The year is 3000, and we can choose only ten aircraft for the Cold War Hangar of Fame. To help us choose the right aircraft, we consulted several brilliant authors: Joe Coles, Michael Pryce, and Jonathan Glancey. We also spoke to two people with hands-on experience: an Air Chief Marshal and a pilot of the fastest spy plane in history. We left two spaces in the museum for readers to choose; leave your selection in the comments below, and tell us why it must be included.

TRIGGER WARNING: The B-52 does not make our list, and the reason is simple: from next year, more of its service life will have been spent in the post-Cold War era than in the Cold War itself. By the year 3000, that imbalance will be even more pronounced. You may, however, argue for its inclusion in the comments section.

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8: De Havilland Comet 4 ‘Geoffrey’s jet-age jet sage’

Though not a warplane, Comet G-APDI was Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s transport to the United States; as such, it symbolised Britain’s greatest Cold War victory: avoiding involvement in the calamitous Vietnam War. We could have chosen one of several types of aircraft Wilson used for his trips to America, but the Comet 4 was the first and the most beautiful.

It seemed natural that Britain, as the US’ greatest ally, would send troops in support of the American-led war in Vietnam. Beyond the Korean War, Britain had also been actively involved in several post-colonial conflicts. But Wilson refused, citing Britain’s commitment to the fighting in Borneo as one reason. He also explained that, as Britain had been chair of the Geneva conference of 1954 that had legally divided Vietnam, British involvement would be illegal. US President Lyndon B. Johnson was unimpressed with this explanation and bitterly disappointed by a British leader he considered ‘tricky’, and by a Britain he believed took more than it gave from ‘the Special Relationship’. Wilson could not support the war. His party was weak and divided, and much of the British public fiercely opposed the war, particularly the aerial bombing campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder.

Wilson headed to Washington. The subject of British involvement had been discussed for a long time, notably during the 1964 trip, but in ’65 he made it clear he would withhold support. Unlike Australia and New Zealand, Britain would not be taking part. Despite this, Secretary of State for Defence Denis Healey and his close friend, US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, remained on good terms.

Britain was spared the prolonged human pain and enormous financial cost that involvement in Vietnam would have inevitably entailed. Despite many bemoaning Wilson’s Government’s cancellation of BAC’s TSR-2 bomber and Hawker Siddeley’s P1154 fighter, it is worth considering how many aircraft – and more importantly, men – would have been lost had Britain been…mired in the bloody jungle hell of Vietnam.

The transport aircraft that took Healey and Wilson to the United States saved likely many more British lives than any other aircraft type on this list. Though symbolic, this is why the Comet 4 must be included.

7: Reims/Cessna F172 ‘The Helsinki Angelboy’

“I see a white sports aeroplane, maybe a Yak-12, do I have permission to engage?”

– MiG-23 pilot Senior Lieutenant A. Puchnin

Mathias Rust was only 18 when he took off from Helsinki in his Cessna 172, intending to land in Red Square. He had no permission to do this and would have to pass the largest integrated air-defence system in history. Rust would be entering a Soviet air-defence network of staggering scale. More than 10,000 air-surveillance radars covered the USSR and allied territories, providing virtually complete medium- and high-altitude coverage. As the little aircraft approached the capital, it would face interceptor fighters, surface-to-air missile batteries and ground-based guns. A Cessna could not realistically withstand a direct (or indirect) missile hit, and its aluminium skin offered no meaningful protection against cannon fire. It was a 556-mile journey, around five and a half hours at typical speeds. At one point he flew low to avoid bad weather, inadvertently avoiding radar. He wasn’t trying to hide: he wanted to be detected. But he did fly low, averaging 1,000 feet, and his small, low aircraft was easy to lose in radar coverage gaps. Adding to the confusion, a light aircraft is not a typical intruder and is a common sight, so at times it was mistaken for local aircraft. His extraordinary journey had begun on 13 May 1987 at a small airfield in West Germany. He flew via the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway and Sweden before reaching Finland, from where he departed Helsinki-Malmi Airport for Moscow on 28 May.

This idealistic young man wanted to deliver a message of peace that he hoped would help end the Cold War. That he wasn’t blasted from the sky is extraordinary and relied on an extremely unlikely series of events. Soviet air defences were less than trigger-happy, partly because the painful memory of civilian airliners being accidentally shot down was still raw. Rust also benefited from freakish good timing: 28 May was Soviet Border Guards’ Day. Border Guards Day was a major Soviet holiday, with festivities involving drinking. The Los Angeles Times, citing the Soviet newspaper Moscow Pravda, reported that at least 100 border guards had been detained for drunken behaviour in Moscow’s Gorky Park.

Crucially, the overhead trolleybus wires above Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge had been temporarily removed for maintenance; had they been there, he would have been sliced to ribbons. He ruled out Red Square itself as too busy, while landing inside the Kremlin could have had him ‘disappeared’ and the event denied. After landing, he was arrested.

Heads rolled within the Soviet military leadership and the PVO (Soviet Air Defence Forces) for this humiliation, including Alexander Koldunov, the air-defence commander and decorated Second World War fighter ace. He was charged with Illegal crossing of the Soviet border, violating international flight regulations — and the rather fun crime of malicious hooliganism. Rust was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment but was released in 1988 after serving about 14 months.

The whole story is hard to believe, but it’s true: a hopeful, strange Cold War fable. His 172 in our hangar reminds us that the Cold War largely affected civilians, not those bound by military thinking. Today, his aircraft is displayed at the Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin, but in the post-national age of the year 3000, we can pinch it for our museum.

6: Republic F-105 Thunderchief ‘The Thud’

“However, while the Thud was putting in its time, pretty well on its way to being replaced by the likes of the F-4C, something not so different happened. We decided to go for another no-win war, to see how much we could waste without really offending anybody on the other side; and who wound up in the forefront of the air war over Southeast Asia? You betcha, the Thud.”

– Colonel Jack Broughton USAF (Retd), from foreword of Republic F-105 Thunderchief by David Anderton, Osprey, 1983

Nothing embodies the Cold War better than the Republic F-105 Thunderchief.

The F-105 was created as a single-seat, supersonic nuclear strike fighter-bomber capable of penetrating Soviet airspace at very low altitude, delivering one nuclear weapon, and escaping at high speed. The single pilot was there to deliver a holocaust with a one-megaton bomb. The mission was officially a genocidal, not suicidal mission, but should the pilot wish to survive, his odds were bleak. Low-level flying, massed enemy defences, and the likelihood of returning to a nuked base all worked against him. As an angel of death, the F-105 looked the part: a massive silver claw, built from vicious, slashing angles.

