Top 10 Most Dangerous Aircraft

Flaming screaming balls of death and destruction are best avoided. Fortunately, once they reach service most aircraft aren’t dangerous if you use them for their intended purpose. The SR-71 for instance was an excellent spy plane but would have been a lethal crop duster. Some types however manage to sneak through the design and testing stages without all their vulnerabilities being discovered and it’s left to the crew, and in some cases passengers, to deal with the fallout. Bing Chandler has plucked ten statistically worrying rides to remind you that there were times in history when finding out the price of an onboard Kit Kat was not the most alarming moment of a flight. We could have just selected 10 pioneering aeroplanes or early carrier jets, but in the name of spreading the blame out more fairly, we have selected a more diverse cadre of calamitous shitbuckets.

10. McDonnell Douglas DC-10 ‘Crowd Killer’

I believe that pigs and even DC-10s can fly

Nothing screams brand recognition like having your aircraft being included in a song. It’s just unfortunate for McDonnell Douglas that the DC-10 gained this recognition through the medium of crashing. Developed at the urging of American Airlines for an aircraft to fill a gap in the market for a long-haul aircraft smaller than the 747, McD struck on the idea of a three-engined wide-body at almost the same time the competing team from Lockheed did.

McDonnell Douglas won the race with AA placing an order for 25 DC-10s in February 1968, United following with orders for 30. With a first flight in August 1970 the DC-10 was in commercial service with American just under a year later. Less than a year later, on 12 June 1972, American had their first DC-10 accident. At 11,750 feet over Ontario the rear cargo door blew off and decompression caused the cabin floor to collapse. To make things interesting multiple control cables were severed including those for the rudder and the central, number 2, engine. Fortunately, despite this, the crew retained enough control to make a successful landing.

What had gone wrong? The DC-10 was the first airliner produced by the company post the merger of McDonnell and Douglas in 1967, with management from McDonnell, previously a manufacturer of fighters, directing that the aircraft be produced on a tight budget. This included recycling of technology from the DC-8 and the sub-contracting of design work, including the fuselage, to companies such as Convair who were forbidden from directly contacting the FAA even over safety concerns.

Ground testing had revealed a potentially catastrophic situation where the failure of the rear cargo door led to collapse of the main cabin floor which incidentally carried the control runs to the rear of the aircraft. In a move that would definitely come back and bite them McD chose to ignore Convair’s memo that predicted the loss of an aircraft if adequate measure weren’t put in place to prevent it happening to an in-service DC-10. Somewhat grudgingly after the American Airlines incident the locking mechanism was modified, and an inspection window added.

On Sunday 3 March 1974 the aft cargo door on a Turkish Airlines DC-10 failed at around 12,000’ shortly after leaving Paris Orly airport. This time there would be no survivors, the aircraft crashing into woods to the north of Paris killing all 346 onboard. Investigators discovered the airframe in question had incorrectly been recorded as having the cargo door modification implemented.

Although the cargo door lock would ultimately be fixed 32 of 386 DC-10s would be lost in accidents with engines failing, or even falling off, being a leading cause most famously at Sioux City where the catastrophic failure of a fan disc in the centre CF6-6 left the crew barely able to control the aircraft via use of differential thrust.

Fortunately, the lessons of the DC-10’s development were identified so when McDonell Douglas and Boeing merged there were no issues with a profits-motivated management system being imposed on an engineering-led company…

9. Tupolev Tu-104 ‘Moscow Mule’

Some Russians like to claim the Tu-104 was the world’s first jetliner, on the spurious grounds it didn’t suffer a break in service while it had problems rectified. This overlooks the trifling facts that a) it was still second and b) it had a lot of problems that should have been rectified. Based on the Tu-16 Badger bomber the Camel replaced the bomb-carrying fuselage with one more suited for passengers, but retained everything else.

The cabin was remarkably well furnished with brass-like alloys and mahogany covering the internal framing, while the overhead luggage racks would not have looked out of place on a Victorian railway. Less assuring was the pre-positioning of oxygen masks in the seat back pockets, or the pressure bulkhead between the cabin and the cockpit. The cockpit itself held an impressively large crew of 5 and included glazed nose position for the navigator.

Entering service during the awkward pause in Comet operations the Tu-104 was the world’s only jet airliner for a brief period. What it wasn’t was particularly safe. The controls were heavy, the type was unstable, and the highly swept wings had adverse handling characteristics approaching the stall. Acceptable in a strategic bomber but not ideal in an airliner. The tendency to pitch up violently, or enter an uncontrollable dive at the stall led to pilots flying the approach 50 km/h faster than the intended speed often creating problems that the brake chute couldn’t solve.

