Blackburn Aircraft Limited produced some of the worst aeroplanes ever made. From the TB of 1915 (an engine start set the float on fire), the Sidecar of 1919 (sold at Harrods, but couldn’t fly), the Roc (a fighter of 1938, that was slower than any bomber), and the pathetic Botha (underpowered, impossible to see out of in rain), through to the shameful Firebrand (late, extremely dangerous to pilots- but scandalously pushed into service with a hush-up that resulted in many deaths)- their track record was pretty appalling, so it is all the more impressive that they went on to make the wonderful ‘Bucc’, a masterpiece from 1958.

The Buccaneer was designed to counter the threat of Sverdlov-class cruisers. It was prepared in great secrecy, as a fast, low-level maritime attack aircraft capable of using nuclear weapons. The S. Mk.1 was underpowered, as test pilot Dave Eagles quipped in his recent Hush-Kit interview it “relied on the curvature of the earth to get airborne ”. This was solved when the S.Mk 2 was introduced in 1962, powered by the Spey. The result was a superb low-level aircraft with a long-range (longer even than the Tornado), a virtually indestructible construction and a rock-steady low-level ride. The type proved its worth in Desert Storm, and remained to the end of its life a potent weapon.

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English Electric Lightning. Three words which sit so beautifully together (ignoring the tautology of ‘electric’ lightning). The charged air of English skies ripped apart by riveted lunacy.

The Lightning was quite mad- a greedy machine set on eating fuel and turning it into speed. It was so greedy its great gaping mouth was half-full, trying to eats its own nose. Its hunger saw it eating up sky to reach altitudes where few could reach it. Unlike anything else, its engines were stacked one on top of each other, making it stand monstrously tall on the ground.

The Lightning would scorn today’s tedious drones controlled by gamers in porta-cabins. The Lightning was the anti-thesis of the UAV- it was a manned missile, tricksy and twitchy – and it killed more of its own pilots than it did enemies.

It could outfly and outfight any of its peers, but like an English genius, they neglected it and tried to kill it. The English Electric P.1A flew two months after Alan Turing died, another English product killed by a nation that loves to punish its greatest children.

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MY FAVOURITE AEROPLANE IN 200 WORDS #4: Supermarine S6

The Supermarine S6 earned itself the position of the ultimate racer built for the Schneider Trophy by securing the 2nd and 3rd consecutive wins for Great Britain. Every inch the thoroughbred, she boasted a Rolls Royce R Type engine so closely cowled that the cam covers were a part of the streamlined outer surfaces. No ounce of excess weight was allowed, nor any square inch of unnecessary cross sectional area. I used to think that, as the fastest machine of her day, she was hugely sophisticated but having seen one stripped down at Southampton I realised the opposite is true – and that she is the better expression of the ultimate for it. There is no crudity to the design but rather a simplicity that speaks of clarity of purpose. High speed aerodynamics, minimal packaging and maximum cooling are the only considerations. All this and achingly beautiful too.

Her legacy is also impeccable, though with no direct lineage lessons learned here greatly influenced the Merlin and Spitfire.   So – successful, pivotal and displaying the pure aesthetics born from the focused pursuit of speed. By default a shining example of the Bauhaus ideals of Walter Gropius.

There can be no finer aircraft.

Stephen Mosley is an artist and aeronautical engineer

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Peter Pendragon and Louise Laleham, the heroes of Aleister Crowley’s searing novel Diary of a Drug Fiend, hurtle headlong into the pitchblack night and intense love, in the freezing cockpit of Peter’s plane, fantastically high on beautifully pure cocaine. They first met a few hours ago, and neither of them have ever taken drugs before.

Jack Parsons was a very handsome man; a wayward father of modern rocketry, explosives expert, explosion addict, practising sex magician, OTO lodge leader, and mentor to L. Ron Hubbard. A week after he performed the Babalon Working ritual in the Mojave desert (against Crowley’s wishes), the remarkable Marjorie Cameron, a flame-haired visionary artist exactly matching the depiction of the goddess he’d invoked, knocked on his door and became his lover.

In my head there is a brilliant Hollywood biopic of Parsons. One sequence, amidst all the flame and fire and red desert smoke, shows Jack and Marjorie becoming Peter and Louise, flying through the night, lit by pale cold terrifying brilliance, howling wind, and mad passion, from the California desert to Thelema, Crowley’s judgement, and rebirth. The only aeroplane beautiful enough to carry them is the de Havilland Dragon Rapide.

David Piper is Commander of Special Operations for Hendrick’s Gin

Your friend is running an aviation role-playing game. You need a character and an aircraft, and you don’t want to be British or American because everyone else is.

You remember an airshow, early 1990s, you and your dad gazing at a silver fighter with unusual wings. You say: OK, my pilot is Swedish, his name’s Lars, and he flies a Saab Viggen.

The more you research your chosen plane, the more you’re smitten. It can take off and land on motorways! It’s technically a biplane! You build the 1:144 Revell kit; find the Matchbox model at a boot sale. You visit the Gothenburg Aeroseum and sit in that huge, high cockpit, in a Cold War hangar hacked from solid rock.

In 2012, the Swedish Air Force Historic Flight restore their Viggen to flying condition and announce a display at Sanicole Airshow in Belgium. On your birthday.