Among the F-105 Thunderchief’s many striking visual features were the razor-sharp, swept-forward air intakes, and the man behind them had an equally exciting life. Antonio Ferri was an Italian aero engineer. Three days after the Germans occupied Rome in 1943, Ferri snuck his way back into his facility, destroyed vital equipment, took research and disappeared ‘underground’.

🇦🇺 Australian Sabre vs Canadian 🇨🇦 Sabre: which was the ultimate dogfighting Sabre?

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Full disclosure: If you came here to read about mastodons fighting Rottweilers, look elsewhere. We are talking Cold War fighter aircraft.

One packed 25% more power than the F-86F and had 30mm guns. The other was lighter and with a slatted wing and six fifty calibre heavy machineguns. So, which ruled the roost? We enlisted fighter pilots, an Air Warfare Instructor, and an aerospace engineer to settle the debate in this fabulous deep dive into the ultimate Sabre showdown.

The North American F-86 Sabre was the most advanced fighter aircraft of its generation, offering a combination of high performance, fine handling, and advanced technology unmatched by any other. The Sabre began as a plan for a straight-winged jet carrier fighter in 1944, intended for the invasion of Japan. Then, after the Allies won, North American Aviation took German swept-wing research and its own design brilliance, and (after stumbling past the FJ-1 Fury) created a masterpiece. It was so good that British test pilot ‘Winkle’ Brown described it as a ‘jet Spitfire’ (something he certainly didn’t say about the Supermarine Attacker despite its Spiteful wing).

In the Korean War, the fast, manoeuvrable Sabre proved itself a match for the similar Soviet MiG-15. Soon after, though the F-86 had much developmental potential, the US became besotted with supersonic fighters. The US had the budget to leap ahead to other fighters, but the final USAF F-86 had not squeezed every ounce of fighter potential from the Sabre. It took a couple of Commonwealth nations to refine the F-86 into its ultimate fighter form.

(For those unfamiliar with the term, the original British Commonwealth was essentially the Empire’s racist platinum card: self-rule for white-run dominions, colonial rule for much of everyone else)

Today, we’ll examine the ultimate Sabres and, alongside an aerospace engineer, a former fighter pilot and test pilot, and a pilot who flew one of the Sabres in question, decide which was the best.

As I write this, it is a dreich October day in England; I want to think about sunny places. So, let’s start in Australia. Australia produced some brilliant aerospace talent, from Don L. Brown, designer of the Miles M.52, Britain’s ambitious but doomed answer to the Bell X-1, to Fred David, the man behind the CAC CA-15, a Griffon-powered fighter capable of around 442 mph, to Lawrence Wackett – a pilot, engineer and the driving force behind Australia’s aircraft industry. As head of CAC, he helped build the company while pushing Australian engineers to develop their own designs.

His influence carried into the jet age. Before anyone asked, he had started chatting with North American Aviation in 1949 about making Sabres in Australia. Local production, including spare parts, was essential. Relying on a support chain stretching halfway around the world made little sense — a lesson Australia would struggle to learn again with the scuppered Tiger attack helicopter decades later.

In 1949, the Royal Australian Air Force had just begun flying its locally built, licence-produced Vampires, but it was already considering its replacement. It also needed a replacement for the F-51D Mustang, the mainstay of its air force. After considering an indigenous effort, the CAC CA-23 (think Hunter meets Lightning meets MiG-21 meets a trout but uglier than any of them) was deemed too risky and time-consuming to develop. Australia had traditionally bought British aircraft, and ordered the Hawker P.1081 in 1950. CAC was to assemble these in Australia. The P.1081 was a halfway house between the Seahawk and the yet-to-fly Hunter, with swept wings and a Nene engine. Australia had wanted to license-produce a P.1052 derivative, but this would have to do.

Soon Australian interest waned, the project struggled, and Hawker seemed unlikely to support a licence agreement while busy with British projects. Then came the Korean War, and the RAAF’s fighters’ inferiority became critical; waiting for an unbuilt fighter was not an option. They asked the US for Sabres, but the US could barely meet its own demands. The British offered the Meteor F.Mk 8; it had to do. The RAAF rushed Meteor F.8s into service for Korea in 1951, but they were hopelessly outclassed at higher altitudes. Five were shot down by MiG-15s in air combat, including three during the disastrous engagement of 1 December 1951. No. 77 Squadron lost 54 of the 90 Gloster Meteors it operated during the Korean War. The majority of the squadron’s aircraft losses, however, occurred during ground-attack operations, largely due to enemy anti-aircraft fire and operational accidents. The Meteor’s inferiority to the MiG-15 in speed, climb and high-altitude manoeuvrability forced the squadron to abandon its principal fighter role in favour of ground attack. The Meteors claimed five MiGs destroyed, but this was in more favourable set-ups, and the figure is much disputed, with only one fully confirmed.

The RAAF kept thinking about its next fighter. They considered the Hunter and the Sabre (factoring in the time to licence-produce it). The Sabre was attractive: available, capable and combat-proven. But buying an American aircraft straight off the shelf would have been politically difficult for a government committed to its “Buy British” preference.

How a Soviet Spy Helped Change the Course of the War

F. W. Meredith was an Irish aeronautical genius working at the Royal Aeronautical Establishment in England. In the 1930s, the RAE was not the fusty organisation we might imagine but a hotbed of radical ideas. Meredith’s fears for Europe, which proved prophetic, led him to spy for the Soviets. Meanwhile, the aerodynamic phenomenon he identified was harnessed to great effect for the P-51 Mustang. And Meredith’s contribution to aviation went even further. He played a key role in creating the first practical drone and even the autopilot. Far from being a thing of the past, his ideas may prove more important than ever for the next generation of electric aircraft.

In his book Spitfire, Mustang and the ‘Meredith Effect’: How a Soviet Spy Helped Change the Course of the War, Peter Spring traces Meredith’s remarkable career in meticulous detail, challenging (and sometimes even reversing) received wisdom about some of the war’s most celebrated aircraft. Which fighter was designed to harness the Meredith effect — the Spitfire or the Mustang? The answer is surprising.