1958 saw three aircraft lost in accidents with subsequent years seeing a steady drum beat of losses. 32 aircraft were lost in accidents before the type was withdrawn from commercial use, while another aircraft was hit by a missile after a training exercise went awry. Aeroflot withdrew the Tu 104 in 1979 after a false fire alarm led to an aircraft crashing while returning to Moscow airport killing 58 of 119 onboard. The Russian military continued using the type until 1981 when a Soviet Navy example crashed due to improper loading of cargo, killing 16 Admirals in the process.

With 201 aircraft built the Tu-104 suffered a loss rate of 16%, better than the next entry but substantially worse than just about any other jet airliner.

8. de Havilland Comet ‘Ghosts in the wing’

After years of wartime austerity, the de Havilland Comet showed the world that Britain was still at the cutting edge of civil aviation. The world’s first jet-powered airliner entered service with BOAC in 1952 heralding a golden future for the country’s aviation industry. Unfortunately, the Comet then refused to take-off. Literally.

Before anyone had even heard of metal fatigue, on 26 October 1952 a BOAC aircraft ran off the end of the runway at Rome’s Ciampino airport the aircraft stubbornly refusing to leave the ground despite the nose being held in the air. Barely four months later a Canadian Pacific Airlines example taking off from Karachi suffered the same phenomena, this time tragically gaining the Comet the un-coveted title of first jet airliner to suffer a fatal accident when all 11 onboard were killed.

Why was this happening? The approved take-off technique involved lifting the nose gear off the ground at 75-80 knots and holding a 2-3° nose up attitude until flying the aircraft off the ground at around 110 knots. A few factors counted against the pilots in these incidents. The Comet artificial horizon had no pitch markings so the nose up attitude was entirely visually judged, the two accidents happening at night give the first clue as to what may have gone wrong. Adding to the pilot’s difficulties the early hydraulic controls had no feedback mechanism just a spring to centre them, consequently the force to make a given movement of the controls was the same no matter what speed the aircraft was travelling. Finally, and crucially, the Comet’s wing created excessive drag if the nose was held too high, while the intakes struggled to provide the engines with sufficient air. All the ingredients were in place for a tragedy, obviously in the enlightened flight safety regime of the time the investigations found the accidents were entirely due to pilot error.

After the second accident DH at least discovered the issue with the wing, re-profiling the leading edge. Meanwhile BOAC directed its pilots to add 1000’ to the take-off run and keep the nose on the ground until they’d reached V2 and the aircraft could climb away even with one engine failed.

To keep everyone on their toes in May 1953 another BOAC Comet plunged into the ground just after take-off from Calcutta, this time issues with the wing leading edge weren’t to blame as they were no longer attached to the airframe. This was determined to be due to the pilots over-stressing the aircraft in turbulence, all Comets were subsequently fitted with a weather radar to give them a chance of avoiding turbulence, and artificial feel to give the stick monkeys an indication they were in danger of being too enthusiastic.

Keeping to the annual schedule in January 1954 in one of the more famous aircraft accidents, G-ALYP came apart in flight over the Mediterranean with the loss of all onboard. The Abell Committee was established to investigate it and in a no way politically motivated move the Comet was returned to flight on the 23 of March 1954. Two weeks later G-ALYY repeated the trick disappearing near Naples. The Comet’s Certificate of Airworthiness was revoked and the Cohen Committee was established to do what the Abell Committee should have.

Contrary to popular legend this was not due to the Comet having square windows. Or even windows. The crack in the fuselage that caused the first disaster actually promulgated from a rivet hole around the cut-out, or window, for the ADF mounting which had been damaged and repaired during manufacture. The Comet’s actual windows had perfectly sensible rounded corners, the manufacturers of the Mosquito not being complete amateurs. Even in the water tank testing as part of the investigation, the windows remained intact with failure occurring at a bolt hole.undefined

Where de Havilland did show a lack of experience, because they were literally the first people to produce a jet airliner, was in the manufacturing techniques used. These, combined with the thin-gauge metal construction to keep the aircraft’s mass as low as possible, made it liable to stress concentrations at the rivet holes which were punched into the material. It was these punched rivet holes that were the initiation points for the explosive decompressions. Both rivet holes manufacture and skin thickness were improved for the subsequent Comet models but the reputational damage was already done and the aircraft would never fulfil its early promise. In total 114 Comets were built with 25 being lost, 7 alone in the first two years of operations.

