10 Fleet Air Arm Myths, Number 2: The Swordfish was rugged

Hero of Taranto the Swordfish pioneered attacking an enemy fleet in harbour over a year before the Japanese gave it a go on easy level, in broad daylight, before the opposition were ready. It was also a rare Fairey success story, especially when compared to its stable mates the Albacore and Barracuda. It even manages to cast Blackburn in a decent light as they took on responsibility for producing the vast majority of them while Fairey struggled with the rest of their workload and attempting to design aircraft that didn’t look like they’d already been in an accident. After the high point of Taranto popular imagination has the Stringbag’s ruggedness and robust landing gear allowing it to remain relevant taking part in the Battle of the Atlantic, in conditions that would defeat lesser aircraft.

This probably seems plausible based on the antiquated design which implies a certain sturdiness. The problem is that it doesn’t really match reality. At best it was easily repairable, certainly on at least one occasion a serviceable Swordfish was assembled onboard ship, from the remains of three that had been damaged serving on a Merchant Aircraft Carrier (MAC) allowing ASW patrols to continue. [4] Try doing that with an F-35. But being easily repairable isn’t the same as being rugged. Being rugged means you’re devastatingly attractive to the other aircraft, and don’t have to go to the engineers when you stub your undercarriage.

Some will argue that this is irrelevant as the Swordfish was better suited than anything else that could have been operated from Escort Carriers (CVE) during the Battle of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, this isn’t borne out by the evidence, as even the Royal Navy knew. In analysing operations by the US and Royal navies in 1943 they came to some disturbing conclusions about their premier ASW aircraft. While both forces were operating from near identical CVEs [5] the USN operating Avengers were suffering a far lower wastage rate. [6] In fact the USN suffered 14 aircraft lost or damaged in 1420 sorties to the RN’s 63 in 880! An accident every 14 sorties to the USN’s once every hundred. Worse, over half the Swordfish accidents were attributed to the undercarriage breaking or causing the aircraft to bounce on landing. Nor could this be blamed on the RN operating more often in bad weather as there was no correlation between the wastage rate experienced and the conditions the ship was operating in. On its own this would be bad enough, but that much lower sortie rate achieved by the RN? That was due to ship’s Captains being unwilling to launch their aircraft unless absolutely necessary in case they got damaged. Conserving their strength for times of emergency, you know, more than just being involved in a global conflict to the death. This had two effects, firstly Swordfish equipped CVE were less likely to spot U-boats as they just didn’t have aircraft airborne as much. Secondly U-boats were generally sunk as the result of a continued aggressive attack with all airborne aircraft converging on the target once it was spotted. For the RN this was only achieved twice in 1943 as the minimum number of aircraft would be airborne to reduce the number of landing accidents. So, despite both navies having almost identical carrier availability in 1943 USN aircraft sank 23 U-boats to the RN’s 3. [7]

Ultimately operating from the same decks in the same theatre, the larger, heavier Avenger had a wastage rate 1/7^th that of the experiment in parasitic drag that was the Swordfish. Perhaps more damaging to the Stringbag’s reputation the report’s writers only had two recommendations, one explicitly recommending replacing them with Avengers, the other pointing out doing so would make follow up attacks more effective.

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[4] Achtung! Swordfish! Stanley Brand. Chp 17.

[5] 39 RN CVEs were supplied by the USA to the USN’s design, 3 were built in the UK to a different design, and 3 converted from merchant ships. One of which had been captured from Germany at the start of the war.

[6] Directorate of Naval Operational Studies. ‘Achievements of British and US Escort Carriers’. Admiralty, 12 February 1944. ADM 219/95. The National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom.

[7] The USN had 24 carrier months to the RN’s 22. E.g. the USN could have had 4 carriers dedicated to ASW for six months each.

Bing Chandler is a former Lynx Observer and current Wildcat Air Safety Officer. If you want a Sea Vixen t-shirt he can fix you up.

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According to the former President of the United State of America, Donald Trump, air power has been important to rebels since the the 1770s. In his 4th of July speech in 2019 he stated that the Continental Army fighting the British ‘took over the airports’ as part of their struggle for independence. Despite his grip on historical fact being roughly equivalent to his understanding of morality, Trump accidentally got two things right: air power of any kind is seldom available to revolutionaries and therefore neutralising the aviation assets of their oppressors is a very sensible idea.

Combat aircraft are generally expensive and require large, vulnerable bases from which to operate not to mention a prohibitive amount of spares and maintenance just to get off the ground. When one then considers the hefty training requirements for their crew both in the air and on the ground, it is hardly surprising that freedom fighters, insurgents, rebels or revolutionaries rarely make use of aircraft.

Here are some of the most interesting exceptions to the rule: the best flying freedom fighters from 1776 to the present.

10. Martinsyde Type A Mk.II ‘The Big Fella’, Irish Republican Army, 1921

Not really a ‘warplane’ as such, the first aircraft of the Irish Air Corps was, at least, a modified fighter. In 1921, Michael Collins (the Irish Revolutionary leader, not the Apollo XI astronaut) was due to attend talks in London to discuss Irish independence. Fearing that Collins and other members of the Irish delegation might be detained if the talks were to break down the IRA decided to obtain a fast aircraft to whisk delegates back to Ireland at the first sign of any trouble. The aircraft they chose was a derivative of the Martinsyde Buzzard, arguably the finest fighter of the First World War, and the fastest readily available British-built aircraft. Secretly purchased in September 1921, the Martinsyde Type A was equipped with two seats instead of military equipment and for the rest of the year it was kept at readiness at Croydon aerodrome. Thankfully (and somewhat surprisingly) the talks were successful, the Martinsyde was not required and power was devolved to the Irish Free State. On the other hand, the terms of the treaty directly led to the Irish Civil War of 1922-23 and resulted in the Irish Air Corps investing in several more aircraft of a more warlike nature. Meanwhile the Martinsyde was shipped to Dublin in 1922 and painted with the Irish flag of green, white and gold with the name ‘The Big Fella’ (Collins’s nickname) emblazoned on the nose. This was later changed to ‘City of Dublin’ and later still to ‘Cathair Atha Cliath’ (City of Dublin). Despite the obvious historical importance of this aircraft it was scrapped in 1937.

9. Mitsubishi Ki-51 ‘Guntei’, Indonesian Air Force, 1946-49

Only one example of the Japanese Ki-51 exists and we have the Indonesian independence movement to thank for it. After the end of hostilities in 1945, the Dutch East Indies were still occupied by thousands of armed Japanese troops. Two days after the Japanese general surrender, Indonesian republicans declared the country’s independence from the Netherlands, however the largely powerless Dutch Government-in-Exile based in Australia wished to regain their colonial state. Meanwhile, Louis Mountbatten, Allied High Commander South East Asia somewhat reluctantly agreed to use Allied and Japanese troops as caretaker forces until the Dutch return in 1947. During this period nationalist republican sentiment took hold across this enormous country and fighting broke out, from September 1945 and would continue unabated for four years,

Compared to most revolutionary groups the Indonesians were in an unusual position, the country was littered with the still-functional military equipment of a defeated occupying power. Not only that but trained Japanese personnel were in many cases sympathetic to Indonesia’s desire for independence and actively assisted the revolutionaries’ efforts. About 1000 stayed behind after the general repatriation of Japanese forces to support the republicans.

The bulk of the fighting took place on the ground but in July 1947 the Dutch initiated a large air assault intended to destroy all potentially hostile aircraft on the ground. Rebel forces had managed to hide a handful of Japanese aircraft and on the 29th of July, the first operation of the Indonesian Air Force took place. Two Yokosuka K5Y1s trainer biplanes (known as ‘Cureng’* to the Indonesians) joined the rebel’s premium offensive air asset, a Mitsubishi Ki-51 light bomber known as ‘Guntei’*. They were supposed to have been escorted by a Nakajima Ki-43 fighter but unfortunately it developed engine trouble and could not be repaired in time. Resplendent in their new Indonesian markings (created by simply painting the lower half of the Japanese hinomaru white) the three aircraft dropped incendiaries on the Dutch Army barracks in Semarang, Salatiga and Ambarawa. Material damage was minimal but the psychological damage was enormous as the Dutch, with predictable hubris, had previously declared the total destruction of the Indonesian Air Force. This failure was compounded by the fact that Dutch P-40s, charged with finding and destroying the raiders were unable to locate them. In December 1949 the Dutch, under pressure from the international community, particularly the USA recognised Indonesian independence. Today, the unique Ki-51 and extremely rare K5Y1 and Ki-43 aircraft that helped to make Indonesian independence a reality may be seen at the Dirgantara Mandala Museum.

*Despite frequent references to these names in a variety of sources, I have been unable to find any kind of translation from Indonesian. If you know, please inform us in the comments.

 

8. Hawker Hurricane Mk IV, Balkan Air Force, 1944-45

In 1941 conventional Yugoslavian resistance to the Nazi juggernaut collapsed after a mere two weeks. There followed some four years of brutal partisan fighting in which Yugoslav forces twice came close to being wiped out but eventually emerged triumphant. What makes the Yugoslav experience unusual is its possession of an effective air force that achieved air superiority over the Luftwaffe and Croatian air force during 1944. Of course, the insurgent Yugoslavs could not have achieved this alone and for the first two years of the occupation Axis aircraft operated more or less unopposed on anti-partisan operations. However, after the Allies gained possession of Southern Italy the situation changed markedly. Previously limited to long range bombing missions, Allied tactical aircraft were now within striking distance of the Balkan nations. Initial operations were coordinated as part of the Italian campaign and as such sorties over the Balkans were essentially a diversion from the main thrust into Northern Italy but in June 1944 a different phase began with the creation of the Balkan Air Force, an organisation specifically intended to operate in support of the partisans.

The Balkan Air Force was a cosmopolitan organisation boasting some 15 aircraft types and eight different nationalities in its ranks. The units of the BAF with the most personal involvement in the campaign were 351 and 352 squadron, these were units of the RAF but were entirely Yugoslav manned and sported the Yugoslav star on their aircraft. Both initially operated the Hurricane, 352 converting to Spitfires in 1944 but 351 flew Hurricane IVs to the end of the war despite complaints from the Partisan Supreme Command that the Hurricane was inferior to the Spitfire. British manned No. 6 squadron also flew Hurricanes until VE day as part of the Balkan Air Force, these two units being the last to operate Hurricanes in combat over Europe. The Yugoslav units were kept extremely busy on ground attack, anti-shipping and reconnaissance missions until the end of the war. Released from RAF control on 16th May 1945, the two squadrons and their aircraft formed the 1st Fighter Regiment of the Yugoslav Air Force. The Hurricane remained in first line service until at least 1951.

7. Avia B.534, Slovenské povstalecké letectvo (Slovak Insurgent Air Force), Slovakia 1944

The story of the Slovak National Uprising is a tragic tale of massive bravery and initial success squandered due to political infighting, failures to follow an agreed plan, and a lack of international support. It did however result in one mission that made (slightly obscure) aviation history. The uprising was launched on 29 August 1944 from Banská Bystrica in an attempt to resist German troops that had occupied Slovak territory and to overthrow the collaborationist government of Jozef Tiso.

Things went badly from the start, the insurgents lost six airfields within days and operations were conducted from the two air bases remaining in Insurgent hands at Tri Duby (Three Oaks) and Zolná. The Insurgent Air Force was small, consisting of four Avia B-534 biplane fighters, three Letov Š-328 biplane light bombers, and two Bf 109E-4, charmingly known as the ‘Combined Squadron’. They were later reinforced by a two other Bf 109G-6s and a Focke-Wulf Fw 189. Rather more meaningful air support for the insurgency came in September from the 1st Czechoslovak Fighter Air Regiment of the Soviet Red Army Air Force under the command of Captain František Fajtl. Flying the potent Lavochkin La-5FN, many of the unit’s pilots were skilled fighter pilots who had previously flown for the RAF. These pilots ultimately flew some 923 sorties and destroyed 40 Axis planes before the collapse of organised resistance. Meanwhile the Combined Squadron did what it could with its motley collection of aircraft, always struggling with supplies – particularly ammunition for the German built fighters. The most remarkable sortie by a Slovak Insurgent aircraft came on the 2nd September 1944 when František Cyprich, who had attained ‘ace’ status with the Slovak air force against the Soviets, flew an Avia B.534 to successfully intercept a Hungarian Junkers Ju 52/3m that was crossing Slovak territory, forcing it to crash land. This was the last confirmed ‘kill’ by a biplane fighter in history.

6. Vought Kingfisher, Fuerza Aérea Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Air Force), Cuba 1959

The Cuban Revolutionary Air Force garnered plenty of attention for its actions over the Bay of Pigs in 1961 but revolutionary aircraft had been in action well before that. Castro’s Cuban revolution was a remarkable turnaround from almost complete disaster in 1953 when only around 20 revolutionaries escaped President Fulgencia Batista’s forces to total victory five years later. Air power was almost totally the preserve of Batista’s government forces throughout the Cuban Revolution, the rebels fighting their way out of the Sierra Madre mountains in a guerilla campaign of greater and greater magnitude, garnering fresh troops and support as they went. But in the last few weeks of armed conflict the first ever combat operations of the Rebels’ Fuerza Aérea Revolucionaria (FAR) were flown against Batista’s crumbling forces. The aircraft utilised was a Vought OS2U ‘Kingfisher’ of the Cuban Navy in landplane, rather than the more usual floatplane, guise. Without the time, or perhaps the means, to change the markings, the Kingfisher went into battle still displaying its pre-revolutionary Navy markings. On November 7th 1958, Silva Tablada with gunner Leonel Pajan flew the little Vought armed with two small fragmentation bombs over the encircled Army camp at La Maya, containing some 200 loyalist soldiers holding out against the rebels. Unaware that the rebels possessed any aircraft the soldiers cheered the approaching aircraft, believing it would attack their besiegers.

Their joy soon turned to panic when in the course of three passes over the camp, Tablada accurately dropped his two bombs into the centre of the camp whilst Pajan strafed indiscriminately. Material damage was negligible but such was the psychological effect of ‘Operacion A-001’ that the soldiers surrendered almost immediately, bringing to an end some two weeks of fighting at La Maya. Tablada would go on to fly three more bombing missions, all escorted by the second combat aircraft of the FAR, a T-28 Trojan, before the cessation of hostilities on the 1st January 1959, these four missions representing the complete combat operations of the rebels during the Revolution. Tablada’s OS2U is preserved today in the Museo de la Revolución in Havana.

5. Curtiss Falcon, Constitutionalist Brazil, 1932

Unless you’re Brazilian, I suspect that you’ve never heard of the Constitutionalist Revolution but more fool you because it was a pretty big deal. Basically, in 1932, the state of São Paulo decided to declare war on the rest of Brazil. Ten out of ten for chutzpah but maybe not the brightest move, you would be forgiven for thinking. The ‘Paulistas’ were aggrieved by President Getúlio Vargas having seized the Brazilian presidency in a coup d’etat and ruling by decree, in place of the democratically elected Júlio Prestes. They planned to oust the Government and adopt a Brazilian Constitution, hence the name of the revolt. When hostilities broke out, Government forces could muster around 60 aircraft against the rebel’s four, none of them on either side particularly modern. Immediately, both sides frantically attempted to procure more aircraft. After being fobbed off by France the federalist forces of President Vargas managed to acquire some 200 modern warplanes in the US including the state-of-the-art Boeing 256, which was obtained by Brazil before they entered service with the U.S. Navy as the F4B-4. Meanwhile the Paulistas were prevented by naval blockade from contacting any aircraft-producing nation. Luckily for them in 1930 Curtiss-Wright had set up a production line in Chile and the revolutionaries were able to purchase nine new Chilean-built Curtiss Falcons, though one was confiscated by Paraguay during the delivery flight. The Falcons proved to be the most formidable aircraft involved in the conflict.