We caught up with Peter Spring for an epic, in-depth, 5,000-word interview about Meredith, his inventions and his enduring influence on aviation. This interview, full of fresh perspectives, is essential reading for anyone interested in the Mustang, Spitfire or Second World War aircraft in general.

Ok, pour yourself a glass of wine, get comfortable and let’s jump in.

“In 1942, the RAE investigated why the Allison-powered Mustang I was so fast at low levels compared to the Spitfire V. US aerodynamicist Edward Warner was sent to England to investigate. He wrote he was told: ‘“Well, it really hasn’t much of a laminar-flow section”; that was modified to a suggestion that the wing design was such that laminar flow could only exist near the tips; and finally, that a skin joint running parallel to the span was sufficient to destroy laminar flow beyond the first 25% of the chord.’ Warren added that what interested the RAE was ‘the position of the radiator’.

Explain the Meredith effect in the simplest possible language?

A radiator placed directly in the airstream produces increasing drag as air speed rises. If, however, the radiator is placed in a carefully designed duct, the otherwise wasted heat from the engine’s coolant fluid will heat the air going through the duct, expanding and expelling it at a higher velocity, creating thrust that will, above a certain aircraft velocity, exceed the drag from the cooling system.

It should be added that Meredith’s seminal 1935 paper, Cooling of Aircraft Engines With special reference to Ethylene Glycol Radiators enclosed in Ducts, was largely concerned with the derivation of the equation which calculates the theoretical speed at which drag from the cooling system is exceeded by the thrust generated in the cooling duct. The key insight—that previously no one had considered worthwhile investigating—was that the tiny conversion of the heat into kinetic energy was worth pursuing. Meredith demonstrated that it was: leading to ducted radiator cooling systems becoming ubiquitous, although their efficiency varied widely; and totally replaced the alternatives of retractable and front shuttered radiators.

Producing the Meredith effect operationally required no particular maintenance. What did was the Mustang’s laminar flow wing. During the Second World War, there was great interest in whether the Mustang was so fast because of its laminar-flow wing or some other reason. For a laminar flow wing to function, its exterior surface must be exceptionally smooth and free of physical defects, contamination, or structural changes that could trigger an early transition from laminar to turbulent airflow.

What kind of speeds do you need to reach for the Meredith effect to be meaningful?

Meredith wrote in his original 1935 theoretical paper ‘It is shown that the power expended on cooling does not increase with speed for a properly designed ducted system but that, owing to recovery of waste heat, a thrust may be derived at speeds of the order of 300mph’. The specific number given by his calculations was 312mph at 14,000ft.

Experiments at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) in 1936 found that ‘the internal drag becomes negative at speeds over 290 mph ’. In 1941, US NACA researchers tested a propulsive duct. ‘At a Mach number of about 0.5, [360mph at 14,000ft] the propulsive effect had become equal to the internal drag, and beyond this speed substantial net thrust was developed.’ They concluded, “clearly the insignificant Meredith effect had the potential to become a primary jet-propulsion system.”

These experiments were carried on in laboratories using small-scale models. I am not aware of any tests using actual aircraft that established the velocities at which Meredith-effect thrust balanced cooling drag, but in practice such speeds may have been higher.

The question is the definition of ‘meaningful’. In practice, it is doubtful that most ducted radiator systems on Second World War fighters produced thrust that exceeded drag. The real issue was how much they negated cooling drag.

What was the first aircraft to incorporate the Meredith effect installations?

The Spitfire’s cooling installation was designed to generate the Meredith effect. In 1935, Meredith transferred to the RAE Aerodynamics unit (from its Avionics unit) to tackle the challenge that higher power from newer engines, like the Rolls-Royce Merlin, was being negated by increased cooling drag. That year, ‘Internally placed radiator systems [were rated] Priority A’ by the RAE. In September 1935, Meredith led an RAE delegation to Supermarine to discuss the radiator installation mock-up. E J Davis from Supermarine was present and, in 1986, gave a lecture on The Basic Design of the Prototype Spitfire. Davis wrote that ‘he and his colleagues were of the opinion that the thrust of the warm air from the radiator balanced the drag. It was in effect a rudimentary jet engine’.

Meredith was scathing at the meeting about the Spitfire radiator duct’s design and location, which was too short and would cause significant boundary-layer ingress problems. He was right, and the Mustang’s higher speed at the same engine power was partly due to its superior cooling-system design.

There is a popular idea that the Meredith effect actively contributed to the P-51 Mustang’s thrust; is this true?

It is certainly true that the Meredith effect contributed to the P-51 Mustang’s higher speed. The story, however, of how the Meredith effect came to be incorporated into the Mustang’s design is complicated, and I little understood despite the vast literature on the subject. Indeed,the whole story of the Mustang’s development is shrouded in myth.

The Mustang’s ventral radiator duct allowed a long, deep installation that facilitated the Meredith effect, but that location was not initially selected to produce it. By the late 1930s, US research favoured ‘oversquare’ radiators, that is, wider than they were long. It also favoured burying the radiator. In 1939 North American Aviation (NAA) head of Preliminary Design, Edgar Schmued, commented, when laying out a secret study for an Allison-powered fighter, that “due to the small size of the engine compartment, the oil radiator, coolant tank and cooling radiator will have to be placed to the rear of the pilot”. This had nothing to do with obtaining the Meredith effect, of which Schmued was then unaware.

Incorporating achieving the Meredith effect in the Mustang probably had two key stages:

1) Between February and March 1940 there was a major change in the design of the radiator duct of the P509 which developed into the Mustang. This moved the radiator duct forward and lengthened it. The event that precipitated this change may have been a meeting of NAA engineers in late February, who gathered to break the impasse between the British Purchasing Committee (BPC) and NAA over marketing the P509. At this meeting were CALTEC-trained aerodynamicists Ed Horkey and Irving Ashkenas. They were familiar with the concept of the Meredith effect through NACA publications, which drew heavily on German research that, in turn, developed Meredith’s work. (A 1946 NAA report co-authored by Irving Ashkenas described the “so-called Meredith effect”. This is the second use of the term I found. The first use was in the 1943 report cited above.) The revised duct would have been far more effective in generating the Meredith effect.

