_1900]

Kellett K-2


First flight of the first Air Corps helicopter.


Second prototype of the above machine

[Teekay44]

There are soooo many I really like. Heres the short list

B-25 What my grandfather flew in and was crew chief on.

B-17 Queen of the Skys!

Hurricane The workhorse fighter of the BoB.

C-47 A war winning plane if there ever was one.

ME 109 The clasic German fighter.

[Diamondback]

For sheer prestige, the Boeing 314 Clipper.


If I gotta go fight in WWII, and can't bring my own bird, a Northrop P-61 Black Widow.

What's not to love about 4 20mm cannons and a quad-.50's worth of "make my day"?

Modern, make mine the A-10 for sheer maneuverability, the Tomcat for two-seater "going Mach two with my hair on fire", or the B-52 for long-range work. Travel with company, the Gulfstream 550 family, or a 747-400 stripped and rebuilt into a long-range luxury cruiser.

And for sheer fun-factor, a BD-5J Microjet. Yeah, I know they have a pattern of being pilot-killers under some conditions and I'm too big to bail-out--it took my traveling companion and a museum staffer BOTH to extract my carcass from the one I sat in--but they're still a lot of fun to fly.

Oh, and an SR-71 Blackbird. There's something about just looking at a Habu that gets the adrenaline pumping... like maybe how it looks like Mach 3, even when it's standing still.

[Vladimir Berkov]

Two of my favorites



Heinkel 51



MiG 15

[Dixon Cannon]

http://thundermustang.blogspot.com/

I am obsessed with this Thunder Mustang. Now that doesn't mean I don't still love the B-17, the P-51, the P-38 and the DC-4E. It just means that this airplane is something I could get my arms around! I could wear that cockpit like a well tailored suit!


-dixon cannon

[Zemke Fan]

That is one swell plane. Several questions... What does this puppy run? How long does it take to assemble? How many have been built? Any lost to accidents? Finally, is that your first-person narrative in the blog article? Were you the test pilot?

[Dixon Cannon]

That is one swell plane. Several questions... What does this puppy run? How long does it take to assemble? How many have been built? Any lost to accidents? Finally, is that your first-person narrative in the blog article? Were you the test pilot?

Well, at the moment I'm just an admirer from afar - but I have my dream! The manufacturer shut down it's operation in Nampa, ID a few years ago, but the assets of the company are held by The Thunder Builders Group (TBG) and they are not yet building new kits. They are looking for an investor though! The original kit sold for $195,000; built for you for about $250,000. I think there are about nine actually flying, one of which sets records at Reno. The original aircraft, the green bird, was lost in a crash near Nampa. NTSB called pilot error - too low for the maneuvers. The articles all have been gleaned from the web - I don't know the authors - some were articles in various flying magazines.

The test flight article was written by Dale Clarke, whose bio in included in the blog. He was the unfortunate pilot at the contols at the time of the crash.

There are kits still available in various degrees of completion and TBG maintains the original Papa51 website at: http://www.thundermustang.com/ . They have a great sales DVD available of the aircraft's developement, testing and flight. It is exhilerating!

Glad you like this bird ZF! I am obsessed with it - I fly it in my dreams!!

-dixon cannon