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Despite the disparity in numbers the revolutionaries used their meagre air assets to considerable effect, unfortunately far too late to make any difference to the outcome of the war. Nonetheless they made several dramatic attacks on Federal forces, the most successful when two Curtiss Falcons, one Waco 225 and a single Nieuport-Delage raided the Federal forces’ airstrip in the town of Mogi-Mirim, São Paulo, destroying two brand new Waco CSOs on the ground and seriously damaging two others.

4. Zlin Z-143, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, 2007-08

Sri Lanka is a lovely island riven with ethnic division and years of horrific violence. Historical ethnic tensions between the majority Sinhalese and Tamil population prompted the formation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), generally known as the ‘Tamil Tigers’. Their aim was to secure an independent Tamil state in response to policies of successive Sri Lankan governments considered discriminatory towards the minority Tamil population. Formed in 1976, the Tamil Tigers pursued this aim militarily through a full scale national insurgency from 1983 to 2009. Most of the LTTE’s operations were ground based though unusually for an insurgent group they were able to boast both a naval arm and an aviation component, the ‘Air Tigers’.

The origins of the Air Tigers remain somewhat murky, LTTE radio began to refer to Tamil Tiger aircraft during 1998 but their existence could not be confirmed, and indeed was written off as LTTE propaganda by Sri Lankan Deputy Minister for Defence Anuruddha Ratwatte, until 2007 when they made their presence known in dramatic fashion. In March two LTTE Zlin Z-143 aircraft attacked Katunayake Air force base north of Colombo, killing three air force officials and wounding nearly 20 others. IAI Kfris and recently acquired MiG-27s of the Sri Lankan Air Force were believed to be the target as they had recently bombed LTTE territory but all escaped damage. There followed a succession of small but maddening raids on civil and military targets by the Zlins, of which the Tamils never had more than five, including an audacious attack on the naval base at Trincomalee and a particularly cunning raid on a Shell refinery timed to coincide with the 2007 Cricket World Cup final between Sri Lanka and Australia which a vast swathe of the population was watching live. To add insult to injury Australia won by 53 runs. The culmination of the air attacks was a suicide attack in February 2009 by two Zlins on SriLankan Air force targets around Colombo though both attacking aircraft were destroyed before they could hit their targets. The victory of Sri Lankan forces over the LTTE later that year brought an end to the Air Tigers’ operations.

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3. Dewoitine D.520, Forces Francaises de l’Interieur (Free French Forces of the Interior), 1944

Is it cheating to have your insurgency backed up by the largest invasion force ever assembled? Of course not. The final fling of France’s most successful wartime fighter saw it once again heroically fighting the Nazi forces it had been designed to oppose. Dewoitine D.520s spent most of the conflict in a variety of fascist-y guises from Vichy France to Bulgaria but ended up After D-day being flown against the German occupiers by the Forces Francaises de l’Interieur (FFI), better known to English speakers as the French Resistance. Initially seizing serviceable aircraft from abandoned German and Vichy stocks a few D.520s went into action in a distinctly ad-hoc manner against their former owners.

The Dewoitines were incorporated into a unit named Groupe Doret during July 1944 under their leader, the charismatic pre-war test pilot and aerobatic champion Marcel Doret (who coincidentally had made the D.520’s maiden flight back in 1938). Although distinctly long in the tooth, negligible German air activity meant that the D.520s could be used with relative impunity attacking anti-aircraft positions and isolated pockets of German troops. Doret’s Dewoitines were also used to escort Dauntless dive bombers operating over Royan and la Pointe de Grave. Sufficient aircraft were made airworthy to allow a second squadron to begin operations in August. In the same month, following the Allied landings in Provence, both the SNCASE (Dewoitine) and the Morane-Saulnier factory, which had been manufacturing D.520s for the Germans since 1943, diverted construction to the FFI. The French Resistance therefore became the first, and so far only, insurgent group to possess not only an air force but a functioning aircraft factory! The first brand new D.520 for the Resistance, appropriately coded ‘1’ and sporting both D-day invasion stripes and the cross of Lorraine on its roundels was photographed at Tarbes-Ossun in South Western France on 24th August 1944. The D.520’s insurgent days were relatively brief however as the French Air Force was officially reformed on 1st December 1944 and Doret’s unit became G.C.II/18. The Dewoitines were replaced with Spitfires on the 1st March 1945.

2. Gloster Gladiator, Royal Iraqi Air Force, 1941

Credit: © Clavework Graphics

Quite reasonably believing that in 1941 Britain had rather too much on its plate to deal with an uprising against its rule, Iraq, under Prime Minister Rashid Ali, decided to throw off the imperialist yoke. Correctly surmising that this course of action would be of interest to the Axis powers he requested material assistance from Germany and Italy. As a result several Bf 110s and He 111s under the command of Colonel Werner Junck operated for a time in Iraqi markings as ‘Fliegerführer Irak’. However, the insurgent Iraqi forces were not devoid of air power of their own, being equipped with the impressive total of 116 aircraft of various types at the start of hostilities. Admittedly only about 60 of those were serviceable but these included some relatively effective modern types such as Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 bombers and Gloster Gladiators, not exactly cutting edge by 1941 but notably the same fighter equipped British units in the area. The Gladiator would turn out to be the stand-out aircraft of the conflict on both sides.

Most of the fighting centred on RAF Habbaniya airfield, a large force of Iraqi troops laid siege to the airfield on the 1st of May. Despite possessing a massive numerical advantage (there were about 9000 Iraqi troops facing some 300 defenders) and expecting negotiations to come to discuss terms for a peaceful surrender, Iraqi forces were not prepared for the remarkable intensity of the British response. On the 2nd aircraft from Habbaniya began constantly attacking Iraqi positions and it was near total superiority in the air that allowed for swift British victory. It did not quite all go in favour of the British however, one of the Royal Iraqi Air Force Gladiators succeeded in shooting down a Vickers Wellington on the 4th of May. A day later the only known Gladiator versus Gladiator ‘kill’ occurred when Pilot Officer Watson shot down an Iraqi Gladiator over Baqubah. RAF Gladiators also successfully intercepted Iraqi SM-79s and even destroyed two of the Bf 110s without loss despite the terrific speed advantage enjoyed by the German fighter.

1. Mikoyan MiG-23BN, Free Libyan Air Force, 2011

The aftermath of the events of the Arab Spring still resonate around the world and perhaps nowhere greater than Libya. For a brief period it looked like a historic and justified revolution had occurred but Libya has been stricken with permanent civil war since the initial revolt against the autocratic government of Muammar Gaddafi in early 2011. Nonetheless in the early days the Libyan revolt appeared to be deposing a tyrant and the actions of the Libyan Air Force, though relatively modest, were decisive.

Collectively, probably the most significant act by the airmen of the Libyan Air Force was their defiance of orders to attack their fellow countrymen. On multiple occasions aircraft despatched to bomb protesters deliberately dropped their weapons in deserted areas. Meanwhile two pilots defected with their Mirage F.1s to Malta after their pilots refused to attack opposition forces. Events took a more dramatic turn when in March when the Free Libya Air Force announced its existence in spectacular style by utilising a MiG-23 and a Mil Mi-24 helicopter to sink two pro-Gaddafi warships. Strike missions against Gaddafi’s forces seeking to take Benghazi proved instrumental in the defence of that city and a total of 38 combat sorties was ultimately flown by Free Libyan aircraft between March the 1st and 19th when the NATO imposed no-Fly zone was imposed, effectively grounding the air force. However 32 covert supply runs by BAe 146 transport aircraft operating from roads were undertaken, these flights being escorted by MiG-21 fighters, despite imposition of the no-fly zone. Despite their heroic actions during the first Civil War, the Free Libyan Air Force was reabsorbed into the Libyan Air Force and as of 2020 is split between the forces of the internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli and those nominally led by Khalifa Haftar of the Libyan National Army (LNA) on behalf of the part of the National Parliament in Tobruk. The two groups have been at war since 2014.

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VIFFing won the Falklands There is a line of thinking among some aviation enthusiasts that goes like this: The Sea Harrier was crucial to winning the Falklands Conflict. Harriers can vector in forward flight (VIFF). Therefore, VIFFing won the Falklands. This is sometimes extended into the conclusion that as the F-35B can’t VIFF it’s not as good as the Harrier, presumably because that means it wouldn’t have been able to win the Falklands Conflict. The problem with this line of thinking is that just because the Sea Harrier could do something, it doesn’t mean it did. After all it was also nuclear capable, but no one ever brings that up as a reason it helped win the war. For those wondering what VIFFing was supposed to achieve, imagine Maverick’s move in Top Gun where he ‘hits the brakes and they fly right by’ but in a much smaller aircraft. The massive reduction in speed forcing the pursuer into an overtake at which point the Harrier takes its shot. Meanwhile any other enemy aircraft has a nice slow-moving target to try and hit, which could be considered a drawback. Air combat over the Falklands was characterised by short engagements as Argentinian fighters were operating at the limits of their endurance and were generally concerned with anti-shipping or ground attack missions in the vicinity of the islands themselves. In fact, the Fuerza Aérea Argentina’s most sophisticated interceptor the Mirage IIIEAs of Grupo 8 de Caza could only reach the islands with fuel for 12 minutes at altitude or 5 if they descended to low level where the majority of combat took place. Consequently, they would only engage Sea Harriers on the 1st of May, during which two were lost, one to Argentine AA fire as it attempted to divert to Port Stanley. [1] Future sorties would instead concentrate on high-level sweeps, attempted intercepts of clandestine helicopter operations, and Canberra bomber escort. The remaining Argentine aircraft encountered, were predominantly IAI Daggers, essentially bootleg Mirage’s optimised for ground attack, and A-4 Skyhawks. The only weapons these carried for air-to-air combat were 20 and 30-mm cannon, the Dagger’s main advantage being looking like they might be Mirages. However, these too were at the limits of their range and even with the most direct routing only had around 10 minutes over the islands to find their targets. The Skyhawks had slightly better endurance, especially if a KC-130 was available to refuel them, even so after transiting to the islands they’d have little time to loiter. With these limitations there was little appetite, or time for the Argentinian forces to engage in protracted air combat. At the same time, the FAA’s Sea Harriers would have limited time on CAP for much of the period as the carriers remained well to the east to stay out of range of the Exocet armed Super Étendards of the Argentine Navy. Only when heavy raids were expected did they close to around 80NM from the islands, such as on 25th of May, Argentina’s Independence Day. [2] This reduced their opportunities to engage aircraft and close cooperation with Fighter Controllers onboard frigates and destroyers was often crucial to ensure they were in the right place at the right time. As a result of both sides limited opportunities, most of the engagements during the conflict consisted of a single pass or a tail chase by the Sea Harriers after having spotted the enemy. There appear to have been no prolonged turning fights where VIFFing might have been used as a last-ditch manoeuvre. Because nothing says last ditch like coming to a stop in the middle of a dogfight, ask the Chinese pilot who was shot down by Lt ‘Shmoo’ Ellis over Korea. In total Sea Harriers shot down 20 aircraft during the conflict, plus one shared with HMS Ardent. Several decades after the events the circumstances of each engagement are now relatively clear and are summarised below. Suffice to say none of these combats saw VIFFing employed, where Fighter Controllers were involved the defending aircraft were as far as possible vectored behind the attackers allowing them the best shot for their Sidewinders. On other occasions the enemy were spotted visually with the Sea Harriers chasing after them as they were routing to or from their attacks on the amphibious landings and ground forces. Nor does there appear to have been any use of VIFFing in order to shake off an opponent. In fact there are relatively few accounts of Argentine aircraft being behind Sea Harriers, in one instance Capt Gustavo Justo fired his guns at Lt Cdr Ward at a range of around 2000’ and missed, a lack of tracer not helping. [1] Distracted by a wingman’s parachute Justo then managed to beat Ward around a hill, the winner receiving a Sidewinder for his troubles. Another occasion took place during the final combat on 8 Jun 82 when Flt Lt Morgan engaged a flight of four A-4B but mistook the third aircraft for the fourth. [3] This might have been an opportunity to employ VIFFing, if Flt Lt Morgan had been aware of his mistake, but as it was the Skyhawk’s cannon had been damaged earlier in the sortie by ground fire and the pilot could do nothing as Morgan engaged two of his wingmen. [2] In conclusion the VIFFing myth seems to have arisen from people associating one of the Harrier’s unique capabilities with one of the highlights of its career. To quote the now retired Lt Cdr Morgan ‘No one used VIFFing during the conflict. It was purely a defensive manoeuvre and no SHAR was ever in a position where a defensive manoeuvre was required – we were always offensive!!’. Despite reports of it happening being conspicuously absent in any of the first-hand accounts of the air campaign no doubt there will forever be those who claim it’s the kind of British engineering genius that won the war. Which is ironic as it reduces the actual achievement of taking a task group with integrated air defence to the other end of the world to ‘one neat trick you won’t believe they used’. So, expect a National Interest article on it any day now. Our interview with Sea Harrier pilot ‘Sharkey’ Ward here We sell fantastic high quality aviation-themed gifts here

[1] Dildy, Doug, and Pablo Calcaterra. Sea Harrier FRS1 vs Mirage III/Dagger: South Atlantic 1982, 2017 [2] Rivas, Santiago. SKYHAWKS OVER THE SOUTH ATLANTIC: The Argentine Skyhawks in the Malvinas/Falklands War 1982. S.l.: HELION & CO LTD, 2020. [3] Morgan, David H. S. Hostile Skies: The Falklands Conflict Through the Eyes of a Sea Harrier Pilot. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006.  Bing Chandler is a former Lynx Observer and current Wildcat Air Safety Officer. If you want a Sea Vixen t-shirt he can fix you up.

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Modern fighters are ‘multi-role’, meaning they can attack aerial or surface targets. They can carry the same weight of anti-surface munition as a World War II bomber, yet are also capable of performing the air superiority mission which demands extremely high performance. The ‘swing’ or ‘omni’ mission is one in which both air and ground targets are attacked in the same sortie. 

In 2020, fighter-bombers dominate, with only the US and Russia rich enough to produce and field single-role fighters and attack aircraft. Here we assess and rank the ten most capable multi-role combat aircraft in service in 2020. 

Before we reveal our top 10 for 2020, Jim Smith, who took an active role in in the development of many British warplanes, shares an analysis of what ‘multi-role’ means.

Note: The introduction section is by Jim Smith, the top 10 section is by Hush-Kit (with a section from Justin Bronk) with recommendations from Jim, but does not reflect his opinions. 

Why do air arms select multi-role aircraft?
“When considering the qualities of particular systems, or classes of capability, it is always good practice to start with an examination of what objectives might drive their selection.
In the case of multi-role aircraft, having been peripherally involved with Tornado, and fairly deeply involved with both the Typhoon and JSF projects, I can well remember the much rehearsed argument ‘Another Jack of All Trades, and Master of None’ directed against the Multi-Role solution as opposed to separate Air Combat and Strike platforms.