7. Gloster Meteor ‘Meteorite on the night’

The Gloster Meteor is sometimes overlooked by the kind of people who fetishize Nazi wonder weapons on the grounds it was less glamorous than the swept wing, axial flow engined Me 262. On the flipside the Meteor’s conservative ruggedness meant it could go longer than 25 hours without needing its engines changed and managed more than a couple of years in service before the regime that created it ceased to exist under the weight of its own contradictions, and Allied artillery. In fact, thanks to Martin-Baker two of them continue in use today as ejection seat test platforms, take that Messerschmitt.

That’s not to say it was without its faults, however. The endurance could be measured with an egg timer and an engine failure on take-off could be fatal as the remaining engine, far from the centre of gravity caused extreme adverse yaw. In some cases, pilots would have their own personal critical speed for asymmetric flight based on their leg strength. Other gotchas included selecting the air brakes with the undercarriage and flaps already down, the resultant blanking of airflow to the tail leading to a dive. The limited navigation aids available at the time also caused issues, on one occasion in 1951 a flight of three aircraft from 203 Advanced Flying School at RAF Driffield found themselves having to descend over the sea to gain visual flight conditions. Making their way in poor visibility and low level towards the coast the flight lead spotted Flamborough Head at the last moment and narrowly avoided it, his two wingmen were not so lucky.

Combined with a lingering wartime approach to training and safety the scene was set for some horrendous losses.

On 18 June 1951, three Meteors crashed at Biggin Hill in two separate accidents during a display to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo and Churchill’s ‘Finest Hour’ speech. Rather awkwardly this was in front of the man himself and the then Princess Elizabeth. 1952 saw 150 Meteors lost in RAF service, 30% of losses for that year, nearly 3 a week the next highest figure being for Vampires with a mere 82 being lost. The following year saw a slight easing off with only 143 Meteors lost. In total, the RAF alone lost 890 Meteors, accounting for 22% of the production run.

6. Vought Cutlass ‘The Gutless Cutless’

The Vought Cutlass still looks like it came from the future today. Unfortunately, it’s a future with a very laissez-faire approach to safety (something like the new future being laid today by those walking back environmental policies).

More or less a tailless cropped delta with two vertical stabilisers mounted midway along each wing the early F7U-1 models were powered by two Westinghouse J34 turbojets, engines whose performance could best be described as asthmatic. It was replaced in the later F7U-3 models by the J46 which at least provided 50% more thrust although this was still only 60% of the 10,000lbs that had been promised. With a lack of thrust being one Achilles heel, a complicated high-pressure hydraulic system was another. In the F7U-1 failure of this could leave the pilot with no control for 11 seconds while pressure bleed down enough for manual control to be taken. While the F7U-3 gained a second independent hydraulic system the 3,000psi operating pressure ensured a steady flow of fluid left the aircraft.

A third weak point, was the fragile nose gear. As if having the cockpit 14’ off the ground at a 9 degrees attitude wasn’t enough for landing and taxiing it was raised to 14 degrees, and in a foreshadowing of the Phantom a full 20 degrees for take-off. Unfortunately. this made the whole spindly assembly liable to collapse on landing, or worse punching up through the cockpit floor into the bottom of the ejection seat causing it to fire. Which was at least more than the activation handle did most of the time, one maintainer successfully carrying out a full inspection of the mechanism despite having forgotten to remove the firing cartridge.

A Cutlass from VF-124 aboard the USS Hancock crashes into the flight deck in 1955. The pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Jay Alkire was killed in the accident. (U.S. Navy)

As a carrier aircraft its greatest weakness, of many, was the 23 degree nose high attitude on approach which essentially guaranteed that if you could see the ship you were doing it wrong. The feeble output of its engines meanwhile meant afterburner was often necessary just to maintain the glide slope. An amusing design flaw meant that while in afterburner the transfer tank that fed fuel to the engines could be drained faster than it was being replenished from the rest of the system.