2) Between May and October 1940 there were major further changes to the duct design. There was a debate over whether, after purchasing material from Curtiss, including its XP-46 design, NAA incorporated it into the Mustang design. The BPC, which considered the XP-46 to have been designed to incorporate the Meredith effect, insisted that NAA review Curtiss material. NAA vehemently denied taking anything (for legal and reputational reasons) from the Curtiss XP-46. But a careful analysis of the XP-46 and the changes in the NAA design might cast doubt on these denials. I obtained the January 1940 XP-46 report from NASA (then NACA) and the revised design of the NAA aircraft (by then called the X-73) and the similarities are marked: both ducts have similar shapes; both have adjustable entrances; and a round slanted forward radiator like the XP-46 replaces the X-73’s square vertical radiator. I believe that, despite NAA’s denials, the timing and close similarities indicate that NAA did include design material from the XP-46, and that this improved the derivation of the Meredith effect.

It might be added that writings on aerodynamics show that Irving Ashkenas, who redesigned the entire radiator duct installation for the P-51C to use the Packard-built Rolls-Royce Merlin with a two-stage, two-speed supercharger, was very familiar with the Meredith effect.

Paradoxically, the Spitfire was designed from the outset to incorporate the Meredith effect radiator, and it did it badly; in the Mustang design process, its incorporation and enhancement were gradual, but it did it very well.

Which countries, including the Soviets, explored the Meredith effect and achieved it to a meaningful degree?

It was something utterly different

Historian James Holland made a strong and elegant case for the P-51 Mustang being “the most decisive aircraft in history”, but let me offer an alternative: the Douglas SBD Dauntless.

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If ‘decisive’ means producing the greatest strategic effect at the moment when the outcome genuinely remained in doubt, I think the answer is the Douglas SBD Dauntless. It was not sexy like the Mustang; it was ‘mid’. Presumably the Battle of Midway was so-called because the US Navy’s most significant aircraft was mid. The Dauntless weighed the same as a fully loaded 17-seater minibus. It was not fast like the Mustang; it pootled around at speeds around 100 mph slower than the Zero fighters it had to survive. Its crews joked that SBD stood for “Slow, But Deadly”.

In June 1942, at Midway, the Dauntless proved itself capable of doing something very few combat aircraft have ever achieved: in a matter of hours, it helped destroy the operational heart of an enemy fleet and fundamentally altered the course of a war. Its first notable success had come only days after America’s entry into the war, when US power was at its lowest ebb. On 10 December 1941, Dauntlesses from USS Enterprise attacked the Japanese submarine I-70. The first attack damaged it and prevented it from submerging; later that day, another Dauntless returned and sank it. This was three days after Pearl Harbor.

Then came Midway. By June 1942, Japan had enjoyed an extraordinary run of victories across the Pacific. Pearl Harbor had crippled the American battleship fleet; Singapore and the Philippines had fallen; Japanese forces had swept through South-East Asia and into the Dutch East Indies. The Imperial Japanese Navy appeared to possess the initiative everywhere, and at Midway, it sought to extend that advantage. Instead, it lost four of its fleet carriers: Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, and Hiryū—the very striking force, four carriers of the six-carrier force that had attacked Pearl Harbor. The crucial blow came from American carrier dive-bombers, principally the Dauntless.

On the morning of 4 June, Japanese carriers were caught in an acutely vulnerable state. American torpedo-bomber attacks had driven some Japanese fighters down toward sea level, while the carriers were recovering from earlier operations, rearming and refuelling aircraft. The attacking force enjoyed excellent luck in its timing. When Dauntlesses arrived above the force, they found their targets exposed. The ensuing attack was devastating. SBDs from Enterprise fatally damaged Akagi and Kaga, while Yorktown‘s Dauntlesses wrecked Sōryū. Later that afternoon, Dauntlesses from Enterprise found and mortally damaged Hiryū.

Michael Pryce goes deep into the strange untold stories behind the Harrier

From intuition machines to Mach 3 jump-jets, via illicit liaisons in Paris, the story of the Harrier is as bizarre and exciting as the machine itself. We spoke to Michael Pryce, author of Jump Jet: The Secret History of the Harrier, to find out more.

Follow Joe Coles on Substack, Twitter X or Blue Sky. His superb Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is available her

HK: Short-ranged, killed tons of pilots, hard to use, slow, real dispersed combat operations never happened, and when a quick-to-deploy attack aircraft was needed for Afghanistan, the Tornado proved easier to deploy — was the Harrier a waste of time?

MP: Fight’s on! The Harrier helped win a war or two, did manage dispersed ops in them, and was ‘only’ (!) as dangerous as many conventional 1950s designs, its real peer group. It was much safer than any other jump jet that flew – the first Harrier-family fatality took almost a decade, while other prototypes took much less time to kill their pilots. It was “easy to fly”, but also “easy to crash” as one test pilot told me. Training and procedures mattered.

The Tornado got to Afghanistan eventually, after the Harrier, and there are various ‘swings and roundabouts’ comparisons online between what they both did there, but having worked alongside the Harrier team a bit in 2008-10, I was impressed by how fast they could get new kit developed and delivered to the front line. That was a real difference.

So the Harrier was French, and the Lightning was German… tell me more.

They were both British but took ideas and influence from others. We all share the same air, and no sector is more international than aviation, so that’s not surprising. What did surprise me was how the Lightning derived from a very single-minded German designer’s focus on highly swept wings for supersonic flight. Of course, WW2 German science influenced post-war British design, and in this case this ex-Focke-Wulf chap’s theories on leading-edge suction were what drove Britain’s leap into supersonic fighter design.

The Pegasus engine for the Harrier certainly started with Frenchman Michel Wibault, but it took a British engineer, Gordon Lewis, to bash it into a sensible shape, and Harrier designer Ralph Hooper helped. All of them were conducted by an American in Paris, Willis Chapman, who was the real-life model for Colonel Cathcart in Catch-22. At the start of the project, there was a lot of international influence, and some money.

The planes and their engines were designed and made in Britain for the most part, although the original Harrier has some bits from Northrop engineers working in what is now a SpaceX factory. Ideas flowed between nations and people. I found learning all that fascinating.

The fantastically sexy BAe P.1214-3…what was it, and what are your thoughts on it?

It was the first supersonic jump jet design I ever clapped eyes on, in Bill Sweetman’s Aircraft 2000 when I was a kid. Despite knowing there was supposed to be a new jump jet in the factory at Kingston, near where I grew up, I thought it must be total fantasy. FSW designs were all the rage in the 1980s, but none entered service.