I can also remember the German Government attitude to Typhoon (when it was still EFA) ‘Not a Deutsche Mark for air-to-surface’*. And the Treasury coming in with “As it’s multi-role, I assume you’ll be taking at least two types out of Service when it comes in” – bye-bye Jaguar and Harrier …

So those are the rather glib messages suggesting multi-role aircraft might not be the way to go. But what are the counter arguments? And where might a multi-role solution be just the thing. Well, there are two obvious drivers – force structure constraints, and the economy. For the first, consider maritime air power, specifically carrier-based operations.

You need to be able to provide fighter aircraft – as a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) screen to deter attacking forces, defeat threat anti-shipping and air combat capabilities, and protect other assets, such as airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft, tankers and electronic warfare (EW) platforms. But you also need a strike aircraft, capable of projecting power from the ship – otherwise what’s the point of being there? And you only have limited space on the ship to store and maintain your aircraft.

Hence even the US select multi-role aircraft for naval air, most notably the F-4 Phantom II and more recently the F/A-18F Super Hornet. Not to say they don’t also have some single role aircraft, but these two excellent aircraft give the lie to the “… Master of None” gibe.

In addition, in smaller air arms, and in smaller economies, it may be neither necessary or affordable to maintain separate strike and fighter capabilities. The development of air combat aircraft has been increasing in both cost and time as more and more capability is both sought and delivered. This trend has placed relentless pressure on forces to reduce the number of different types in the inventory, partly because of the continuing increase in development cost and time of such systems, but also because of the operational costs in maintaining, and in training air and ground crew for multiple different systems. As an example, in the UK, we can see a fairly near-term future in which a mix of Typhoon and Lightning II will provide the core air power for the nation, excepting long-range precision strike by cruise missile.

The pressure to reduce the number of types in the inventory has also driven some innovative and successful solutions, where different variants of aircraft have been produced optimised for the Fighter and Strike roles, the most notable Western examples being the F-15C and F-15E, and the Tornado GR and F3 aircraft. These aircraft have differing avionics, and some significant airframe differences, yet still manage to retain significant commonality in propulsion and other, not directly role-specific, systems. However, these aircraft are not truly multi-role, as they are specialised variants of a near-common platform, rather than truly able to be used in many roles.

The third reason to adopt a multi-role approach is simply the flexibility in defence planning which it enables. Many recent conflicts have not involved a contest for air dominance. In general, although fighter aircraft have been used to escort high value targets, the air threat in (say) Afghanistan, Mali or Yemen, has been minimal, and the ability of air combat aircraft like Typhoon or Rafale to ‘Swing Role’ and deliver strike missions has been invaluable. The F-16 also provides a good example of a fighter that has spent most, though definitely not all, of its life operating as a strike asset.

What makes a good multi-role combat aircraft?

Let’s start with a brief indication of the capabilities we might expect such an aircraft to have. A multi-role combat aircraft is one that is used to perform many different types of mission.
Examples might include the delivery of precision guided bombs; the delivery of long-range stand-off weapons; the suppression of enemy defences, perhaps through the use of anti-radar missiles in support of other aircraft; carriage of tactical reconnaissance systems; and the ability to both defend itself against air threats, and, when necessary, escort other aircraft.

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In some cases, possibly many cases, a swing-role capability may be desirable. This means the ability to switch from one mission to another if required, for example, the carriage of mixed weapons so that alternative targets can be addressed. Carriage of both laser-guided bombs to allow direct attack, and anti-radiation missiles to allow defence suppression, for example. Fighter aircraft may carry a full air-to-air load out as well as air-to-surface weapons, allowing them to retain an air combat capability once the air-to-surface stores have been released. As a capability, ‘swing role’ may be particularly important in delivering Close Air Support (CAS), where precision is required due to the proximity of friendly troops, but the nature and location of the target will be unknown until an airborne taking is received.

Delivering this flexible capability is going to drive a number of aspects of our aircraft. To be effective in air combat, it is going to need a radar, an infra-red seeker tracker (IRST), if it has aspirations to either be somewhat stealthy or tackle stealthy targets, and ideally both Long-range or Medium-range and Short-range air-to-air missiles (L/MRAAM and SRAAM). To survive, it’s also going to need the defensive aids that support air combat – a towed decoy; defensive aids system, chaff, flares, missile launch and approach warner, for example.
Beyond this, our aircraft is going to need to be effective, at a minimum, as a tactical strike aircraft. This means having the payload-range to deliver its weapons to their targets. Precise requirements will depend on the targets to be engaged, as this will drive the nature of the weapons to be carried, and the sensors needed to support them. A basic precision-guided bomb delivery capability will require either a podded or internal laser designation system, and the necessary weapons stations and pylons to carry and release the weapons. A JTIDS (Joint Tactical Information Distribution System) or other equivalent datalink capability will also be essential to enable situational awareness, and to receive in-mission target tasking and authorisation.
If the targets are heavily defended by anti-air systems, or are hardened, then it is likely that the ability to deliver weapons with significant stand-off capability will be needed. Because of the need for these weapons to make a powered fly out to their targets, they will be larger and heavier than unpowered bombs or glide-bombs. Similarly, the use of larger and more complex warheads against hardened targets will also drive up weapon size and weight.

Unless a stealthy multi-role system is available, the stores are likely to be mainly carried externally, which compromises radar signature, and increases drag very significantly. To achieve a useful mission radius on a strike mission, it is likely that increased fuel will be required, either through the use of external fuel tanks (e.g. Rafale, Typhoon), fuselage saddle tanks (e.g. F-15E, Late-model F-16) or increased platform size (e.g. Su-32, J-20).

It is important to note that having plenty of pylons available to carry weapons is necessary, but not sufficient. For a multi-role aircraft to be an effective strike platform, the weapons it carries must be integrated with the aircraft system. Aircraft sensors have to be able to cue weapons; the weapon capability envelopes have to be displayed to the pilot; the appropriate carriage and release envelopes must be known and respected; and pilots and maintainers have to be trained in the use and the maintenance of the various systems.

Low Observable Systems
What of stealth? By this I mean systems that are hard to detect by surface and air-based sensors of all types, but generally at least radar and infra-red sensors. One impact of seeking to avoid detection is that when this is necessary, no external stores can be carried. The effect of this is to require stores to be carried in internal bays, which limits the size and number of weapons that can be carried, impacting on both fighter and particularly strike capability.

This has driven the development of specialised stores such as the Small-Diameter Bomb (SDB), but use of internal weapons bays for air-to-surface stores will generally be at the expense of carriage of MRAAM. The inability to carry external tanks or stores without compromising the aircraft stealth capability will reduce both strike range and mission flexibility. That said, the low signature of these aircraft does allow greater utility in high threat environments (sometimes described as the ‘first day of the war’ capability).
A related issue is that while internal stores carriage also means that (generally) there is plenty of space for internal fuel, the resulting configuration can also have higher wave drag. This tends to result in less combat radius or combat persistence than might be expected, and can also result in less energy manoeuvrability.

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Are the F-22 and F-35 multi-role? Well, they do have both fighter and strike capabilities, but will be constrained by weapons bay size if they are relying on stealth to survive. Certainly, the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Air Force will be seeking to use their Lightning IIs for both air defence and strike. Some other air arms will rely on a force mix approach, using their Lightnings mainly as a strike asset, supported when required by air superiority fighters.

The F-22 is effectively optimised for the fighter role, and JSF for strike. In service, F-22 is likely to be used primarily an air superiority fighter, even though it is capable of carrying a mix of JDAM and SRAAM to deliver a strike capability, largely because it is available in limited numbers. Arguably, the F-22 is better employed to achieve air superiority, enabling other aircraft and systems to deliver the strike missions.
Conversely, at least in high-threat environments, the F-35 might best be considered as a strike aircraft with a self defence capability, or perhaps as an air defence aircraft without an effective strike capability. Of course, both air combat and strike effects can still be achieved, using aircraft with a mix of strike and air combat load outs – effectively functioning as ‘bombers and escorts’.

Is a stealthy multi-role aircraft possible? Certainly, but such an aircraft may need to have a larger weapons bay than the F-22 or F-35 to accommodate the variety and size of weapons required for strike missions. Inevitably such a design would be large and expensive, and an exemplar perhaps already exists in the Chinese J-20.

Mission Support

Much depends on the target set, and particularly whether moving targets as well as fixed targets are to be addressed. If targets are fixed, pre-planned strikes are possible and may be conducted with ‘fire and forget’ systems such as cruise missiles and other stand-off weapons. If targets are moving, or are re-locatable, and are thus uncertain in position, a more flexible approach will be necessary.

A variety of approaches are possible, the simplest being laser designation from the aircraft, with the laser being enabled to track the target. This approach, however, relies on a line of sight being available to the target, and hence results in relatively short-range engagements, which may not be feasible against some targets. Alternatively, an active seeker on the weapon may be used, for example using a millimetric wave radar or an infra-red sensor to track and guide to the target.

Importantly, appropriate operational doctrine and command and control systems need to be in place to enable swing role, close air support and dynamic in-mission planning to allow targets of opportunity, or urgent tasking requests, to be addressed. Avoiding casualties to friendly forces or civilians, ensuring the validity of targets and the suitability of the weapons carried, coordinating actions with coalition ground forces, and ensuring the safety of air operations in a complex environment, will all require secure, high confidence datalink communications, and a system for receiving, processing and approving taskings.
While what is described has a Western and Coalition perspective, it is clear that any multi-role, dynamically planned short-notice operation is unlikely to be possible unless some process is in place for issuing and accepting valid taskings in a dynamic environment.

Features enabling a multi-role capability – a reprise
A summary list of good attributes for a multi-role combat aircraft might be (in no particular order):

1. A suitable integrated suite of air-to-air weapons for self defence and escort capability. Likely to be a minimum of 4 MRAAM and 2 SRAAM
2. A suitable integrated suite of air-to surface weapons.
3. Precise capabilities will depend on the target set, but likely to include precision guided bombs, anti-armour and/or anti-shipping weapons, stand-off weapons and cruise missiles, anti-radiation weapons.
4. Appropriate sensors to detect targets and provide necessary weapons guidance. Likely to include Air-to-air and air-to-surface radar, IR Tracker, laser designator and capability to carry other systems such as a tactical reconnaissance package.
5. Sufficient internal fuel to deliver required mission radius, enhanced when necessary by additional external fuel, and ability to receive air-to-air refuelling.
6. Defensive aids including chaff, flares, active radar and IR jamming capability. Ideally a towed radar decoy, or other means of electronic attack
7. Datalink communication to off-board assets such as AEW&C aircraft; ability to receive and pass on target information and authorisation; necessary datalink support to weapons, and desirably ability to provide third-party targeting and weapons support.
8. Air vehicle performance sufficient to deliver Beyond visual range (BVR) air combat, and desirably to survive WVR air combat.
9. An affordable and supportable airframe and weapons systems.
10. If stealthy, a sufficiently large internal weapons bay, or bays, to be able to carry both MRAAM and air to surface weapons simultaneously.
11. An appropriate command, control and doctrinal environment to allow dynamic in-flight mission targeting.

–– Jim Smith

Aircraft discounted from the list 

Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor 

An unmatched air superiority aircraft –but a waste of capability to use as a strike aircraft.

Chengdu J-20

I see this as air superiority, but with an anti-access edge. If armed with a hypersonic air-to-air weapon it would have to be a concern for US AWACS and AAR assets. If capable of fielding a similar anti-ship weapon it might also be a concern for the USN.

Sukhoi Su-57 Felon 

Impressive looking beast, which could well be a good future multi-role platform.

Mikoyan MiG-35

Should become a decent all-rounder but is currently immature.

Top 10 multi-role fighters 2020

10. McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C Hornet (APG-79v4)

The number ten slot is the most contested, with each potential candidate bringing something to the table: the JF-17 has a state-of-the-art cockpit, a stand-off ground attack capability and a potent EW suite; the Mirage 2000 is a proven and well equipped platform; the Tejas is tiny, with a good sensor package and the best carefree handling system of any fighter. But it can only go to one aircraft, so by a slim margin we are handing the number 10 slot to the upgraded FA-18Cs of the USMC. Though they may lack endurance, they may be ancient, they are currently been given a new lease of life with the retrofitting of the APG-79v4, a baby version of the Super Hornet’s AESA radar. This results in excellent situational awareness in an engine/airframe combination already loved for its reliability and legendary manoeuvrability, and one cleared to deploy a wide-range of modern munitions. The Hornet has been combat proven for over 30 years and earned its spurs itself in the heartbreaking wars of the Middle East, Afghanistan and Libya. Back in the early 1980s the legacy Hornet led the way, demonstrating how an electronic cockpit and a decent multi-mission radar was the way forward. In 2020 it can still hold its own and it will continue to serve for some time.

9. Chengdu J-10C

Observers tend to be cautious of heaping praise on Chinese hardware, which (other than engine technology) may be a position more rooted in historical prejudice than fact. Judging an aircraft that has not been exported is tricky, but it is noteworthy that Pakistan cancelled their 2009 order for the type in 2011 to concentrate on improved JF-17 variants in the short term, followed by a likely commitment to the J-31. This may point to the aircraft’s capability edge over the JF-17 being too marginal to merit the cost, but this is pure speculation. What is more certain is that this is modern design that is being rapidly updated.

The Chinese J-10 is in service in large, and growing, numbers. The latest version, the J-10C, is a formidable machine. We spoke to Justin Bronk, Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology at the RUSI think-tank to find out more. 

No nation has more new aircraft programmes than China, and the progress it has made in the twenty years has been spectacular. In the field of fighter aircraft much media attention has been paid to the rather spectacular J-20, a monstrous stealthy combat aircraft comparable in some respects to the US’ F-22, while less has been paid to the J-10.

The J-10 entered service in 2006 and since than around 350 have been built, more than the number of French Rafale, or Swedish Gripen and very close to the number of F-35s. With an estimated empty weight of 8850 kg and maximum weight of 19277 kg it is comparable to the F-16, as is its reheated thrust of around 130kN. The latest version, the J-10C, is the most potent – with a modern AESA radar and the ability to carry the PL-15 long range air-to-air missile, a formidable weapon in the same class as Europe’s much lauded Meteor. We asked Justin Bronk how the aircraft would fare against the F-16, the most widely used modern fighter aircraft.

“On J-10C in Beyond Visual Range combat; kinematically, it is likely to be somewhere close to a later Block F-16; the original J-10A’s thrust-weight ratio most likely having degraded due to weight growth as more advanced sensors, stores and kit such as HMS have been added.” — the J-10C’s thrust-to-weight, an important measure for how ‘energetic’ the aircraft is, remains decent- above 1.1 -1 in a typical combat configuration. “With a light airframe, relaxed stability, decent (although not stellar) thrust to weight ratio and large canards, the J-10C is very agile in airshow configuration and the option for thrust vectoring only increases this capability at low speeds. However, the light airframe and small size relative to fighters like the J-20, Typhoon or F-15 mean that external stores and fuel tanks will have a more serious impact on both performance and agility than on larger fighters.”

China has long struggled with aero-engine technology, so how good are the J-10C’s WS10s? “The WS-10 series has suffered from persistent problems with engine life, mean time between failures and throttle-spool response time. Whilst it has improved sufficiently to enter quantity production for later J-10Bs and J-11s, the Russian AL-31FN Series 3 developed for the J-10B is still a superior engine on almost all metrics aside from cost. Chinese military turbofan engines are improving rapidly but are at best only at par with Russian equivalents and are not yet in a position to compete directly with European or American designs.”