Embarrassingly these issues couldn’t be blamed on a rapid development programme, Vought were awarded the contract for what would become the Cutlass in June 1946 while the first frontline squadron, VF-81, wasn’t formed until April of 1954. Even then Cutlass squadrons seemed to spend as much time being ordered off their parent carriers as on, with VF-124, VA-84, VA-66, VF-83, and VA-212 banished from the Hancock, Forrestal, Ticonderoga, Intrepid, and Bon Homme Richard respectively between 1955 and 1956. Unsurprisingly the Cutlass was withdrawn from fleet operations by October 1957, only three and a half years after entering service, although some would remain in second line use until March 1959 primarily for trials work.

78 of 320 Cutlasses were lost in accidents in only 55,000 flying hours making it the most dangerous US Navy jet of all time. Still that’s amateur hour compared to the next entry.

5. Supermarine Scimitar ‘If it looks right, it crashes right’

Supermarine were purveyors of a fine range of flying boats and one reasonable fighter. The Scimitar was neither. Although to be fair on paper it was at least better than the Cutlass, the two engines each producing actual thrust, 11,000lbs each without even bothering with an afterburner. Although the overly thick wing, to allow free take-offs from a carrier, did stop it being supersonic in much other than a dive. There are however some undeserved myths about the ultimate aircraft from the Supermarine stable. For instance, the mathematically impossible claim that it required 1000 maintenance hours per flying hour, or that its accident rate was due to flying from the RN’s diminutive carriers.

The Scimitar only had four accidents on an aircraft carrier. Famously 803 lost its Commanding Officer after he’d landed on but failed to notice the cable had pulled out while attending to matters inside the cockpit and fell off the forward edge of the angled deck. Although not directly attributable to the size of the carrier presumably if Victorious had been bigger he might have had a chance to realise what was happening in time. Another Scimitar suffered a cable break and also fell off the flight deck, a third suffered brake failure while taxiing to the catapult, while a fourth ditched after bolting. In the latter three accidents the pilots survived albeit slightly damp. A fifth aircraft suffered an engine failure on approach but its hard to claim that’s directly connected to operating from a carrier, at least one Scimitar burying itself near Lossiemouth after suffering the same issue.

Scimitars also suffered nine losses due to hydraulic failures, 5 due to engine failures, a couple each due to bird strikes, fuel leaks, or Controlled Flight into Terrain, oddly both times with RAF exchange aircrew conducting Army cooperation. There were also 7 losses for unknown reasons, which sound mysterious but to be fair once something crashes into the ocean it can be hard to find the remains. In a slightly unusual twist two of the three surviving  Scimitars were involved in a mid air collision over Malta in April 1964 when 807 squadron was on its way back from the Far East.

Overall of 76 Scimitars built, 39 were lost in accidents a staggering 51% all essentially in peace time the closest they came to a hot war being deterring an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1961.

4. C-87 Liberator Express ‘Liberator of corporeality’

The B-24 Liberator was one of the best heavy bombers of the Second World War, and in its ASW variants was responsible for sinking more submarines than any other aircraft in history. The C-87 transport version would enjoy none of its siblings’ success.

Aside from the obvious move of converting the bomb bay into a cargo area by installing a floor the area forward of the cockpit was also utilised by adding a hinged loading hatch. The main cargo area being accessed via a door on the port side of the aft fuselage. Able to carry up to 25 passengers or 12’000lbs of cargo the Liberator Express was a significant upgrade on the existing C-47 fleet. Unfortunately due to the priority given to its bomber cousin some shortcuts were taken in the C-87’s production.

Most significant was the frequent installation of a lower boost supercharger which would adversely affect its high-altitude performance. Not that that could come in useful while crossing the Hump from India in to China over the highest mountain range on earth… The ability to handle more ice than you get in a McDonalds’ soft drink would have been useful as well. Meanwhile, the electrical and hydraulic systems would not have been out of place on a British-built car of the 1960s, 70s, or 80s. The nose gear was prone to breaking on landing, the shock of regularly landing with a full load in the bomb bay not being something the design had originally been intended for. To add extra spice internal loads were prone to shifting throwing the centre of gravity out of limits.

Ernest K Gann hated the type and devotes a large portion of ‘Fate is the Hunter’ to detailing its myriad faults while nearly using one to inadvertently destroy the Taj Mahal after taking-off with three tonnes more fuel than expected. The good people at Consolidated not thinking fuel gauges were a high priority. What Gann didn’t mention is the C-87’s loss rate which at over 50% was higher than that of the B-24 with 152 of 287 lost, all but two in the first three years of operation. In comparison despite being shot at on a far more regular basis around 6,000 of over 18,000 Liberators were lost. Which is bad, but not 53% bad.