Realistically, such wings need a canard to make them work, but for a vectored-thrust jump-jet a canard poses control problems at low speed (basically, the engine tries to push the nose up so the canard trims it back down, producing negative lift just when you want maximum lift). So, without a canard, the P.1214 was likely impractical. In addition, the kink in the wing leading edge would produce unswept isobars right where the twin booms join it. Swept wings work by sweeping back the isobars, the imaginary lines that connect equal air pressure over a wing, so straightening them out slows you down, especially at the thickest point on the wing.

Still, it looked cool enough for supposed spies to try and swipe a P.1214 model on display by BAe at a USAF trade show in America.

Thinking about Ralph Hooper’s P.1216: What was the single most difficult architectural problem in making the transition from a subsonic V/STOL aircraft to a genuinely supersonic jump-jet?

Ralph Hooper was clear that it was hot gas ingestion (HGI). With plenum chamber burning (PCB) engines you have a lot of hot gas near the engine air intake that can cause an engine surge and cut thrust. Despite lots of modelling and full-scale tests it was still a challenge, but one that was very unpredictable. Lots of people said it was impossible, and that the hot PCB exhaust would dig post holes in the ground etc., but what was surprising was that the engineers closest to the problem thought it could be solved, but only by detailed testing on a near-final design.

Airflow under hovering aircraft is still an immense challenge to predict – my day job involves trying to make this work for electric flying taxis, decades after Ralph Hooper’s team tried. The specifics really matter.

The P.1216 looks radically different from the Harrier. How much of that geometry was driven by supersonic flight, and how much by V/STOL?

The whole layout was driven by the need to keep the hot exhaust, with six times the energy of the Harrier engine if PCB was used, away from the rear fuselage. On the Harrier, the exhaust caused vibration that would crack its structure and shake equipment to failure, so upping the levels on a supersonic jump-jet made it all that much worse.

The Fairey Fulmar was the F-14 Tomcat of its day, and I will prove it.

Comparing the Fairey Fulmar to the Grumman F-14 Tomcat is sacrilegious, but I don’t care. One was a stolid British 260-mph, piston-engined monoplane with a reputation for mediocrity; the other, a Cold War sex-and-death god jet eternally glowing in the California sun, attended to by greased, muscular beachball players and beautiful civilian advisors. The 1942 Admiralty instructional film ‘Ditching Without ‘Hedging’ is certainly no Top Gun (and Ships with Wings is no Ditching Without Hedging). ‘Winkle’ Brown lacked the swagger of Maverick. Yet, when stripped of their technological eras, their doctrinal DNA is identical, and they had eerily similar histories. ‘Madness!’ you shout at me as you prepare for a navy-style barroom brawl, but I have a smashed bottle to defend myself and have leapt onto the bar. Fights on!

Follow Joe Coles on Substack, Twitter X or Blue Sky. His superb Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is available here (while stocks last)

10. Grumman & Fairey, separated at birth?

Like Sally Hawkins’ character in The Shape of Water, Grumman made a name for itself by embracing rugged amphibians (while Fairey made its name with similarly wet aircraft with rather more varied aquatic habits). Both manufacturers’ aircraft were known for being tough and pleasant to handle, and both made seaplanes and stars of carrier warfare. Fairey produced the signature FAA torpedo bomber of the war, the Swordfish, and Grumman did the same for the US Navy with the Avenger. Both Fairey and Grumman produced aircraft pivotal to some of their navies’ greatest victories, helping sink or cripple some of the most significant capital ships of the Second World War. Both also created the highest-scoring naval fighters of their respective national navies: Fairey’s Fulmar and Grumman’s Hellcat. Both leapt into the 1950s with ugly twin-engined jobs, Fairey with the grotesquely magnificent turboprop Gannet and Grumman with the piston-engined S-2 Tracker. Both were designed as carrier-based anti-submarine warfare aircraft, and both later spawned airborne early-warning derivatives: the Gannet became the Gannet AEW.3, while the S-2 was related to the E-1 Tracer. Both proposed very large, heavy, complex fighters with long-range active radar missiles, though Fairey’s FD.3 was not made, and Grumman’s F-14 was.

The Fairey Rotodyne and Grumman 698 (1980s) were both wonderfully ambitious attempts to make VTOL transport aircraft practical.

The 698 was a later Grumman V/STOL transport concept developed for possible US Navy use, using tilting engine nacelles. Both ended their independent design lines with a sexy single-engined X-plane exploring a new wing shape: Fairey with the Delta 2 and Grumman with the X-29.

“one squadron is on record as having adopted the tactic of releasing sheets of toilet paper from the rear cockpit in an attempt to deter pursuing enemy fighters as nothing more potent was available..”

9: Fulmar ace versus Tomcat ace

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is credited with five fighter kills across Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick: three MiG-28s and two Su-57s, all while flying the F-14 Tomcat. He survives both films, serves as a test pilot, and continues flying operationally. But he is only fictional. Real-life Fleet Air Arm ace Commander Stanley “Stan” Orr was credited with 17 enemy aircraft destroyed during the Second World War, over eight of them while flying the Fairey Fulmar. He later flew Grumman cats (long before Maverick), the Martlet/Wildcat and the Hellcat. Orr also served in Korea, flying Sea Furies, and, like Maverick, became a test pilot. He died in 2003.

If we choose the real-life greatest fighter aces of each type, the similarities are even more startling. Iranian ace Brigadier General Jalil Zandi and Orr both scored eight confirmed kills in their primary aircraft—Zandi in the F-14 and Orr in the Fulmar. Both survived their respective wars (Zandi fought in the Iran-Iraq War). Both went on to distinguished careers after combat. Zandi was sentenced to ten years in prison and threatened with execution for his opposition to a cruel Lt Col overly loyal to the regime, but was released after six months. He died in 2001 in a car accident; Orr followed two years later, dying in 2003. Colonel Fereydoun A. Mazandarani may have scored more, claiming 11 weapon-confirmed kills and five claimed manoeuvre kills in our 2020 interview with him; regardless, the totals for highest ace on type remain extremely similar.

(Orr is generally quoted as 8.5-11 kill claims on Fulmars, Zandi as eight confirmed and three probable on F-14; it is probably fair to say both had around 8 or 9 confirmed).

8. Urgent Salvage of projects involving bombers and the air force

Neither aircraft began as a clean-sheet design; both were rapidly developed to meet urgent naval requirements, replacing failed programmes (that featured the air force) by aggressively harvesting existing technology.