The PL-15 missile is something of a bogeyman to US planners, as if fully operational and as good as the Chinese say it condemns AMRAAM-armed legacy platforms to a position of vulnerability.

Bronk believes the Pl-15 is not yet fully operational, “The PL-15 is certainly being shown off on carriage flights with a number of different PLAAF types, so being somewhere around what we in the West would term Initial Operating Capability but not near Full Operational Clearance is probably a decent bet. There is a fair bit of concern in the US fighter community about the PL-15; its size and design should allow it to technically outrange the AIM-120 series and a proper active radar seeker head gives a lot more tactical options than older semi-active Russian and Chinese ‘sticks’.”

Though mechanically scanned radars are considered a technologically of the past, they remain the most common fighter sensor in the West. The J-10C has an Active Electronically Scanning Array radar, “Finally, its AESA radar should give the J-10C a significant advantage over older Mech-Scan equipped F-16s in the BVR arena; although having a great deal more experience in the technology, American fighter AESA sets are likely to remain superior where fitted especially in terms of advanced low-probability of intercept/detection (LPI/LPD) scanning modes.” In summary, Bronk firmly places the J-10C in Generation 4.5* “All in all, the J-10C is a significant leap into true ‘4.5th Generation’ capability for the PLAAF compared to the earlier variants of this distinctive bird. 

*something he defines as including “low-observability to radar; the ability to supercruise (fly at supersonic speed without using afterburners); and extreme manoeuvrability at all speeds.”.

8. Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II

In the scenario of war against Russia or China, the F-35 should be able to operate on Day One. If the US doesn’t want go to war with Russia or China, and just fancies bombing poor people, then the F-35 offers a great deal of over-capability (as do all the aircraft on this list). As a Rafale pilot recently noted in an interview, a weaponised C-130 or 737 would be able to do everything currently expected of a frontline fast jet in real-world operations.

The F-35C lacks maturity, and the F-35B has a short range. In time, the C variant would perhaps be the best multi-role one, with its bigger wing, then the A. The F-35B has significantly less range. As discussed above, I wouldn’t see this delivering a swing role very well. It has the advantage of stealth, and good data-links within F-35 to F-35, but would be unlikely to fare well in WVR combat.

7. Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70

It would be easy to dismiss the F-16 as it is so old, but the latest versions have very little in common with the aircraft that flew 46 years ago.

The F-16’s traditional dominance in the WVR regime is dependent on a relatively clean configuration. Whereas the eurocanards carry their vital EW kit internally, the F-16 will in any real-life situation go into battle with a very draggy 600-pound pod. Above 25,000 feet and at higher speeds it is dominated by the eurocanards in air-to-air combat.

The latest F-16s carry AESA radar, an impressive weapon load of modern weapons and some avionics and systems superior to even those of the F-35. The cockpit of the block 70 is excellent and future variants are likely to benefit from Lockheed Martin’s experience of wide-screen displays.

The F-16 has seen as much combat as any US aircraft type, and has demonstrated itself for 40 years. It remains an aircraft to be respected.

(Note: Mitsubishi F-2 is included as an F-16 variant for our listing)

6. Saab JAS 39C Gripen

The Gripen has a good mix of external stores, fuel capability and good connectivity, but is a single-engine and smaller design and hence has less range with a useful load. Its air combat capability, with the superlative Meteor long range missile, is likely to be better than the F-16. The Gripen pilot is imbued with excellent situation awareness and protected by an exceptional electronic warfare system. 

The Gripen is also the cheapest aircraft to operate on this list, the least fuel thirsty and the smallest. Its small size, combined with high off-boresight missiles and a helmet cueing system make it a particularly nasty opponent in within visual range combat.

5. Boeing F-15SA/QA Eagle 

Though the USAF’s F-15E force is old, it is unmatched in the strike role. But it is is also rarely used in a dedicated air combat role, which raises questions about it being counted in this category. Self defence certainly, but given the F-22 and F-15Cs, in service it’s not really a multi-role aircraft. It is however a multi-role aircraft for some of the export operators of the type. The latest members of the Strike Eagle family, (the SA and QA) are lavishly equipped with all the latest sensors and systems.  The SA is ferociously capable as will the QAs when they reach a greater stage of maturity.

HK notes

Personally I would have placed the F-15SA or QA higher in this list. In payload performance, sensor suite and modernity of systems it ranks very highly. Depends whether we give more importance to the ground attack or air role. At the risk of committing to the Turkey at Christmas argument I would argue that the former has dominated the last two decades of air operations.

4. Sukhoi Su-35/Su-30M series

Deciding which ‘Flanker’ to include is challenging. It would be tempting to include the Chinese J-15 on the grounds that carrier fighters must be multi-role but the J-15 currently shares many of the limitations of the Su-33 (which are described here) — is not optimised for air-to-ground and lacks a meaningful load-out when carrier deployed.

The Sukhoi Su-35 is generally better equipped than the Su-30M series though lacks the situational awareness and workload benefits of the M’s backseat WSO, but does benefit from the very capable Russian defensive electronic warfare system. The vast sums that the Indian Air Force is willing to pump into Rafale procurement does not boost confidence in the similar vintage Su-30M (the Russian type having entered Indian service only five years before Rafale entered French service). The Su-34 is more of a medium bomber than a multirole fighter. The Su-35 has a very powerful radar, excellent kinematic performance and an exceptional un-refuelled radius of action. It should be able to give a decent account of itself in air combat with any type short of the F-22 or Su-57. Another contender is the Chinese J-16, a twin-seat multi-role Flanker.

The Russian Su-35 and related aircraft have high payload range, a very good range of weapons carriage options, including large numbers of pylons and high internal fuel. They also have large radars and are fitted with IRST. They might not do too well against stealthy fighters, but in a permissive environment, or against non-stealthy opponents, would be a capable multi-role aircraft in at least the F-15E class.

3. Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet

The Super Hornet is very well equipped, and needs to be. Whereas the air force can rely on a mixed force of F-15C/Es, F-16s, F-35As, A-10s etc, the Super Hornet has to do pretty much everything (at least until the F-35C is more mature). The range of weapons it can carry is impressive, ranging from the stealthy AGM-158 JASSM (Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile) to the AGM-88 for anti-radar attacks, the JDAM series and the AGM-84 Harpoon anti-shipping missile. Air-to-air weaponry is decent but typical of the current US lag behind Europe. Though the AIM-120D is highly regarded, it is an enhanced range AIM-120 rather than the new breed of long-range air-to-air missiles.

It is much slower than the European canards, and the extremely draggy manner in which the fuel and weapons are carried further compounds this disadvantage. The aerodynamic configuration is optimised for low-speed handling. The most notable omission equipment-wise, an IRST, will be solved with a combination sensor/fuel pod carried on the centreline. This inelegant solution will have a deleterious effect on the Rhino’s already lacklustre performance. Boeing had earlier proposed an internal IRST at the expense of the aircraft’s gun, but this was rejected by the Navy.

I have placed this ahead of the F-15E because I think it achieves a better balance between both roles. The F-15E is a very capable strike aircraft, but I’m suggesting less emphasis is likely to be given to air combat missions (at least in US hands) because of the availability of other assets. At present the F/A-18E is the primary strike and air combat asset for the US Navy.
2. Eurofighter Typhoon

Cynics might note that the Eurofighter nations have spent a great deal of time and money on turning the Typhoon into a Rafale, i.e. converting it from a fighter to a fighter-bomber (this idea would have been taken further if the rather silly idea of a carrier Sea Typhoon had actually happened). Today’s Typhoon, especially the British examples, are a very different beast from the fighter-intercepter that entered service in 200

The long road to AESA seemed to be finally reaching a happy conclusion but has recently split into a complicated mess of different nations and different radar. Still when Kuwait receives their Typhoon’s this year they should have a functional AESA in the Captor-E Radar 0.

Like Rafale, it has demonstrated capability in both the air-to-air and air-to-ground role, and likely exceeds Rafale in the former domain due to greater energy manoeuvrability.

1. Dassault Rafale 

Other than low observability the Rafale has almost everything. The most notable absence, a helmet mounted display/cueing system has, with the introduction of the type into Qatari service, been addressed (though no photos have yet been released to support this). It also lacks a towed radar decoy though it is believed this will enter service with the Indian Air Force in the near future. There is some question regarding whether all Rafale’s have an IRST, though it was a certainly a part of the original internal sensor set.

It edges out Typhoon due to better strike optimisation and greater number of ‘wet’ pylons, giving a broader range of weapons fit options and potentially greater range.

Future Capabilities – By Jim Smith 
“What of the future? Well, who would dare to predict anything in the world of 2020? However, if the material out there in US and European future air power projections is to be believed, a system of systems approach is likely to be the key to future air power.
It seems likely that, at least from a US and European perspective, autonomous, cooperating systems of systems will form the basis of future air power. To implement this, it is likely that we would see a return to a variety of specialised platforms, rather than the current move towards fewer multi-role systems.
The driver for this is likely to be survivability. Wherever possible, systems will be unmanned and either autonomous or operated remotely. If this approach is to be believed, future manned platforms will largely be limited to a manned multi-role system such as Tempest or Future Combat Aircraft System (or their US equivalents), accompanied by a series of unmanned co-operating systems, which could include a ‘wingman’, a Neuron or Taranis platform to augment air combat capability or provide a strike platform. Other functions, such as refuelling, Electronic Attack, Electronic Intelligence, Target Detection and Geolocation, and Communications Relay, would all be delivered by specialist autonomous or remotely operated vehicles.

Manned platforms would be limited to, perhaps, Airborne Early Warning & Control platforms, and the manned fighter aircraft, operating principally as a fighter and weapons director, controlling cooperating unmanned weapons carriers. All elements of the system would be stealthy, and linked by secure data-links, with the intent of separating command and control, sensor and weapons delivery elements.
Is this plausible? Well, technically this might be an endpoint of a road-map, and individual elements of such a system are likely to be achievable in the relatively near term.
A better question might be ‘Is such a system affordable?’ Separating the functions across 7 or 8 specialised platforms would certainly increase costs, as each would need to be designed, developed and integrated. It would also be unlikely to reduce manpower costs all that much, as experience seems to show that unmanned and autonomous systems still need to be maintained and ‘crewed’, even if the crew is not actually in the aircraft.
Among the most powerful drivers against the implementation of such a system would be its vulnerability to cyber attack through interference with communication links. Its most effective opponents are, however, likely to be the accountants in Treasury departments, who may not be swayed by survivability arguments when asked to disaggregate the functions of one multi-role platform to two, three or four specialist, stealthy and autonomous platforms.

In any case, it is perhaps a safe bet that this route will not be affordable outside the Super-Powers – China, Russia and the USA. The EU, and the UK, would, in my view, not be able to take on this approach without cooperation, and in the current climate, that seems a big ask. Maybe the first integration should be between the Tempest and Neuron or FCAS and Taranis if a European approach is to be sought.

It is also not clear how a carrier task group could accommodate such a proliferation of platforms, and it is also clear that this type of solution will not be available without very significant expenditure. So – for the UK and EU, it would be best to design FCAS and Tempest with capability growth in mind. Build growth avionics capacity and some extra volume into the initial aircraft, because more sensors, more functionality, and more roles are likely to be required. And I would not expect the USN to adopt the same solutions as the USAF – the (big) carriers might not be big enough to accommodate the system of systems approach.

Multi-role systems are likely to be of continuing value to Air Arms and countries that are not seeking world domination, but need to address local defence issues, and to deter external aggressors.”

––– Jim Smith

This book can only happen with your support. Preorder your copy today here. 

From the cocaine, blood and flying scarves of World War One dogfighting to the dark arts of modern air combat, here is an enthralling ode to these brutally exciting killing machines.

The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is a beautifully designed, highly visual, collection of the best articles from the fascinating world of military aviation –hand-picked from the highly acclaimed Hush-kit online magazine (and mixed with a heavy punch of new exclusive material). It is packed with a feast of material, ranging from interviews with fighter pilots (including the English Electric Lightning, stealthy F-35B and Mach 3 MiG-25 ‘Foxbat’), to wicked satire, expert historical analysis, top 10s and all manner of things aeronautical, from the site described as:

“the thinking-man’s Top Gear… but for planes”.

The solid well-researched information about aeroplanes is brilliantly combined with an irreverent attitude and real insight into the dangerous romantic world of combat aircraft.

FEATURING

• Interviews with pilots of the F-14 Tomcat, Mirage, Typhoon, MiG-25, MiG-27, English Electric Lighting, Harrier, F-15, B-52 and many more.
• Engaging Top (and bottom) 10s including: Greatest fighter aircraft of World War II, Worst British aircraft, Worst Soviet aircraft and many more insanely specific ones.
• Expert analysis of weapons, tactics and technology.
• A look into art and culture’s love affair with the aeroplane.
• Bizarre moments in aviation history.
• Fascinating insights into exceptionally obscure warplanes.

The book will be a stunning object: an essential addition to the library of anyone with even a passing interest in the high-flying world of warplanes, and featuring first-rate photography and a wealth of new world-class illustrations.