3. Fairchild F-105 Thunderchief ‘Elmer Thud’

The Republic F-105 Thunderchief had an auspicious start to life with the first two prototypes breaking their backs in landing accidents. Given the airframe needed a complete redesign to reach the contracted Mach number this was probably less of a problem than it at first seemed. Although it wasn’t an encouraging sign when after all the modifications to achieve that were done the third prototype very nearly did the same thing. In this case the main gear refusing to extend as the engine auxiliary intakes, located in the gear bay, had opened and the suction from the Pratt and Whitney J-75s was holding the doors firmly shut. In a cruel twist with the engine shut down the test pilot was walking away from the aircraft only for it to slowly hoist itself up onto its wheels, the hydraulics being able to overcome gravity if not vacuums.

Despite these early set-backs, the USAF decided to equip the Thunderbirds display team with nine modified F-105Bs. This essentially involved replacing the weapons system with one for coloured smoke and allowing the flaps to be deployed at up to 500 knots. By 16 April 1964 the team were ready to display with the Thunderchief, by 9 May they’d lost a pilot and an aircraft in a landing accident during a public display at Hamilton AFB and the team reverted to the Super Sabre.

Later that year US involvement in Vietnam would escalate with the Gulf of Tonkin incident and a whole new raft of problems with the F-105 would emerge. Aside from the excessive heat and humidity requiring modification to the Thunderchief the single hydraulic system controlling the horizontal stabiliser soon emerged as a weak point. Damage to the system would force the aircraft into an irrecoverable dive several aircraft lawn darting into the jungle. Republic soon developed a mechanical lock to prevent runaway before the long term fix of an additional hydraulic system was introduced. Despite this and the introduction of a Radar Homing and Warning System (RHAWS) F-105s were falling to North Vietnamese air defences, primarily guns, at a shocking rate. At least 60 were lost in 1965, 111 in 1966, and a further 97 in 1967.

In all 334 Thunderchiefs were lost in combat over Vietnam nearly 20% of USAF losses and 40% of all F-105s produced. Even in the context of a war this was bad when compared to loss rates for aircraft in WW2. A further 63 were lost in accidents in South East Asia while when other losses are included well over 50% of all Thunderchiefs produced were lost. The F-105D was withdrawn from Vietnam by 1970 with only the F-105G Wild Weasel seeing out the war and from 1974 it was the only variant to remain in service.

2. Latécoère 631 ‘Dodgy latte’

Credit: Oldmachinepress.com

The Latecoere 631 was perhaps the ultimate in late ‘30s flying boats, with its six engines, a max take-off weight of 75 tonnes, and a cockpit perched so far back from the nose it has to be assumed most of the ocean was obscured to the pilots on landing. Its aero-sexual credentials being enhanced by the twin vertical tails and that Cyrano-esque nose housing a bar. The only minor issue, a quibble if you will, was that thanks to the intervention of the Second World War it didn’t actually enter operational service until 1946. It also crashed quite a bit, which is why it’s here.

Development of the 631 continued in Vichy France and then under direct German control, its utility as a maritime patrol aircraft being obvious. Consequently, the first aircraft found itself in Luftwaffe markings on Lake Constance, before being sunk by Mosquitos in 1944. Thanks RAF. Despite this minor setback by the end of the war orders for an additional 10 631s were being fulfilled and the second aircraft had made a successful return flight to Dakar by early August 1945.

Credit: /www.sim-outhouse.com

The first inkling that the 631 may need improvement came somewhere in the South Atlantic in October 1945 when the same aircraft, F-BANT, was enroute between Rio and Montevideo. The propeller on the number 3 engine decided it had had enough and departed the aircraft. One blade damaged the number 2 engines prop and almost ripped the engine from its mounts. Tragically another ripped through the fuselage killing two passengers. In this case the aircraft was recovered, initially by redistributing engines between the wings so it could make a short hop as a four-engined aircraft to Montevideo for the full repair package to be carried out. Despite this deliveries to Air France continued and it wasn’t until February 1948 when the barely a month-old F-BRDR flew into the English Channel in bad weather, either due to pilot disorientation, icing, or hitting debris from the Normandy landings while trying to land.