The Fulmar: The Fairey P.4/34 was originally intended for the RAF for use as a light bomber. After earlier Admiralty requirements failed, Fairey responded to Specification O.8/38 for a long-range carrier fighter by adapting the existing P.4/34 airframe and aerodynamic work for carrier operation, adding folding wings, arrestor and catapult equipment, naval communications, and other modifications. It helped that it was fighter-like in its sleekness. No new gun or engine was developed for the aircraft.

The F-14: When Secretary Robert McNamara’s joint-service General Dynamics F-111B collapsed due to crippling weight issues, the US Navy faced an urgent fleet defence vacuum. Grumman salvaged the situation by transplanting the F-111B’s core technologies—its AWG-9 radar, Phoenix missile system, TF30 engines, and variable-geometry wing research—directly into the new VFX (F-14) airframe. The F-14 Tomcat was approved for development in February 1969, after the U.S. Navy selected Grumman’s design for the VFX fighter requirement. It first flew on 21 December 1970. So, from approval to first flight, it was about 22 months. Like the Fulmar, its apparently miraculous short development was something of an illusion, as work had actually been going on since 1966. As the main subcontractor, Grumman, knew pretty early on that the F-111B was a turkey (1966 test results were bleak and a 1967 report revealed it would be very vulnerable to Soviet fighters). So the Model 303, later F-14, was developed as a potential successor.

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Both were the Fulmar and Tomcat heavy, specialised fleet-defence fighters engineered to solve the same naval strategic problem. Though the F-14 was agile for an interceptor, it could not match the other teen fighters of its generation. Likewise, the Fulmar was nowhere near as agile as the land-based Spitfire. Neither the Tomcat nor the Fulmar was designed primarily to excel in dogfights. Both were conceived around the concept of Outer Air Defence—engaging incoming threat waves long before enemy strike aircraft could launch anti-ship weapons against capital ships.

7. The Dedicated Second Crewman (RIO /Observer)

Beyond the F-14’s swing-wings, the defining hallmark of both aircraft was the second seat, recognising that open-ocean air combat was far too complex for a single pilot.

The Fulmar: The Admiralty specified a two-seat layout so a dedicated Observer could assist the pilot during long over-water flights. Operating without radio beacons over featureless marine environments, the second crew member provided critical dead-reckoning navigation, managed long-range communications, and performed visual scouting. A second pair of eyes was especially useful when scanning the sea for aircrew or sailors on liferafts.

The F-14: The Tomcat paired a pilot with a Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) in the back seat. The RIO was essential to operate the powerful Hughes AWG-9 radar, track multiple high-speed targets simultaneously, and manage complex long-range missile engagements.

6. Most famous backseaters

‘Goose’ and Lieutenant Mark Fownes Somerville were both back-seat aircrew, but their roles differed. Goose was Maverick’s fictional F-14 RIO, handling radar, navigation, communications and weapons systems. Somerville was a real Fleet Air Arm observer in the Fulmar, responsible mainly for navigation, wireless communication and observation. Goose had no confirmed kills; Somerville (and pilot Rupert Tillard) were credited with six Italian aircraft destroyed together. Both died in service: Goose in a training accident, Somerville in combat in May 1941.

5. Outsized Ammunition and Weapon Reserves: Flying Battleships

“The Royal Navy at last had a shipboard fighter packing healthy firepower and coupling this most desirable of attributes with a performance which could at least be considered respectable.”

–—Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown, Wings of the Navy

An actual fulmar, a seabird, will spit a foul-smelling oily substance at predators who get too close. It is similarly unwise to anger a Fairey Fulmar, as it was packing heat. The F-14 was also extremely well-armed. Both aircraft were designed around an armament-first philosophy that prioritised sustained firepower over pure speed or vertical climb rates, serving as flying armouries for attrition warfare at sea. The Fulmar had eight guns; the Tomcat had up to eight missiles.

The Fulmar: its designers equipped it with a staggering 6,000 rounds of .303 ammunition (750 rounds per gun across eight Brownings)—double the standard load of a Spitfire or Hurricane—allowing crews to conduct prolonged Combat Air Patrols (CAP) and multi-wave attacks without running dry. Later variants had a rather wild 1,000 rounds per gun for a total of 8,000 rounds.

The F-14: The Tomcat could carry eight air-to-air missiles (though not if they were the large heavy Phoenix). The Tomcat could take off (if not land) with six AIM-54 Phoenix missiles. Normally, a smaller number of Phoenix missiles were combined with AIM-7 Sparrows, AIM-9 Sidewinders, and 675 rounds of 20mm Vulcan cannon ammunition. The Phoenix was the world’s longest-range air-to-air missile, giving the F-14 a formidable

Mosquito mothership and Mini-Miles during Operation NEPTUNE

‘One of those flashes of genius that can change the course of history.’

–Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown

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If General Hap Arnold was feeling at all jaded, the sight of the yellow-painted Mosquito, impressively displayed by its test pilot, Geoffrey de Havilland, raised his spirits. The previous night, on April 19, 1940, following dinner with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the United States Army Air Corps Chief had been up talking until 2 am. This energy-sapping encounter did nothing to dampen his enthusiasm for de Havilland’s new twin-engined bomber, which he deemed to be ‘outstanding’.

Returning to the United States with a set of plans for the Mosquito, America’s own entry into the war was still eight months away. It would take until July 1943 before the USAAC, lobbied by the President’s son, Elliot Roosevelt, made a formal bid to acquire Mosquitos which, two years on, still outperformed any other machine in the sky. It was one of only three British designs, alongside the Spitfire and a small quantity of Beaufighters, supplied to the US under the reverse lend-lease agreement.

Accelerated by war, Britain’s aviation industry was world-leading, a position reinforced by machines like the magnificent Mosquito. Four years later, de Havilland’s finest would play a supporting role in the country’s retreat from the race.

Lieutenant Commander Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown’s introduction to the Mosquito came in 1944 when he was asked to land one on an aircraft carrier – the first time anyone had attempted to do so in a twin-engined machine. A Fleet Air Arm fighter pilot with a number of kills to his name, Brown was already building a reputation as Britain’s most revered test pilot, and would, in a long career, set records for both the greatest number of different aircraft types flown and more carrier landings than anyone else in history. Both still stand today. In December 1945 he also became the first person to land a jet aircraft on a carrier when recovered aboard HMS Ocean in a de Havilland Sea Vampire.