Unlike the many brilliant British aero-engineers of the 1930s and ’40s, who were repeatedly thwarted by crusty officialdom, their German equivalents were lavishly funded and nurtured by both a determined state and a brutally efficient military …or so the myth goes. As we shall find out in ’10 things you didn’t know about World War II Warplanes’, the truth was rather different. Calum Douglas B.Eng M.Sc is a piston aero-engine history specialist, and author of The Secret Horsepower Race – WESTERN FRONT FIGHTER ENGINE DEVELOPMENT The reason Germany missed out on the two-stage supercharger  The Mk IX Spitfire, with its two-stage supercharged engine, is lauded for having rescued the RAF from the clutches of the Focke-Wulf 190. Given the new Spitfire’s effectiveness did the Focke-Wulf rapidly counter it with a similarly equipped fighter? No. Germany only fielded a couple of fighter types with two-stage superchargers and both entered service far later, very close to the end of the War. They were the Fw 190D-11 and Ta 152, powered by the Jumo 213E/F. The Jumo 213E had a system like the Merlin, but only appeared in tiny numbers a few months before the collapse of Germany. German failure to develop a two-stage supercharged fighter is widely regarded as one of their great technical failures in high-altitude flight. However, this was as much an organisational failure as anything else, as Daimler-Benz had been running two-stage supercharged DB601 engines since around 1936 in their test cells in Stuttgart Untertürkheim. Focke-Wulf master designer Kurt Tank told incredulous American engineers that the notion of a two-stage supercharged fighter had been quashed by German military bureaucrats before it could take full form. The Luftwaffe was regarded at the time as purely a tactical force, designed to support ground operations. They saw the ability of fighters to attain very high altitudes as an anathema to this strategic concept, and cancelled all such projects. They did have their own equivalent to the Spitfire Mk IX’s engine, but wasted the opportunity with sheer ineptitude. 2. Britain needed fuel from the US to survive?  Germany is well known for its successful synthetic aviation fuel programme in the Second World War, which created fuel from coal and hydrogen, mixed under high pressure and temperatures. However, Britain had embarked on a programme to do the same thing. This began as early as 1932 and received strong Air Ministry support from about 1936 onwards. Not as outlandish as it sounds, Britain was at the time the third largest producer of coal in the world, and could therefore, have waged war against Germany even if no fuel from America had ever arrived. When, later in the war it became imperative to increase the performance of fighters stationed in Britain to combat the German pulse-jet powered V1 flying bombs, it was the British synthetic fuel programme which helped yield ingredients for the 150 Grade fuel that was needed. This fuel was also made in the U.S.A., but the process was pioneered at I.C.I. Billingham in the laboratory of Ronald Holroyd. 3. Radio gagger After the ascension of Nazis into power, all amateur radio activity and associated clubs and component development was banned. The paranoia of the Nazi state couldn’t allow the thought of young Germans freely communicating with long distance HAM radio, or listening to remote foreign broadcasting stations. This had a catastrophic impact on German radar and electronic warfare development a decade later. Dr Wolfgang Martini, in charge of all German radio technological development was fired by Göring not long after Martini admitted that he had no countermeasures to British jamming devices. Erhard Milch dryly reminded Göring that having no enthusiastic young radio fanatics to help had likely been a direct result of their earlier policy on banning youth radio. Not long before this meeting, on 8th October 1943 Göring had also harangued Martini on why they had not been able to shoot down more de Havilland Mosquitos, which were now roaming with almost complete impunity over all of Germany day and night. Martini had reported that their radar was struggling to get a reliable echo return on the Mosquito, due in part to its very high speed and also its primarily wooden construction. Göring, infuriated with the lack of technical prowess, told Martini: “Er hat Genie, und wir haben Dösköppe.” (“They [the English] have the geniuses and we have bone-heads.”) While a popular documentary was made about the German Horten jet-fighters being the first stealth aircraft, in fact the best real evidence for a high speed intruder aircraft which (probably inadvertently) had a very small radar signature was the British Mosquito. 4. The lost List  Hans List, was probably the most renowned piston engine development scientist in Germany in the Second World War. In Europe he was second only to Sir Harry Ricardo in stature. Whilst Ricardo was busy helping Rolls-Royce develop a two-stroke engine to replace the Merlin in the Spitfire, Dr List squandered much of his time on bizarrely speculative projects, such as working out how to increase the performance of the enemy’s Packard-Merlin engine. Ostensibly this project (which must have absorbed the work of his laboratory for several months) was to provide technical intelligence predictions to the German designers by judging what technical steps the British might take in their own development methods. However, there is a strong case that the entire project was an unbelievable waste of the talents of the great Dr List. Not long after the war, List started the engine development consultancy AVL, which remains the largest privately owned engine development firm in the world today. This kind of abysmally poor usage of German talent was very representative of the gigantic failure to leverage science by the Nazis in the Second World War. Whilst they are acknowledged for having started the jet, rocket and space race, this appears to have been the fruits of a totally unbalanced research programme, which required the resources of the Allies to make full use of post-war. Figure 2: Translated version of Dr List’s report on the Merlin. 5. Why did the Germans really put a german engine on a Spitfire?  The now well-known ‘MesserSpit‘ or  ‘German Spitfire’ was a captured Spitfire Vb fitted with a Daimler-Benz DB605 engine. The re-engining largely took place to settle a feud between the head of Daimler-Benz Fritz Nallinger, and Professor Willy Messerschmitt. Messerschmitt, furious with being blamed for the poor performance of German fighters compared to the latest Allied types in 1943, told Erhard Milch that this was no surprise to him, because he was forced to fit water radiators twice the size of those the Spitfire used, per horsepower delivered. Erhard Milch, astonished, turned to the head of German Engine Development Wolfram Eisenlohr and asked him: “How have our designers not noticed this?” Germany, had failed to develop high-pressure-high-temperature water cooling. This meant that their radiators had to be significantly larger in section than the Allied fighters used, adding to their drag values. They estimated this was costing German fighters at least 15mph in top speed, enough to turn a performance edge into mere equality. 6. Speer’s fake miracle  Albert Speer is credited with the miracle of German fighter production in 1944, where vast numbers of fighters were built. However when Allied investigators interrogated Speer and started adding up the numbers in his departments production figures they discovered an incredible secret. Eight thousand German single engine fighters in the ledgers, didn’t exist. Further investigation revealed that although Speer had managed to dramatically increase the number of fighters produced, he had also cooked the books to gain favour with Hitler. American engineers discovered that Speer had done it by having all aircraft being repaired, or refitted re-allocated to the ‘new aircraft’ ledger. Thus, giving a dramatically over inflated impression of his achievements. That was not all, German engine designers told Allied engineers that the impressive final boost levels released by Daimler for the Bf 109 of +2.1 and even +2.3 atmospheres manifold pressure, where in fact needed just to get the 109 to meet its basic service specifications. Speer’s ‘miracle’ had created fighters of such incredibly poor build quality that the Daimler-Benz engine designers told the Allies that the fighters reaching the front line were on average an incredible 25mph slower than their claimed performance (over 6%). The allies had faced hordes of ‘ghost fighters’, those which were not figments of Speers ledgers were in performance terms, shadows of their potential.

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7. Sexing down the ‘Butcher Bird’ The Fw 190 was judged to be such a serious threat when it arrived, that the Chief of Air Staff, Sir Charles Portal wrote to Churchill on the matter. The archives show that he rewrote the letter twice in March 1942 before sending it, each successive letter putting the threat across in more nuanced language than the last. The first read: “adverse casualty rate”, the second version scored out this line and replaced it with “unfavourable balance” and finally “unfavourable factor”. Figure 3: One of the draft letters Portal prepared for Churchill. 8. Why the chaos?  There is strong evidence to suggest that German aviation production planning was thrown into the ruinously bad state of organisation which plagued it during the Second World War as early as 1936. One of Germany’s most renowned aviation designers Dr Robert Lusser (who had worked for Messerschmitt and Heinkel) wrote to the Secretary of State for Air, Erhard Milch on 15th January 1942 to inform him that German aviation was being destroyed by the application of badly thought out plans to accelerate production of new types. Figure 4: Dr Robert Lusser, German aviation designer. Lusser explained how up to 1936, the path from aviation development to mass production had taken (in planning) at least 4 years. This began with design, then testing, production simplifications and prototype building over the course of the middle 2 years, with mass production beginning in the 3rd year. Support Hush-Kit with our high quality aviation themed merchandise here

Figure 5: Lusser`s chart of how production was planned up until 1936 in Germany. At a certain stage, due to the pressures from above, planning had attempted to be ‘compressed’ by one year, to allow mass production (Gross Serie) to begin after just two years. This involved both testing (Erprobung), production simplifications (Serieneinfachung) and prototype build (Null-Serie) all occurring at once, over the course of just one year. To make this (in theory) a possibility, demands were also made that design and testing resources might have to be drafted in from other firms who were being under utilized in some particular capacity at the time. Figure 6: The same chart modified to show how it was altered post-1936. The process was in fact, according to Lusser, a disaster. It resulted in several aircraft of appalling quality being made, and the changes needed to rectify the faults ended up putting on far more time than would have been taken to just stick to the original, (proven) time plan. Lusser, regarding these compressed plans told Milch: “Diese Glaube hat sich als eine schwere illusion!” (“These beliefs [that production can be accelerated] are nothing more than a fantasy!”) 9. Willy’s Frölich? The Messerschmitt Me 210, the much-needed replacement for the ageing Me 110 was a disaster which tarnished Professor Messerschmitt’s reputation for decades and resulted in him temporarily being demoted. However, it appears from archive records of interrogations carried out in 1945 of German aviation designers that it may not have been his fault. According to British Technical Intelligence files on the Me 210, a series of problems occurred, none of which were instigated by the professor himself. It turned out that in the concept phase, the German Air Ministry (the RLM) told Messerschmitt that a team of designers from the Arado firm would be drafted in to the Messerschmitt offices to design the wings and tail section. This team was led by Arado engineers Rethel and Frölich. There was a fundamental disagreement about the ideal concept to take, but the RLM insisted that the Arado engineer’s idea was to be followed, and the original twin-fin tail layout was rejected. If that were not enough, for reasons of expediting the development timeline the RLM ordered that the drawings were to bypass the manufacturing department (fertigungsbüro). When the aircraft was tested, it displayed appalling aerodynamic instability and frightening structural failures (the wings sometimes broke off at about 2/3 of the distance from the wing-root). It killed many pilots and was branded a dangerous menace. Two hundred had been made when production was stopped whilst the errors were fixed. The tail was modified five times before it had been enlarged enough to induce stability. This never worked very well, and only when the original specifications were re-issued as the Me 410 was the fighter a success. By the time that occurred, the design was nowhere near as useful as it would have been had it been in service two or three years prior. Messerschmitt had fallen victim to RLM incompetence and demonstrated exactly why Lusser had been right when he wrote to Milch. 10. Teacher’s pets  German technical intelligence spent its time producing wonderfully artistic but useless reports on British aircraft development possibilities, whist the British produced simple projections on possible German developments on a single sheet of paper with a typewriter and some hand-drawn arrows. Figure 7: Typical British Intelligence chart showing projections for the Bf 109 development. The German reports were produced by Dietrich Schwenke, who was the head of German aviation technical intelligence. What follows is a page showing the equivalent projections on possible British developments with the Spitfire. This was part of a mammoth 60-odd page report, the illustrations for which must have taken weeks to prepare. Figure 8: One of the well-illustrated pages from Schwenke’s huge pamphlet on Allied aviation developments We can conclude from this only that the German report was not written to provide a timely and useful memo for German engineers, but was written to show superiors an impressive looking publication to convince them what a thorough job they were doing. It would have taken so long to prepare that by the time it was released much of the utility of the information was lost. This concentration of appearance over substance is representative of much of the failure which resulted in the German defeat in the air over Germany in 1943 and 1944. In conclusion, it was not in fact the Allied engineer who struggled against all odds to succeed but the German. Whist Allied policies and choices are full of incompetence and failure, the German story simply has even more disastrous strategic errors, and so reached the event horizon of defeat.

This book can only happen with your support. Preorder your copy today here. 

From the cocaine, blood and flying scarves of World War One dogfighting to the dark arts of modern air combat, here is an enthralling ode to these brutally exciting killing machines. The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is a beautifully designed, highly visual, collection of the best articles from the fascinating world of military aviation –hand-picked from the highly acclaimed Hush-kit online magazine (and mixed with a heavy punch of new exclusive material). It is packed with a feast of material, ranging from interviews with fighter pilots (including the English Electric Lightning, stealthy F-35B and Mach 3 MiG-25 ‘Foxbat’), to wicked satire, expert historical analysis, top 10s and all manner of things aeronautical, from the site described as: “the thinking-man’s Top Gear… but for planes”. The solid well-researched information about aeroplanes is brilliantly combined with an irreverent attitude and real insight into the dangerous romantic world of combat aircraft. FEATURING

• Interviews with pilots of the F-14 Tomcat, Mirage, Typhoon, MiG-25, MiG-27, English Electric Lighting, Harrier, F-15, B-52 and many more.
• Engaging Top (and bottom) 10s including: Greatest fighter aircraft of World War II, Worst British aircraft, Worst Soviet aircraft and many more insanely specific ones.
• Expert analysis of weapons, tactics and technology.
• A look into art and culture’s love affair with the aeroplane.
• Bizarre moments in aviation history.
• Fascinating insights into exceptionally obscure warplanes.

The book will be a stunning object: an essential addition to the library of anyone with even a passing interest in the high-flying world of warplanes, and featuring first-rate photography and a wealth of new world-class illustrations.

Oasis, The Godfather, Champagne, many things in life are over-rated. Popular opinion will hold that they’re the outstanding examples of their kind, but popular opinion is merely the collective braying of the uneducated hordes. To elevate you above the uneducated horde the following list is ten of the most over-rated military aircraft, allowing you to display a veneer of sophistication when they crop up in conversation. To be clear most of these aircraft aren’t bad, generally they’ve at least displayed some level of basic competence, but this has been over-inflated in the popular imagination to an unwarranted degree. The Bruce Springsteen of aviation if you will.

To avoid filling the complete article with flights of fancy cancelled projects don’t count. This saves you the reader from my multi-volume rant on the TSR.2 having fewer flying hours than the X-35 did when it was selected to be the Joint Strike Fighter. It’s also pretty much all combat aircraft as it’s hard to think of any over-rated cargo haulers. Or helicopters. Or Blackburn products.

National chauvinism frequently plays a part in aircraft, or anything else, being overrated. For this reason, the list would appear to be biased against British aircraft, because those are the ones the author has most often heard being praised while thinking, ‘steady on, they aren’t that good’. Plus let’s face it, most other countries’ aircraft are average at best.

 

Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor ‘Pointless Craptor’ 

The F-22 is an impressive aircraft to be sure, fast, extremely agile, and almost invisible to radar. Slightly short on range compared to some other modern military aircraft and more expensive than even the F-35 it is none the less the fighter to beat. It’s not however without its problems. Early Raptors appeared to have been inspired by HAL from 2001, making multiple attempts on their own pilot’s lives which lead to a four-month grounding while the USAF tried to resolve the issues. These were eventually traced to a faulty g-suit inflation system and an erratic onboard oxygen generating system.

The small matter of attempted pilotcide [1] out of the way you’re still left with helicopter levels of maintenance activity, each aircraft having to undergo a three-week work package every 300 flying hours, primarily due to the stealth coating. There’s also the issue of a relatively small fleet size of around 180 aircraft due to the early programme cancellation. Now to your average European air force that sounds like excessive largesse, but if you’re trying to maintain a global presence it barely scratches the surface.

Perhaps more critically the F-22 seems wholly unsuited to the wars the USA has spent most of the century fighting. Yes, they have been employed dropping the occasional JDAM on Syria, and have apparently conducted Close Air Support which makes criticism of the F-35 conducting the role look wholly misplaced. But is a $150 million air superiority fighter really the best tool for the job or was that an attempt to justify its existence. Because at ~$60,000 per flying hour you could have employed 3 A-10s to do the same thing.

Don’t say – The ultimate manned fighter.

Do say – Overkill when you’ve decided to spend the last twenty years dropping bombs on people without an air force.

[1] If we use it enough in print the OED have to make it a word, work with me.

 

 

McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II

Hush-Kit’s top Cold War Carrier Combat Aircraft was the F-4 Phantom, probably the first jet aircraft to succeed at being multi-role and so good the USAF swallowed its pride and brought a few. Thousand. Contrary to popular opinion, and some dialogue in Top Gun, it also achieved a respectable kill-ratio in the Vietnam War against smaller more agile opponents. It wasn’t however without its problems.

Designed as a missile armed all weather interceptor this proved to be overly ambitious when put to the test in South East Asia, the performance of the early Sidewinder and Sparrow missiles being sub-optimal. Initially this led to crews’ ripple firing missiles in an attempt to gain a hit, foreshadowing the author’s attempts to stay alive in DCS World. But with the close in fighting that developed due to the rules of engagement in force even this wasn’t guaranteed to work. Indeed, it was not uncommon for a Phantom to find itself too close to the enemy to fire even the short-ranged IR seeking missiles. This led initially to the fitting of gun pods, the accuracy of which was variable especially when fitted to aircraft subject to catapult launches. Ultimately an internal gun was fitted on the Air Force’s aircraft from the E model onwards. A solution that required the shuffling around of internal components to maintain the centre of gravity and the deletion of the ram air turbine that supplied hydraulic pressure in the event of engine failures.

To add to the woes over Vietnam the J79 engines used by the Phantom produce copious amounts of black smoke, providing a convenient pointer towards the aircraft for any enemy fighters or anti-aircraft batteries. Still at least it only took two decades to fix that issue with the J79-10A fitted to the F-4S in 1977. Two years after the end of the war in Vietnam. Having two of the J-79s also meant the ‘Toom drank like a furloughed single man during lock-down, getting through about 5 times as much fuel as a Harrier or Corsair just to get airborne.