August 1948 saw F-BDRC disappear over the Atlantic, only a few small pieces of debris being discovered by the USCG. With the writing on the wall for flying boats Air France took the opportunity to cancel its orders and the French government, with nothing better to do, created a new company SEMAF to use them as cargo aircraft.  Meanwhile, F-WANU was used to attempt to discover what had led to F-BDRC’s loss. This led to the theory that at certain RPMs the engines were operating at the resonant frequency of the wing and aileron causing them to fail. Certainly, this was what caused F-WANU’s left aileron to depart and the aircraft to crash into the sea killing all onboard. So definitely a possibility.

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Another company, La Société France Hydro was now formed to use two of the remaining 631s for cargo operations. However, when one of these broke up in a thunderstorm over Cameroon in 1955 the game was finally up. Presumably as it was becoming increasingly hard to find anyone willing to get on one. In early 1956 to add insult to injury the 5th, 10th, and 11th examples were written off when snow collapsed the roof of the hangar they were stored in.

Four of 11 Latecoere 631’s were lost in accidents with all onboard dying, making it one of the more dangerous airliners ever to fly, even more so when you consider another four of the 11 never saw operational service as an airliner or even cargo aircraft.

  1. Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka ‘Suicide is easyish’

Aircraft designers must regularly deal with conflicting requirements to achieve what the customer wants. Almost inevitably this will include bringing the crew and passengers back in a fit enough condition to make another flight. It must have been a pleasant relief for the students of the University of Tokyo’s Aeronautical department then when asked to work on a design that explicitly did away with this limitation.

The brainchild of one Ensign Mitsuo Ohta work started on the design in 1943 but production wouldn’t begin until 1944 when the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Yokosuka arsenal took on the programme. A 20’ long tube with stub wings the Ohka sandwiched a half-trained pilot between a 2,645lb armour piercing warhead and a 4,500lb thrust solid fuel rocket motor. Perhaps surprisingly there was armour plating at the rear of the cockpit the pilot not being completely disposable. Although the use of a human as the guidance system for a missile raises some ethical dilemmas it was at least arguably more human than B J Skinner’s proposal in the US to train pigeons to perform the same role, given they had no opportunity to say no.

With a ton of explosives, an approach speed of over 450 knots, and the most advanced guidance system available to mid-20th century mankind the Ohka was then presumably a highly effective weapon that significantly delayed allied forces reaching the Japanese homeland? Not so much. Although kamikaze attacks in converted fighters and attack aircraft had shown limited success in sinking shipping the MXY-7 had an Achilles heel. Unable to take-off under its own power the manned missile had to be carried to its destination by a converted Mitsubishi G4M Betty bomber, who’s own performance was compromised by carrying two tons of suicide machine. In fact the G4M’s ceiling was reduced to a mere 16,400’ when loaded with the Ohka and on their first mission to attack Task Force 58 near Kyushu on 21 March 1945 all the bombers were intercepted before they were within 50 nautical miles of their target. Given this was well outside the MXY-7’s 20nm range it remains an unanswered question what happened to the few that were jettisoned by the Betties as they tried to evade the attacking Hellcats.

The Ohka’s performance didn’t really improve during the remainder of the war, the lack, of post-mission feedback probably not helping. In fact, only one ship, the USS Mannert L Abele was sunk by the MXY-7 having already been hit by another kamikaze aircraft, 84 personnel were believed killed. Given there were 74 Ohka missions and the Betty carrier aircraft had a crew of up to seven, it’s entirely possible more Japanese lives were lost in Ohka missions than American. At the same time when the deaths onboard the Bettys are taken into account it must be the only aircraft in history to have killed over 100% of its crew.

The aircraft listed here were, with one exception, more dangerous than they should have been, but in most cases, this was also a sign of the times. For example, entries 2-10 could have been filled with jet fighters from the 50s and 60s which probably would have been more statistically accurate, but would also have got a bit predictable.

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5 comments

  1. Lloyd Crawford

    Absolutely fascinating- I was particularly surprised to see the Meteor and the Thunderchief in the list- and with Bing Chandler being a rotary wing expert, perhaps there’s another article to be had on the most dangerous choppers out there after, of course, Jack Nicholson’s in The Shining.

    I can’t imagine every helicopter ever made came out of the designer’s head already formed into a perfectly reliable, problem-free classic. Maybe it’s because there’s fewer of them that it’s hard to think of a particular stinker but there must have been some- The Australian Taipan is surely a recent example, so in the laissez-faire 1950’s and 60’s there must have been some real cack-handed ‘copters out there. 

  2. Gray Stanback

    I’m surprised you didn’t include the Christmas Bullet, quite possibly the only aircraft ever to have crashed on its only two flights.

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