The following summer, however, he was expecting to become the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.

Details of Britain’s early jet engine development, led by Frank Whittle, had been shared with Hap Arnold during his April 1941 visit to Britain. Enthused by its potential, the USAAC boss pushed for its adoption on his return to the US, only to conclude that, with war seemingly imminent, it was more important to build sufficient numbers of good aircraft than to choose to ‘follow the mirage’ that jet propulsion seemed to offer.

Across the Atlantic, Britain’s first jet, the Gloster W.28/39, took to the air just a month after Arnold’s visit. Work on the experimental jet in which Winkle Brown was going to break the sound barrier began the following year. Four years later, in February 1946, with construction of the prototype Miles M.52 already well advanced, the project was cancelled, and all of the company’s research was shared with the United States. With the end of the war, Winkle’s hopes of going supersonic were deemed to be unaffordable and unnecessarily risky.

The cockpit of the Miles M.52 after its cancellation

In the US, though, work on a rival design continued unabated. At first glance, the bullet-shaped, straight-winged Bell X-1 and Miles M.52 looked similar but, lacking a sufficiently advanced jet engine, Bell chose to use a rocket engine. And, on 14 October 1947, Captain Charles ‘Chuck’ Yeager, after being carried aloft in the X-1 by a B-29 Superfortress, dropped from the bomber’s belly, ignited the rocket and flew beyond Mach 1 for the first time.

Winkle Brown’s disappointment cut deep. Not least because he, along with many others who had worked on the M.52 project, was convinced the X-1 had only been controllable at transonic speeds because of its adoption of the all-moving tailplane pioneered by Miles’s design.

A year later, a Mosquito XVI took off from St Eval airfield in Cornwall to complete Operation NEPTUNE. Climbing to a height of 36,400 feet, she levelled off west of the Isles of Scilly and accelerated to near 400 mph. Beneath the fuselage, she was carrying a 3/10-scale, rocket-powered model of the Miles design.

With the cancellation of Winkle Brown’s attempt to fly faster than sound, the distinctive M.52 design had been adopted by Barnes Wallis at Vickers-Armstrong for a series of unmanned high-speed trials. The first of these NEPTUNE flights, launched six days before Chuck Yeager’s record-breaking flight over the Mojave Desert, ended in failure when the model’s rocket engine blew up. A year of frustration followed. But on October 10, 1948, it all came good.

The model’s Alpha rocket fired six seconds after being dropped from the Mosquito mothership. The Mini-Miles accelerated smoothly, trailing a slim white exhaust plume. Sixty-two seconds later, telemetry equipment recorded that the little drone was flying at Mach 1.38, proving the soundness of the original design.

The Mini-Miles in flight after being dropped from the Mosquito mothership

For Winkle Brown, the cancellation of the Miles M.52 and the success of Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1 represented the moment that Britain relinquished its position at the forefront of global aviation. If that was the case, the Mosquito, a machine that remained unsurpassed for its performance and versatility throughout the war, had represented something of a high-water mark. And, even three years after the war’s end, it was still the only place to turn when a high-speed, high-flying aircraft capable of launching the Mini-Miles drone was needed.

And Winkle was an unabashed fan of de Havilland’s finest. The Mosquito, he wrote, was ‘one of those flashes of genius that can change the course of history.’ After losing the race to Mach 1, he could never quite bring himself to be similarly generous about Chuck Yeager …

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Speed, Walthamstow and Heroin Chic

A man bombs around Crystal Palace on one of Britain’s first motorcycles. He created both the bike and the engine. A couple of years later, he lives in Walthamstow and is busy designing some of Britain’s first buses. He borrows £500 from his dad to make an aeroplane (and a new engine to power it). As this was 1906, this was the equivalent of £77,000 today. This twenty-four-year-old man was Geoffrey de Havilland.

Twenty-seven years pass, and the world’s most beautiful object, the De Havilland D.H.88 Comet, wins an England-to-Australia air race. It combined a thin wing with variable-pitch airscrews and a retractable undercarriage, something even the radical Boeing 247 had only done eight months earlier. But the DH.88 combined these with far more advanced aerodynamics: an enclosed cockpit, a dainty tapered wing with a rounded tip, curving deliciously into the fuselage at the rear root, perky 205-horsepower Gipsy Sixes, and a dramatically raked-back tail; it was devilishly handsome. Futuristic, too, with little in common with other 1934 aircraft that were either barrels or bathtubs festooned with struts, too many wings, and more parasitical drag than RuPaul stealing your pension pot. Once painted glossy black or red, the DH.88 was almost too lovely to look at.

But de Havilland’s had not stopped his quest to make the world’s skinniest aeroplane; with the DH.91 Albatross airliner of 1937, this heroin-chic went from the wings to the fuselage. On mail and airline service, they proved extremely fast.

The de Havilland Albatross was built mainly from wood. Wood was chosen because it was lightweight, strong, and could be produced with a smooth aerodynamic surface. Instead of solid timber, it used a sandwich structure made from thin birch plywood bonded to a lightweight balsa wood core. The birch plywood provided strength, while the end-grain balsa added stiffness without much weight. This reduced the aircraft’s overall weight, improved fuel efficiency, and increased speed compared with many 1930s aircraft. The smooth wooden skin also produced less drag than the riveted metal construction then in use. Although the design was advanced and performed well, it required skilled craftsmanship and careful maintenance to protect the wooden structure from moisture.

In 1938, De Havilland suggested to the British Air Ministry that a scaled-down twin-engined Albatross derivative would make a great bomber, unarmed, immune to fighters by dint of higher speed. Something that could carry a decent load to Berlin. The Air Ministry didn’t like the idea of an unarmed wooden combat aircraft. I sometimes think the Mosquito story is presented almost as if it sprang from nowhere. Clearly it did not. Likewise, I take issue with people who portray it as a “idiots from the Air Ministry are sceptical about the wonder weapon” yet when you look at it from their point of view at the time of course they were sceptical: they were presented with a plan for the fastest bomber in the world after the previous fastest bomber in the world which was (checks notes) the Blenheim! Ah yes, and that turned out spectacularly well, right? And this time, rather than a one-gun turret, they want us to have no guns at all? Fine. Great. Sign us up.

How very British. And you know exactly what I mean by that.