Having just about got the F-4 sorted the world’s air forces started replacing it as newer designs were introduced that fixed its various short-comings. Or in the case of the RN fitted on their ships. Despite this the Phantom actually remains in service with a variety of air arms in 2020, 60 years after the first USN squadron formed. Nominally Iran, Japan, South Korea, Greece, and Turkey are still operating McDonnell Douglas finest. The last two presumably refusing to retire their aircraft until the other does.

The Phantom was a good aircraft at its peak although inevitably compromised when compared to more specialist airframes such as the A-6 or F-8. But this peak was broadly the late 60s through to the early 80s. For the other two-thirds of its life it’s either been struggling through development woes or stumbling around in the early hours trying to find the toilet as bladder control starts to become an issue.

Don’t Say – Confusingly mixed messaging from the clowns at Hush Kit.

Do Say – Good for its time, but increasingly out classed during the latter four decades of its service.

More about the Phantom’s flaw’s here.

 

Mikoyan MiG-25 ‘Foxbat’

For the younger reader it may be hard to imagine the degree of paranoia and secrecy that permeated the Cold War. The rivals on either side of the iron curtain were equally desperate to find out what their opposition were building while guarding their own secrets. Aircraft performance had to be estimated from looking at reconnaissance photos and figuring out what the design was supposed to achieve. If you weren’t there it was basically like Firefox and The Hunt for Red October but with better accents.

Consequently, when the first images of what was to become the MiG-25 appeared there was much scratching of heads. To Western thinking, influenced by Col John Boyd’s energy manoeuvrability theory, the large wing and monstrous engines were optimised for dogfighting. This led to significant increases in the performance requirements of what would become the F-15 which had previously assumed the MiG-23 was the aircraft to beat. [2]

In reality the wing was sized to lift what was a very heavy aircraft, being made of stainless steel rather than aluminium alloy like pretty much everything else. Why stainless steel? Because the Foxbat was intended to intercept the, ultimately cancelled, B-70 Valkyrie bomber which would operate at Mach 3. Matching these speeds would heat the airframe to around 300°C at which point aluminium tends to lose structural integrity. Titanium presumably not being used due to a desire to have an aircraft that could be maintained by conscripts. A problem the similarly speedy SR-71 didn’t have allowing it to be built from the metal, ironically sourced from Russia. The speed requirement also drove what is a relatively thin wing profile to minimise drag, increasing take-off and landing speeds to the extent it has a 4,500’ take-off run. In contrast to RAF practice of the time the Soviets required some degree of endurance from its aircraft, consequently ~70% of the internal volume is given over to fuel. Which to limited what other equipment could be crammed in there.

Much of this was revealed to the Capitalist Running Dogs of the West when Lieutenant Belenko used one to take a day trip from Vladivostok to Hakodate Air Base in Japan in 1976. While Belenko was whisked away to a life of luxury and questioning in the USA technicians took apart the MiG to discover its secrets. They then boxed it up and returned it to the Soviets in crates, who gave the Japanese a bill of $10 million for damage to the aircraft. The Japanese countered with $40,000 of charges for shipping costs, which makes an Amazon Prime subscription seem good value.

By this point though the damage had been done, the F-15 was entering service designed to counter abilities that didn’t exist.

(still it is the only MiG with a teenfighter kill)

Don’t say – The fastest fighter in the world.

Do say – Made into a bogey man by the USA to justify the F-15’s performance requirements.

[2] In something of a pattern the MiG-23 was also considered by Western powers to be more impressive than it really was.

Heinkel He 113

It’s fair to say the first half of 1940 hadn’t gone well for Britain and her allies, having lost the Battles of Norway and France everything relied on winning the upcoming home match to stay in the championship. Worryingly for Fighter Command who would bear the brunt of the upcoming fighting they’d only just held their own against the Luftwaffe’s current fighters the Bf109 and Bf110. It was obvious from intelligence reports that the far superior He-113 would be a completely different proposition. With a top speed of 390mph some 35mph faster than the Spitfire and a fuel injected engine allowing negative g flight the Super Jaegar would be able to run rings around the RAF’s best. Perhaps more worryingly where the British aircraft were armed with eight, or sometimes twelve, .303 calibre machine guns photos indicated the Germans had managed to incorporate three 20-mm cannon into their fighter. For those not up on the technicalities of fighter weaponry machine-guns fire inert lumps of lead, 0.303 inches in diameter in this case. Cannon on the other hand fire mini projectiles that incorporate explosives that detonate on contact, which makes much more of a mess. The Allies were working on arming their aircraft with cannon, but they wouldn’t start to see wide-spread adoption until the following year due to difficulties developing them and the performance hit due to their greater mass.

Everything then indicated the He 113 was going to be a tough customer and so it would prove. The first encounter seems to have been while Hurricanes were covering the Dunkirk evacuation when they were bounced by the Super Fighters while themselves preparing to attack a group of He 111 bombers. This pattern would repeat itself throughout the subsequent rather predictably named Battle of Britain, flights of He 113 would strike from high level just as the attacking fighters were about to engage bombers. Later they would use their great speed to carry out lightning raids on ground targets, the first on 18 August when they destroyed a Hurricane and seven Spitfires at RAF Manston for no losses. Indeed, throughout the battle there were no confirmed kills of the He 113 only a handful of probables. The only relief for the Allies was that the Germans seemed to have only limited numbers of the aircraft available, it was speculated due to difficulties operating what was obviously a highly advanced aircraft from muddy fields in France.

In reality it was because they hadn’t actually built any He 113s. The whole thing was a ruse by Nazi head of propaganda Joseph Goebbels and the Luftwaffe using repainted He 100 prototypes to convince their enemies they were far ahead of them in aircraft development. The He 100 had set a world air speed record shortly before the war so was a plausible basis for a new fighter but for a variety of reasons hadn’t been selected as such by the Luftwaffe. The 113 designation was chosen in an attempt to play up to the stereotypical image of German methodical predictability, being a logical follow on to the He 112 that had seen limited service. That the ruse worked can be demonstrated by the willingness of allied pilots to report higher flying faster aircraft as He 113, when in reality they’d just been Bf 109s using a height advantage to gain speed. More crucially as the Super Fighter’s reputation grew, they would become increasingly wary of engaging any formation they mistakenly identified as consisting of them.

To say the He 113 was over-rated is probably under-stating things, fear of its ability allegedly factoring in Dowding’s decision not to deploy Spitfires to France. When in reality it was a prototype cosplaying as an end of level baddy.

Don’t say – What?

Do Say – The kind of information warfare Alistair Campbell would be proud of.

Avro Vulcan ‘Hero of Operation Slack Fuck’

Say V-Bombers and if you’re basic your first thought is the Avro Vulcan and why not, it’s a moderately attractive cranked delta with four Olympus engines. Its greatest claim to fame is of course the Black Buck raids during the Falklands Conflict which saw pretty much the entire surviving V-Force execute possibly the most complicated refuelling plan in history to hit a runway. With a bomb. Followed shortly after by the retirement of most of the Vulcan fleet at the end of the year. Which is the kind of thing someone should write a book about.

So, job done, Vulcan, greatest V-bomber, if not strategic bomber, of all time, right? Well no frankly. It was certainly in the top three V bombers beating the Short Sperrin by entering service, and the Vickers Valiant by not falling apart after ten years of pootling around the sky. Although to be fair that did have the distinction of actually dropping a nuclear bomb and beat the Vulcan to conventional bombing missions by 26 years during the Suez Crisis. They managed more than one hit on the runway as well.

Still if you’re a Top Trumps kind of aircraft fan it could at least carry the same bomb load as the Valiant slightly faster. It fails utterly in comparison to the other V-bomber though. The Victor could carry 14 more 1000lb bombs than its sisters in the V-Force for a total of 35,0000lbs. Or half a B-52’s payload. It could also go further and in a shallow dive break the sound barrier.

The only real problem with the Victor was the manufacturer, Handley Page’s chairman being less keen on the government’s ideas for manufacturer consolidation than they were. That combined with potential issues fitting the Skybolt missile meant only a handful of Victor B2s were ordered compared to an extravagance of Vulcans. Consequently, when Skybolt was cancelled the greater numbers of Vulcans meant they were a shoe in for the bomber role while the Victors became tankers.

Not a bad aircraft overall, the Vulcan’s reputation today seems to rest on its role in Black Buck rather than its overall capability. Plus it’s in Thunderball which can’t have hurt.

Don’t say – A triumph of British design and engineering.

Do Say – The Victor could carry more further, what else do you want in a bomber?

Mitsubishi A6M Zero ‘

To say that the Mitsubishi Zero came as an unpleasant surprise to the Allied forces during December 1941 would be a bit of an understatement. Nimble, fast, and long ranged it was everything you’d want in a carrier fighter. Okay slightly more armour and radio aids would be nice, but their absence didn’t stop it racking up an impressive kill rate during the sudden expansion of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere into the Indian and Pacific oceans. During raids on the only ‘civilised’ bit of Northern Australia, Darwin, they easily dealt with the Spitfire Vs that had been rushed there for its defence. This despite the defenders being flown by experienced Battle of Britain veterans.

The evidence for the Zero’s reputation seems pretty clear-cut then, cutting a swathe before it even when opposed by the ‘greatest fighter of all time’ flown by the best of the best. Or at least the best of the RAF. Mitsubishi had obviously created some sort of uber-fighter, probably either with the direct help of the Germans, or inspired by an obscure Gloster design that never got ordered. [3] Because the alternative would be that the Zero was an average fighter with strengths and weaknesses and the Japanese were producing better pilots than the Allies. Which would be incredibly inconvenient given all the intelligence assessments and propaganda that had asserted the Japanese were producing inferior knock-offs of Western aircraft and were themselves physically inferior. Particularly inconvenient if you’d then based your defence policy on those assumptions and left a variety of obsolete aircraft to defend your key outpost in the region. Still at least the loss of Singapore put an end to any conceit of racial superiority in the British populace.

The Zero wasn’t a bad aircraft, it was very manoeuvrable, had decent armament, and had excellent low-speed handling. It wasn’t however particularly fast, and its critical altitude, where the supercharger can no longer compensate for the depredation of altitude on engine performance, was a relatively low 16,000’. Useful for naval air combat but much lower than the Spitfire’s and other fighters optimised for the European theatre. Its main advantage was in the cockpit where the pilots sat, after undergoing what at the time was the longest training course in the world. This allowed them to make the most of their aircraft and drag allied pilots into combat on their terms. Meanwhile the Australian Spitfire pilots insisted on using tactics that wouldn’t have cut the mustard in Europe by getting into turning fights with one of the few aircraft that could out-turn them. Indeed, the score could probably have been reversed if they’d used high speed dives to make slashing attacks on the Zeros before climbing away to position for a follow up.

As a fighter the Zero was a good aircraft, however, to compensate for the shocking performance of the Allies against what they’d been told was an inferior enemy it had to become a great one.

Don’t say – It swept a wave of terror across the Pacific.

Do say – Made into a bogey man by the Allies to cover-up their pre-war intelligence failings.

[3] The Gloster F5/34, Google it, it’s pretty similar.

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress ‘Captain mediocre’ 

Ask the average man in the street to name a WW2 USAAF bomber and they’ll probably ask you to stand two meters away and put a face mask on. Repeat the experiment enough times however and you’ll soon realise the Flying Fortress is probably the most famous American bomber of WW2. Capable of delivering 4,500lbs of high explosives to Berlin while fighting off hordes of Fw 190s and Bf 109s with an ever-increasing battery of .50 cal machine guns the B-17 played a major contribution to attempts to flatten Germany into submission.

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Impressive as that sounds it was also broadly what the Mosquito could do on half the engines, only two crew, and about 130mph faster. Meanwhile the USAAF’s other heavy the B-24 Liberator could fly further, faster, with more. It was also the most produced bomber in history, with 18,482 to the B-17s mere 12,731. [4]

So why the love for what was at best the equal of its peers? Mostly good PR. Even before the USA was bombed into entering the war against fascism the B-17 was getting publicity for its work with the RAF. Ironically mostly with Coastal Command the early models being considered unsuitable for its primary role after initial trials over occupied Germany had achieved at best mixed results. With the late entrants to the war doing their best to play catch-up the USAAF were keen to push the message that they were taking the fight deep into Nazi Germany.

Until mid-43 this meant lots of reports of Flying Fortresses, cementing its place in the public’s heart before the B-24 had got down to business. If this wasn’t enough just as the Liberator was deploying in May ’43 the first B-17 completed a tour of 25 missions, the following week the Memphis Belle did to a blitz of publicity including the 1944 release of a documentary broadly documenting their final mission. In a further insult to, well everyone, the 1990 film Memphis Belle fictionalised the making of the documentary, added to the profile of the B-17, and gave Harry Connick Jr an acting career.

Essentially then the Flying Fortress was an alright bomber with a great PR department. The Adam Sandler of strategic bombing. Seriously how is he still getting roles?

Don’t say – The Bomber that won the war.

Do say – The Liberator did the work the B-17 got the glory.

[4] The Ju-88 making second place with 15,183 built, fact-fans.

English Electric Lightning ‘Exciting & useless’ 

Continuing the RAF’s love affair with short ranged aircraft the Lightning was designed to defend V-Force airfields long enough for the bombers to get airborne. This led to an aircraft with a phenomenal rate of climb, impressive top speed, and for the time, 1959, cutting edge weapons system. Contrary to claims by Lockheed-Martin about the F-22 it was also the first aircraft to be able to super-cruise. All things that bring aviation enthusiasts of a certain age to a near priapism.

The Lightning was very impressive in its niche, and if it had stuck at being a short-range point interceptor it would have been great. But awkwardly that role didn’t last for long the nuclear deterrent role going to the navy’s Polaris submarines in 1968 removing the strategic requirement to defend the V Force airfields. Meanwhile the air defence requirement changed to intercepting aircraft over the North Sea and GIUK gap. [5] More awkwardly thanks to the Sandys’ review passing off savage cuts as strategic long-term planning, there were no successors to the Lightning in the offing, manned aircraft being considered obsolete.

This left the Lightning by default as the RAF’s best choice of aircraft for the role, the alternative being the Javelin possibly the only all-weather fighter with a restriction on flying in cloud. However even with an increased fuel load in a gradually expanding pot belly the Lightning would be heavily reliant on tanker support. The ultimate F.6 model only had a combat range of around 135nm for a supersonic intercept. Perhaps less usefully there doesn’t seem to have been anything in the way of an effort to increase the Lightning’s armament, the F.1 entering service with two heat seeking missiles and two internal 30mm cannon, and the F.6 leaving service with two heat-seeking missiles and two 30-mm cannon. This wasn’t necessarily an issue when the aircraft was intended for a last-ditch defence of the UK’s airfields to allow the deterrent to get away. Operating over the North Sea to hold off the advancing Soviet hordes it would seem to be more of an issue. Hence 43 Squadron forming on surplus Royal Navy Phantom FG.1s in 1970 to take on some of the air defence burden solving the range and payload problems simultaneously. Although to be fair that was a far more advanced aircraft having first entered service 12 months after the Lightning.

As an air show performer and rocket emulator the Lightning was fantastic, but that’s not what its actual role was.

Don’t say – A triumph of British design and engineering.