So on a sunny September Sunday you watch that silver fighter rise on the lift from its delta wing and canard foreplane, showing off its unique silhouette for you just like twenty years ago, and you learn that this particular Viggen was actually made in the year of your birth.

It’s your birthday Viggen.

The Fiat G.91 is the Kevin Bacon of European aviation: every military aircraft that followed can be linked to it very easily, normally in one or two degrees of separation. The Sud-Est Baroudeur is no exception to this rule.

Aeroplane designers hate wheels. Wheels are for cars. The weight and complexity of a retractable undercarriage is a huge nuisance. Why not do away with them altogether? The Nazi Germans were very keen on this idea and built a series of aeroplanes that took off from trolleys. The aircraft would uncouple itself from the trolley as it took-off, the trolley remaining behind on the runway. The aeroplane would land on simple skids.

A trolley take-off would free an aeroplane from the need for vast, vulnerable runways. It was far easier to achieve than vertical take-off and landing. And so it was that the Sud-Est SE.5000 Baroudeur (‘adventurer’) took its first flight on 1 August 1953.

It was superb. Trolley take-offs proved effortless, skid landings a delight (even in crosswinds). It could be rapidly rearmed and refuelled, and would have made a superb tactical fighter. A souped-up version was offered for a NATO competition, but lost out to the Fiat G.91.

Michael Fleet is currently researching spatial disorientation

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Alice Dryden [http://www.alice.dryden.co.uk] appreciates well-built Scandinavians.

It seems unsporting to mock anything Greek at the moment. But, this is about a Greek-American ‘achievement’.. and I’m half-Greek, so I guess it’s OK.

The Capelis XC-12 of 1933 was described in a 1973 letter to Air Enthusiast from John H.Murphy thus “The airplane was designed by Greeks, built by Greeks, and the venture was promoted by a Greek- and every Greek restaurateur on the West Coast stuck a few bucks in.. it succeeded in breaking just about every law of common sense, the Aeronautics Bureau of the Department of Commerce, and those of nature, including gravity” self-tapping screws were used, which shook themselves loose during flight “And its performance? Lousy- depending on how many screws were loose”.

But it had unexpected glory.. as a film star! It featured in the following films: Five Came Back (1939) Flying Tigers (1942), flown by John Wayne, Invisible Agent (1942), Night Plane from Chungking (1943), Action in Arabia (1944) and Dick Tracy’s Dilemma 1947 (models of it featured in even more films).

If the Capelis XC-12 teaches us anything- it’s that success sometimes come in unexpected ways. Alternatively, it may teach us that when designing an aeroplane, it’s probably best to use an experienced team of aeronautical engineers.

Nick Pardo

Film aficionado and reluctant Capricorn, he strongly recommend you check out this blog

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“Favourites?  Mustang, Spitfire, yeah…boring.  Mythologies rather than experiences. The closest any of us have gotten to the royalty of the air are plastic models or a glimpse at an airshow.

Not me.  As a kid, I spent hours surrounded by the scent of aluminium, old oil, and rubber… in my own plane.

It was an 0-47.

The 0-47 was so anonymous that the Army didn’t even give it a name.

No Storch, no Lystander, just a number.  Starting with a Zed.

North American built 250, a tiny number… [for America]   

No guns, it was designed to observe with a mile long greenhouse on top and a fat belly underneath with camera ports.

It was my airplane.

On a sleepy country airport one sat derelict axle deep in weeds.  Just a mile of walking, carrying a camp stool for the missing pilot seat, my sister and my best friend could fly to Europe destroy the Axis.

The pilot’s stick still waggled the bare ailerons who, like rudder, it’s yaw buddy, had lost their fabric years ago.

No cowling, prop, nor glass in the canopy, but deep inside it’s green cavernous interior, sitting at the observer’s station, the two camera port doors could be cranked open pushing the weeds aside to reveal the Japanese fleet..

The 90 degree Oklahoma Summer, the sound of cicadas, and this thing that once flew, were a 10 year old’s perfect day.

There is a flying example in California.  Now, for me as a pilot, the need is great…”

– Jack Murphy

In 1965 the Soviet Union started a top secret project lead by the engineer Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy. Known as ‘Spiral’, its aim was to build a spaceplane that could have been used for a variety of purposes including aerial reconnaissance, space rescue, satellite maintenance, and as a space interceptor to sabotage enemy satellites. Yes, I did say ‘space interceptor’, but let’s add another element of excitement: it was to be launched from the back of a Mach 6 mothership (to be built by Tupolev). Once thrown into the air by the mothership, its own detachable rocket would boost it into space. The  MiG-105 was built as a research aircraft in support of the Spiral, to demonstrate landings (made on skids) and low speed handling. It made its first subsonic free-flight in 1976, taking off under its own power from an old airstrip near Moscow. It made only eight flights before the project was cancelled in favour of the Buran, a knock-off of the US Shuttle. Though the MiG-105 never made it into space, its sister, the unmanned БОР (‘BOR’) did. Now exhibited at the Monino museum, The MiG-105 is (like me) a Muscovite — which is clearly another reason to love this little flying shoe.

— Ria Timkin, Musician (you can support her music here. She currently has no songs about spaceplanes)