To officially open Mosquito Month on Hush-Kit, we hand you over to the Pub Warlord himself, historian, comedian and drummer, Al Murray.

“I am not a fan of overpraise, hype, too much buzz. Something in it makes me baulk, refuse the hurdle. Whole bands’ output that I might otherwise love is ignored if there’s just too much talk about them. Similarly, I find it impossible to credit notions of national characteristics in engineering with too much importance. People and governments, rather than Britishness, are what gave birth to, say, the Spitfire – and where did the wing come from, anyway? Engineering problems in aircraft have a universal quality, bound by physics and material constraints.

However, it seems to me, despite my better judgement, that there is something very British (whatever you or I mean by that, but I think this makes my case) in the interaction between culture, engineering, human beings, and government in what can best be called the manifestation of the de Havilland Mosquito, the greatest warplane of all time. A family firm, fatally wedded to the dangers of its vocation, designing an aircraft in spite of the specification laid down, from materials that were not scarce in a time of material constraint, that outperformed everything, that adapted to every role thrown at it: the world-beating Wooden Wonder. And a Wonder that, like the thoroughbred English stallion it was, literally wilted in the Burmese climate.”

Mosquito month has just taken off on Hush-Kit! Prepare for heavy Mosquito action this July on Hush-Kit.

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Follow Joe Coles on Substack, Twitter X or Blue Sky. His superb Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is available here.

Charge of the foam-sprayed maniacs

Of all air force missions, torpedo bombing was the most perilous; In 1942, the RAF estimated a crew had only a 3% chance of surviving a 2nd tour. The reason was simple: they flew low and relatively slowly along a predictable path towards often-fiercely defended ships, yet they were also deadly to their enemies. Across the vast oceans of the Second World War, torpedo bombers became instruments of sudden maritime doom, striking battleships and convoys alike from wave-top height. From fragile biplanes to powerful twin-engined attackers, these aircraft shaped naval warfare, deciding campaigns in seconds of impact, courage and precision flying under unimaginable defensive fire. These are ten of the greatest.

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10: Heinkel He 115 ‘Der Seedoppelagent’

Unlike the Junkers Ju 88 and He 111, which were Germany’s most successful torpedo bombers, the He 115 was purpose-designed for the maritime role; it was also distinctive as the only seaplane (an aircraft that can operate directly from water) on our list.

The He 115 was a rather large twin-engined floatplane powered by two BMW radial engines. It first flew in 1937 and garnered a string of world records. Its prototype set eight international seaplane speed-and-payload records in March 1938, carrying loads of up to 2,000 kg over 1,000-km and 2,000-km courses.

The Heinkel He 115 was valued for its long range and dependable handling in rough seas. Its top speed was about 327 km/h (203 mph), which proved adequate early in the war. However, it became increasingly vulnerable to enemy fighters, while its large float-equipped design made concealment and escape difficult.

The Heinkel He 115 served with the German Luftwaffe as a torpedo bomber, minelayer, reconnaissance aircraft, and transport. It operated extensively in Norway and the North Atlantic, attacking Allied shipping and supporting special missions. Some captured aircraft later flew with British forces for covert operations and intelligence missions. Though the He 115 is added at the He 111’s expense, we think it is an interesting aircraft worthy of inclusion.

9: Aichi B7A Ryusei ‘Grace’ ‘Grace under fire’

The B7A was a large, advanced carrier-based torpedo-dive bomber developed for the Imperial Japanese Navy, intended to combine strike roles in a single high-performance aircraft. It was designed specifically to deliver a Type 91 aerial torpedo against enemy shipping while also carrying conventional bombs for dive-bombing attacks. It was meant to be Japan’s next-generation naval strike aircraft; in practice, it arrived too late and in too few numbers to matter.

Chief Engineer Toshio Ozaki’s design centred on a mid-wing configuration with an inverted gull-wing layout, chosen to provide clearance for a large propeller while still allowing a capacious internal bomb bay and the structural considerations required for carrier operations. Powered by the Nakajima Homare 12 radial engine, the Ryusei achieved impressive speed for a carrier bomber—around 352 mph—allowing it to outrun or at least evade many contemporary interceptors after a torpedo or bombing run.

First flown in 1942, the B7A suffered from prolonged engine reliability issues and continual airframe refinement, delaying meaningful production until 1944. By that stage, Japan’s carrier fleet and strategic position had already collapsed. Roughly 80 aircraft were completed at Aichi before a major earthquake destroyed its manufacturing facilities, with a further 25 assembled at alternative sites. Its limited production run severely restricted any chance of operational impact.

In theory, the Ryusei was intended to operate from the fleet carrier Taihō, but she was sunk before ever embarking the type. The last viable carrier, Shinano, was also lost shortly after commissioning, leaving the B7A to operate from land bases. As a result, its intended role as a carrier strike torpedo bomber, delivering coordinated attacks against enemy shipping formations, was never fully realised. Despite its promise and performance on paper, the “Grace” ultimately remained a weapon of unrealised potential in the closing stages of the war.

8: Nakajima B6N Tenzan ‘Jill’ ‘Me Tenzan, you Jill’

The Nakajima B6N Jill was Japan’s main late-war carrier torpedo bomber. It replaced the B5N Kate and was built for attacks against well-defended fleets. Impressively, it was almost one-third faster than the B5N. Its role was to deliver torpedoes at sea against enemy task forces under heavy fighter cover.

The Nakajima B6N Tenzan used the Nakajima NK7A Mamoru engine, which produced nearly double the horsepower of the engine in its predecessor, the Nakajima B5N Kate. The B5N’s Sakae engine produced about 1,000 hp, while the Mamoru generated around 1,850 hp on paper. This gave the B6N higher speed and better performance, though engine unreliability often reduced its real-world advantage.

B6N formations took part in the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf battles. They launched torpedo attacks against United States carrier groups and escort vessels. They achieved limited confirmed sinkings but did record torpedo hits on escort carriers and destroyers. As losses mounted, some surviving crews were later reassigned to kamikaze missions as well as reckless attacks with near-suicidal odds.

It had high wing loading and a high landing speed, which restricted it to Japan’s larger fleet carriers such as the Taiho class. It could not safely operate from smaller decks. Its combat record shows fewer successes than earlier types, but it remained Japan’s most capable dedicated torpedo bomber in sustained fleet action

7: Bristol Beaufort & Beaufighter ‘The Filton Felons’

Rommel later acknowledged that