Do say – Woefully under-armed, unless the Soviets were planning on invading one at a time.

[5] For the younger reader the GIUK gap is the area between Greenland, Iceland, and the UK through which the Soviet Navy would make their way to the North Atlantic.

Harrier ‘Vectored trust’ 

The 1960s were a time of great experimentation as the world’s aircraft manufacturers attempted to produce viable VSTOL aircraft. British aviation enthusiasts take a considerable degree of pride in the emergence of the Harrier as the only successful aircraft from this period of sometimes crazed tinkering. No, the Yak-38 Forger doesn’t count as successful. This pride is enhanced by its ability to inflict wide area tinnitus via air show performances.

You do though have to question whether it was all worth it. The genius of the Harrier was doing away with a separate lift engine by using the front stage of a turbofan to provide thrust forward of the centre of gravity. The hot stage does the same aft of it, a bit of shuffling around with the aircraft’s mass and voila you can hover. It does mean you need a turbofan with a reasonable bypass ratio though which is the sort of thing you normally see on a business jet. It also makes engine maintenance something of a challenge, the wing having to come off if you want to change it. Plus, the usual problem of any powered lift aircraft using full thrust for a vertical landing increasing the fatigue and vibration load, decreasing airframe life.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and it’s notable that the Royal Air Force was the only land-based operator of the Harrier. All the other Harrier variants were sold to people who wanted to fly from ships, the USMC, the Spanish Navy, the Royal Navy, the Italian Navy, etc. Indeed, the major operation the RAF’s second-generation Harriers were involved with was Afghanistan. Where their VSTOL capability was well used operating from a runway only otherwise suitable for, checks notes, Tornadoes.

Another area of misplaced pride in the Harrier is the assumption it’s somehow better than the F-35 because it doesn’t have a lift fan and the UK ‘should have just made a better Harrier rather than wasting money on the F-35’. Which overlooks the fact the Harrier’s lift fan is essentially the first stage of the Pegasus, is always engaged, and creates an increasing amount of intake drag as you approach Mach 1. Never mind that for a turbofan producing a similar level of thrust to the F-35’s engine you’d be looking at something that’s usually hung off an A320. Good luck building a fighter around that. The Pegasus configuration anyway makes for some awkward packaging decisions when designing your aircraft, look at the P. 1214 to see some of the work rounds needed to use it on an Advanced STOVL project.

The Harrier then, a really successful technology demonstrator that probably degraded the UK’s overall defence capability. Still handy if you’re going to cheap out on your aircraft carrier.

Don’t say – A triumph of British design and engineering.

Do say – Pardon? I can’t hear you over the sound of the Harrier.

 

Supermarine Spitfire

If you’re British and aren’t particularly interested in aircraft the Spitfire is your favourite. It’s probably also what you call every camouflaged aeroplane with a propeller that you see. This helps the aviation connoisseur avoid you.

Not that the Spitfire was a bad aircraft, as a short-range interceptor it was exactly the sort of thing you’d want if say you were planning on defending an island against an aerial onslaught. Once that unpleasantness is out of the way however you really need something with more range. Despite Photo-Reconnaissance Units and the USAAF proving you could usefully cram more fuel into the Spitfire, almost equalling the range of the Mustang, the RAF proved resistant to the idea. This made it difficult providing an escort to any missions going further than say the beaches of Pas-de-Calais.

Nor did this limited range gain the Spitfire much in the way of performance, with broadly similar Merlin installations the P-51C was 7% faster than the Spitfire MkIX with 10% better fuel consumption, thanks to a more aerodynamic form. This despite the Mustang being 20% heavier. The Spitfire was faster climbing, which did at least let it spend its limited time airborne at a decent altitude.

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Long range escort not being an option attempts were also made at dive-bombing, where the Spitfire would build up speed too quickly. This would have been less of a problem if it couldn’t lead to the ailerons detaching if unchecked by the pilot. The light build of the aircraft also left it able to only carry half the bomb load of its contemporaries, 1000lbs to the P-51 and P-47’s 2000lbs.

But at least it was unrivalled in air-to-air combat. Apart from say against the Zero, or when operated by the Soviets who relegated it to the rear with the PVO’s air defence forces, favouring the Bell Airacobra for the VVS busy engaging the Luftwaffe over the battlefield. That’s right they preferred the Airacobra, something virtually no one has heard of, to the Spitfire.

The less said of the attempts to make the Spitfire seaworthy the better, suffice to say the undercarriage was never really up to the job even with multiple upgrades. By the time it got to the Korean War the Seafire was so stretching the original design that the fuselage was wrinkling from conducting deck landings. Which is a bit of a design flaw in a carrier aircraft.

The Battle of Britain gave the Spitfire great PR, this has overshadowed its later perfectly average performance.

Don’t say – A triumph of British design and engineering.

Do say – The sort of dead horse flogging that saw the original Mini in production for 40 years.

Bing Chandler is a former Lynx Observer and current Wildcat Air Safety Officer. If you want a Sea Vixen t-shirt he can fix you up.

Don’t say – Deliberately contentious waffle, a Pound Land Clarkson.

Do say – Thought provoking and insightful, the thinking woman’s Brad Pitt.

This book can only happen with your support. Preorder your copy today here. 

From the cocaine, blood and flying scarves of World War One dogfighting to the dark arts of modern air combat, here is an enthralling ode to these brutally exciting killing machines.

The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is a beautifully designed, highly visual, collection of the best articles from the fascinating world of military aviation –hand-picked from the highly acclaimed Hush-kit online magazine (and mixed with a heavy punch of new exclusive material). It is packed with a feast of material, ranging from interviews with fighter pilots (including the English Electric Lightning, stealthy F-35B and Mach 3 MiG-25 ‘Foxbat’), to wicked satire, expert historical analysis, top 10s and all manner of things aeronautical, from the site described as:

“the thinking-man’s Top Gear… but for planes”.

The solid well-researched information about aeroplanes is brilliantly combined with an irreverent attitude and real insight into the dangerous romantic world of combat aircraft.

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• Interviews with pilots of the F-14 Tomcat, Mirage, Typhoon, MiG-25, MiG-27, English Electric Lighting, Harrier, F-15, B-52 and many more.
• Engaging Top (and bottom) 10s including: Greatest fighter aircraft of World War II, Worst British aircraft, Worst Soviet aircraft and many more insanely specific ones.
• Expert analysis of weapons, tactics and technology.
• A look into art and culture’s love affair with the aeroplane.
• Bizarre moments in aviation history.
• Fascinating insights into exceptionally obscure warplanes.

The book will be a stunning object: an essential addition to the library of anyone with even a passing interest in the high-flying world of warplanes, and featuring first-rate photography and a wealth of new world-class illustrations.

 

The most beautiful machines in sporting history were the unforgiving brutes designed to win the Schneider Cup for seaplane racing. Dangerous, glamorous and with international pride at stake, the racers were fire-breathing monsters operating at the absolute limits of what was technologically possible. In the ten years from 1921, the Schneider record speed doubled, from 205mph to 470mph. The final figure of 470mph was also a staggering ten times faster than the first race winner of 1913.  The world of racing seaplanes is a very limited one so when I was asked to put together a piece about the top 10, the first thing I did was bend the rules and include flying boats. Even so, this really only leaves Schneider Trophy (more properly ‘Schneider Cup’) contestants, with an oddball excursion thrown in for variety. First held in 1913, Schneider’s intent for his eponymous trophy was that it should encourage the development of reliable, safe, waterborne aircraft. This being seen as a more practical proposition in those early days of sparsely distributed random muddy airstrips for land-borne planes. The First World War arrived a year later immediately rendered the concept anachronistic, with surviving members of the air forces emerging from those dark days educated with all they needed for setting up a more formal land based aviation network, equipped by an industry that had developed from inspired geniuses and lunatics into fully mature and generally competent businesses. However, the Schneider Trophy carried on, and it developed into an arena for government funded racers. It was finally won in perpetuity by Great Britain in 1931. The selection of aircraft for this list could have simply been made based on the number of wins and increase in performance over previous winners, but where’s the fun in that? Instead I have made my selection based on historical significance, success, flair and aesthetics. 10. Savoia S21  This is a fictional aircraft but please bear with me. Porco Rosso is a film from that doyen of anime, Studio Ghibli, and although an animated fairytale of sorts it is multi-layered and well regarded by those who know about this sort of thing. The plot is based around 1930s ‘air pirates’ in a pseudo-Mediterranean setting with some of the aircraft being clearly based on Schneider Trophy competitors (in particular those of the two main protagonists). There are fictional aspects to suit the storyline but, even so, the aircraft maintain a close visual relationship to the source material. Porco Rosso’s S21 is obviously inspired by the Macchi M33 of 1924 and arch villain Donald Curtis flies a Curtiss R2C-2. As the hero’s mount it has to be the ‘S21’ that gets the vote for inclusion here.  This film introduces this extremely appealing subject to a wider audience in a colourful and entertaining way. It’s clear that whoever drew these has a real love of the aircraft and as such it cannot help but encourage interest in this period of aviation history, and the Schneider Trophy in particular. If I’ve learnt anything about anime fans it’s that they can be a tad obsessive, so you can guarantee a fair number will dig deeper into what lies behind the designs. It’s the education of a wider public – almost through subterfuge – that earns this aircraft a place on the list and, if nothing else, it’s the best porcine aviation based animation you may never have seen! 9. Macchi M.39 America had shown the old countries the way with regard to what was required to win the Schneider Trophy in its later years, with the CR-3 in 1923. In 1926, the USA was on the cusp of winning it forever. The Italians retorted by showed how they had learned from the American success with the Macchi M.39. As the Curtiss had set the model for success before it, the M.39 refined this further and introduced the basic aircraft configuration that would be followed by all subsequent winners. Castoldi had studied the entrants in 1925 and applied what he’d learned to his new design, concentrating on attention to detail around the streamlining and packaging. The other aspect embraced was government backing; Il Duce’s regime funding it and creating the Reparto Alta Velocita (High Speed Unit) as the team to uphold Italy’s honour. The M.39, with its Fiat AS2 engine, was the first to hold the fuel in the floats and crystallised the classic late 20’s design (albeit as an all-wood construction) The key features were a faired in cockpit with minimal height screen, low monoplane wing, surface radiators and minimal external bracing. There were problems at the start with the aircraft being difficult to handle, both on the water and in the air, but the initial development programme at least got these to a point where they were manageable. There were also problems with the inlet duct causing a reduction in engine power, something that would reoccur with a number of later aircraft as the limits of testing and knowledge were pushed further. In this case it was solved whilst out in America for the race where the M.39 was finally able to show its class and grab the win, vanquishing the biplane as victor to the history books forever. 8. Piaggio Pegna PC7 The Piaggio Pegna PC7 manages to clamber so far up the list simply by being so inherently audacious and, given it was such an ambitious design, having come so close to flying. Pegna had been creating various wild schemes for some time and in 1928 his persistence was rewarded with a contract from the Italian government for two examples of the PC7. Sadly there were too many novelties and too little time to develop them, but the PC7 wasn’t simply a madcap scheme. The overall driver for the design stems from the use of hydroplanes instead of floats or a conventional hull, an approach which required with numerous additional, and very complex, features. Pegna had been actively researching hydroplanes during the First World War and returned to them as a way of reducing weight and drag. The problem of creating a ‘vane design’ that would work well when on the water and in flight occupied quite a bit of time. There was also the matter of how you deal with the low lying propeller at the front. This was solved by installing a clutched variable pitch water propeller in the back and a clutched drive to the main prop up front. The latter also had a cunning device to ensure that when stopped it would always be with the propeller blades across the aircraft (the position shown in the photograph above). All of which allowed for a slim, low-sitting, fuselage-hull without wing tip floats. The nose was extraordinarily long and the pilot located pilot well back toward the fin. Both PC7s were completed but an inherent instability during take-off, and the passing of the race itself, meant they never actually flew. Instead they simply became beautiful, visionary, and utterly glorious cul-de-sacs. 7. Gloster Napier VI The Gloster Napier VI only came about because of the decision to change the Schneider Trophy into a biennial event after 1927. At the time, Gloster were shaping up to develop their series of good but not quite good enough biplane racers a little further. Meanwhile, the aero-engine manufacturer Napier were reconciled to the Lion engine finally being outclassed. However, an additional year of preparatory time was enough to spur both airframe and engine designers to greater ambition. The result was VI with its supercharged version of the W-12 engine. Two aircraft were built and, with their gold painted fuselages, the type soon became known as the ‘Golden Arrow.’ If nothing else the looks promised much. Even by Schneider Trophy standards, the new type had a small fuselage and highly polished finish. In fact many still view this as the most handsome aircraft ever to be built in pursuit of the trophy. The slim wings (with their hint of the elliptical) had a ‘kick up’ at the root to provide an aerodynamically efficient junction with the fuselage revealing the extreme care with which the type was designed. The supercharger, designed under contract by British Thomson-Houston, was fed by three carburettors which in turn were fed by air from three separate intakes. It is here that the key to the VI’s failure lay: the engines could not be made to run consistently under race conditions, a problem generally attributed to the related inlet ducting. The tendency to cut out during high speed turns was especially dangerous in the racing environment. The Gloster VI may never have competed because of this, but N249 momentarily snatched glory in 1929 when it set the world speed record at 336.3mph. Sadly for Gloster, the Supermarine S6 topped this a mere two days later, but at least it had earned its brief place in the sun – and validated Henry Folland’s masterly, but flawed, design. 6. Supermarine Sea Lion II Supermarine first entered the Schneider Trophy in 1919 with the Sea Lion and, truth be told, it hadn’t gone at all well. They returned with the Sea Lion II in 1922 and this time they were far more successful, taking the win in Naples. Sea Lions I and II are related but its not quite so simple as one being a development of the other. Supermarine had built and supplied three aircraft to the government in support of a bid to supply single-seat fighter flying boats during World War I. After the cessation of hostilities they bought them back, possibly with a view to selling them onto wealthy individuals for ‘sports’ flying. What two of them actually ended up being used for was forming the basis for the racers, the small single-seat hull being an ideal starting point. The Sea Lion II had the more convoluted evolution of the two, passing through an intermediate phase before emerging as the aircraft that would finally race. New wings and a new tail got it match fit, while swapping the engine for a development of the Napier Lion W-12 didn’t do any harm for its chances of success either. Whereas the Sea Lion looks a little ‘square rigged‘ to our eyes the Sea Lion II at least has the streamlined nose the modern eye expects. The latter aircraft makes it onto the list for one very special reason though, and that is by it being the last flying boat to win the trophy. There were flying boats that came later and flew faster but this was the last time an integral hull was proven as giving the best solution to building a waterborne racing aircraft. As such it is arguably both the last and the ultimate of its kind. 5. 1913 Deperdussin The first Schneider Trophy was held in 1913 and the Deperdussin earns its place in the top 10 by being the first winner. However, the reason for inclusion does go a little deeper. The intent of the race was to promote the reliability of seaplanes and flying boats, thereby improving the breed. This is why, right up to the end, competing aircraft still had to carry out sea worthiness and taxiing trials. It was never simply an outright speed contest. Deperdussin entered a number of slightly different aircraft in the inaugural competition although only one made it to the start line. With a wood ply monocoque forward fuselage to which were attached just the single set of wings, this was an aircraft far removed from the Wright Flyer of only a decade before. Up against a Morane-Saulnier and a couple of Nieuports, the surviving Deperdussin came in first due to various problems befalling the other competitors. 1914 saw a near doubling of the winning speed and a similar level of attrition before the clouds of war halted flying for sport (other than blood) in Europe for the following four years. By the time the contest resumed in 1919, the sustained – desperate – military funded development of aviation had brought a relatively high level of reliability with it. The game had changed, and manufacturers were compromising a little too much for teh sake of outright speed, and the initial objective for the Schneider Trophy had been undeniably diluted. The Deperdussin and 1914’s Sopwith Tabloid stand then as the only winners that had to be designed as a complete package, to struggle to be superlative across the complete range of disciplines originally demanded by Jacques Schneider. 4.  Supermarine S5 Italy well and truly established the way forward in 1926, and R. J. Mitchell, who would later create the Spitfire, responded with the audaciously sleek S5, designed for the 1927 Schneider Trophy contest in Venice. The gentle waters of Venice would reverberate to the fire-breathing majesty of the fastest and most beautiful machines in existence. Conforming to the new norm for success, this was a design both supported by the government and benefiting from extensive testing in government funded institutions. In addition the RAF formed its own High Speed Flight to provide the team that would enter on Britain’s behalf. The S5 though took the principle of reducing drag to obsessive levels of detail. The radiators were of the surface-type mounted on the wings and the fuel was held in one of the floats, removing the need to find room for it in the fuselage. The oil was also cooled by surface radiators but this time mounted on the fuselage sides. Although this basic architecture had been a feature of the M.39, Mitchell saw beyond that design and realised it unlocked a potential for dropping the cross sectional area to minuscule proportions. Napier helped by cleaning up the Lion, and Mitchell packaged it so tightly that the cam covers formed the external surfaces of the aircraft. The fuselage behind this was tiny, the pilot only being able to get into it by half turning until his shoulders were below the cockpit edge. The overall result was that the S5 had a clear advantage over its opponents even before the propellers turned. The S5 seemed to fly well with no particular indication of vices but despite this Flight Lieutenant Kinkead lost his life while attempting to set a speed record in 1928. The S5 succeeded in 1927 and was so good that two years later it only lost second place to Italy’s M.52R by a trifling two mph.

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3. Curtiss CR-3 Up to 1923 the development of racing water-borne aircraft had followed a process that veered between seaplanes and flying boats, but which was still a recognisably evolutionary path (excepting the leap forward in technology that came with WWI). The Curtiss CR-3 that won in 1923 indicated a step change from this and became the pattern for how people went about winning the Schneider Trophy from then until the competition’s conclusion in 1931. It is apparent from photos of the CR-3, when compared with its peers and predecessors, that it was a very clean design, reduced to what at the time must have seemed to be the smallest overall package. The others are obviously racing aircraft in that they are small with a large engine but this has the look of every aspect having been reviewed and pared down individually. The major mechanical components were similarly optimised in support of this. The engine, Curtiss’ own D-12, was superlative. Later, even Italy went on to source examples to power its own racers, and the Reed patent metal propeller also became the default fitment for serious contenders. It was the perfect storm to be faced by its fellow competitors. The other key change the CR-3 brought with it was less obvious but equally important, it was ordered by the U.S. Navy to enter into the contest. This was now essentially a government backed endeavour and from here on a private venture would no longer have the money or resources to win the competition alone. It could be argued that up to this point companies had entered to promote themselves and also, perhaps, to fly the flag for their country. Now it was a straightforward matter of national prestige with all the hopes and pressures that brought with it. 2. Macchi-Castoldi M.C.72 Although conceived to contest the 1931 Schneider Trophy, the M.C.72 ruled itself out by being too late however it did go on to set an outright speed record that stood for five years. The journey to success wasn’t easy though, with Fiat’s A.S.6 24 cylinder engine being the main culprit. The A.S.6 is one of those pieces of engineering that seems half inspired and half insane: take two highly strung V12 race engines and bolt them back to back, having one drive one element of a contra-rotating prop and the other drive the second, with no direct link between the separate throttles for each half of the combined engine. Surprisingly, all this wasn’t the main source of the problem but rather it was the inlet tract, all the way from the carburettor inlets to the cylinder ports. The way the problem generally manifested itself was through backfires and these caused a number of failures which included the splitting of the supercharger casing. Ultimately this caused the deaths of two pilots, Monti and Bellini, and led to the M.C.72 being a no-show at the 1931 event. A protracted development programme, aided by advice on fuel mixtures by Britain’s Rod Banks, eventually brought just enough reliability to allow record attempts to be made. An ultimate speed of 440.68mph was set in 1933, only being bettered in 1939 (by a German landplane), and it’s still the case that no piston-engined seaplane has travelled faster. The proportions dictated by the long engine made it a magnificent looking aircraft. It may have failed in its original aim but the M.C.72 is a worthy runner -up. Support Hush-Kit with our high quality aviation themed merchandise here

1. Supermarine S6 Series R.J. Mitchell realised that the S5, along with the Napier Lion, would not be competitive in the race of ’29. The replacement S6 was late to the starting gate, being delivered on August 5th with the competition starting on September 6th. This was partly down to prevarication by the government and RAF, something that would also blight the 1931 attempt, but mainly it was the difficulty in getting the new Rolls Royce R type engine to run reliably. Despite this, it stormed to victory in a 1929. When the S6 followed this with a second win in 1931 Britain got to keep the Trophy forever. In a further flourish of glory, it achieved an ultimate speed record of 407.5 mph shortly thereafter. Admittedly there were no other competitors in 1931 –  but before the race it was decided that a minimum increase in speed had to be met for a win. This was never simply a case of turning up and claiming the prize. There’s also the minor matter that when you enter a race you need to ensure you’re there at the start, having something faster later rather misses the point. Two wins, numerous records and a speed increase of 80mph over its short life are reason enough for the S6 to claim the top spot, but take a moment to look at it as well. There is a lean beauty that comes with the pursuit of aerodynamic cleanliness, the aeronautical equivalent of high cheekbones and in this case it’s perfectly accentuated by the blue and silver paint scheme. The legacy is rather important too, lessons from the S6 and R were applied to the Spitfire and Merlin. Simply sublime on all counts. By Actuarius

This book can only happen with your support. Preorder your copy today here. 

From the cocaine, blood and flying scarves of World War One dogfighting to the dark arts of modern air combat, here is an enthralling ode to these brutally exciting killing machines. The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is a beautifully designed, highly visual, collection of the best articles from the fascinating world of military aviation –hand-picked from the highly acclaimed Hush-kit online magazine (and mixed with a heavy punch of new exclusive material). It is packed with a feast of material, ranging from interviews with fighter pilots (including the English Electric Lightning, stealthy F-35B and Mach 3 MiG-25 ‘Foxbat’), to wicked satire, expert historical analysis, top 10s and all manner of things aeronautical, from the site described as: “the thinking-man’s Top Gear… but for planes”. The solid well-researched information about aeroplanes is brilliantly combined with an irreverent attitude and real insight into the dangerous romantic world of combat aircraft. FEATURING

• Interviews with pilots of the F-14 Tomcat, Mirage, Typhoon, MiG-25, MiG-27, English Electric Lighting, Harrier, F-15, B-52 and many more.
• Engaging Top (and bottom) 10s including: Greatest fighter aircraft of World War II, Worst British aircraft, Worst Soviet aircraft and many more insanely specific ones.
• Expert analysis of weapons, tactics and technology.
• A look into art and culture’s love affair with the aeroplane.
• Bizarre moments in aviation history.
• Fascinating insights into exceptionally obscure warplanes.

The book will be a stunning object: an essential addition to the library of anyone with even a passing interest in the high-flying world of warplanes, and featuring first-rate photography and a wealth of new world-class illustrations.

As the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev said, “Berlin is the testicles of the West: every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin.”. In 1948 the Soviets wanted to castrate the West and take all of the city, isolated as it was 100 miles in the Soviet-occupied east of Germany. Taking west Berlin would have fortified already growing anti-US feeling in West Germany and could have led to a disaster for the US: all of Germany turning Communist. Whereas the Western powers envisioned a future Germany as vast industrial and military stalwart at the centre of Europe that needed to stay functional to avoid another Hitler, the Soviet Union feared a strong Germany and wanted to keep it weak and use it as a bulwark against the West. In an attempt to starve out West Berlin and force the population to look east, the Soviet Army blocked all roads and rivers. Effectively depriving its already desperate citizens of electricity and food. The battered city sat on the edge of catastrophe. Losing Berlin was a nightmare that President Truman could not bear to consider. While his military advisors suggested withdrawal, the British Royal Air Force suggested an exceptionally unlikely solution: supplying 4,000 tons of food and fuel a day to the beleaguered city. Truman agreed, and the West responded with the greatest humanitarian effort in history, the Berlin Airlift. Finding enough aircraft proved hard, and air forces looked everywhere to find suitable aeroplanes. A motley armada was assembled and against all odds succeeded. Here are the 14 most important aircraft in this titanic enterprise. 

 

14. Yakovlev Yak-3 ‘Yak Cult’

If the USSR had decided to oppose the great airlift with force, hundreds of transport aircraft would been savaged by Soviet fighters. The most significant Soviet fighter in terms of number and potency was the Yakovlev Yak-3. Marcel Albert, a French ace, who flew the Yak-3 in the USSR with the Normandie-Niémen Group, considered it a superior fighter to even the the P-51D Mustang and Spitfire.

Whereas other nations had moved toward ever bigger and heavy fighters, the Soviets had gone in the opposite direction with the Yak-3; a loaded Supermarine Spitfire XIV weighed a whopping 2,500 pounds more than a similarly configured Yak-3. Every measure was made to keep the weight down to ensure it was the best-of class for power-to-weight ratio and wing loading, this included partial construction in laminated wood and the use of pneumatic systems in place of the more usual electrical/hydraulics. 

 

During the war, the Yak-3 had been found to be an outstanding dogfighter below 13,000 feet. Unarmed, fully laden transport aircraft would have been easy meat for the superb Yak-3. As it turned out, the Yak-3s did no more than buzz the transports. The world could have become a far worse place if the Yak pilots had been given more aggressive orders.
Loaded weight: 2,697 kg / 5,946 lbs
Favourite cargo: 150 rounds 20mm ShVAK cannon ammunition

13. Amiot AAC.1 Toucan ‘Me Julie’

Mention the Berlin Airlift and few people think of France’s contribution (nor do we generally remember the help from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa). But France did help and it did so using a German aircraft design. The Amiot AAC.1 Toucan was a French-built Ju 52/3m produced at the same former Amiot factory that had previously turned out 320 examples for the Luftwaffe. Following the war, Amiot was renamed the Atelier Aéronautiques de Colombes (AAC) and continued to turn out ‘La Julie’, the French nickname for the ’52.

Loaded Weight: 10,499 kg (23,146 lb)

Favourite cargo: coal and sugar

12. Douglas C-74 Globemaster ‘The Wasp Factory’

The C-74 was a giant new airlifter in 1948.  A single Globemaster aided the operation from the 14 August. Over the next six weeks, the Globemaster crew flew 24 missions delivering 1,234,000 lb (559,700 kg) of supplies. It once delivered 20 tons of flour in one mission, as well as delivering  quarter of a million pounds of coal in a single day. 

Favourite cargo: coal, rock crusher (in parts), flour

11. Short S.25 Sunderland/Hythe ‘The Flying Porcupine’ 

These big flying boats had been with RAF Coastal Command on the first and last day of the Second World War. Theirs had been a very busy war but yet more was to be asked from them. Taking advantage of their ability to take-off and land from water they were operated between the Elbe Estuary in Hamburg and Berlin’s Lake Havel. The Sunderlands and Hythes (the name for the unarmed civil version of the Sunderland) added capacity to the airlift without consuming space and resources at ground bases.  The seaworthy paint on Sunderlands enabled them to carry sacks of salt without fear of corrosion.

Loaded weight: 27,200 kg / 60,000 lbs
Favourite cargo: steam irons, rolls of newsprint, sacks of salt, children not feeling well, cardboard boxes with MADE IN CANADA printed on them.

10. Avro Lancaster/Lancastrian ‘Gert Lancaster’

To a wartime Lancaster crew, the seemingly innocuous word ‘cookie’ had a macabre meaning, it was another word for a ‘blockbuster’* bomb, so-called because it was big enough – sometimes weighing as much 12,000Ib – to destroy an entire block of streets. The aircraft went from dropping ‘cookies’* of death from 25,000 feet to bringing actual cookies to the people of Berlin. The most warlike aircraft on this top list is surely the Lancaster, working with its civilian sister, the Lancastrian.  Good luck overstating the irony of seeing Bomber Command’s premier high explosives delivery platform in the role of humanitarian relief with a fuselage full of essentials.  The very people subjected to the Lancaster’s nocturnal attentions during the war were, before they knew it, eating a warm dinner by the stove only thanks to the presence and capacity of this machine. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.  Either way, the Lancastrian would have about a decade of service on long-range air routes after the war until modern passenger airliners were available (ones that could carry more than nine people in side-facing chairs).  Unconverted Lancasters, it can be noted, had repatriated prisoners of war back to the UK in another operation so the Berlin Blockade is not the only time this aggressive machine did more heart-warming, less people-burning, duties.

Loaded weight: 29,484 kg / 65,000 lbs
Favourite cargo: Nivea moisturizer, tinned creamed corn, exercise equipment, comic books, pork sides.

*It is from this we have the word to describe a successful film

9. Avro 688 Tudor ‘A Tudor rose’ 

The Tudor was a big plane, an ambitious design intended for long range civilian air travel. It had Lancaster DNA: the Tudor used the same wing as the Lincoln, which was essentially a stretched Lancaster. But it sported a new tail and circular fuselage and such comforts as kapok insulation and the first pressurised fuselage on a British airliner.  Sales were slimmer than hoped due to what is looked back upon as a combined government and industrial failure to capitalise on post war opportunities and the fact that better quality or cheaper alternatives were available from American firms or in the form of war surplus. The air effort to supply Berlin was simply ramped up so fast it couldn’t help but suck in a few civil-registered Tudors to move liquid fuels, securing the type’s only real claim to fame. If we discount the Rolls-Royce Nene testbed VX158, that is.

Loaded weight: 34,473 kg / 76,000 lbs
Favourite cargo: barbecue starter fluid, Ronson and Zippo lighter flints, gasoline, nylons.

8. Handley Page Halton/Halifax ‘ ‘Last cargo in Halifax’ 

Aircraft from the Second World War served in the Berlin Airlift in modified, civilianized forms and in their exact wartime configurations. Newer aircraft produced after the war were also present.  Sometimes such aircraft were operated by civilian airlines (with, no doubt, demobilised service personnel in their crews) contracted to help military organisations.  The most visually striking aircraft of the entire effort must be the red Halton freighters belonging to Eagle Aviation Limited.  Four-engined bombers were among the top three or four strategic weapons of the war and they were nearly always a noisy and impressive sight in any numbers.  In comparison to the Lancaster, the Halifax suffered from the kind of airplane sibling rivalry that assigns reputations sometimes unfairly in the manner of the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane.  The demilitarised Halifax, the Halton, adds a thick layer of obscurity to that process. Either way, the mail brought in and out of Berlin by Haltons was probably cherished in a Europe still heartbroken by the worst war in human history.

Loaded weight: 25,000 kg / 54,400 lbs
Favourite cargo: coal, flour, mail, Coke, dog food, prams, car engines, aquarium filters, feather pillows.

7. Bristol 170 Freighter ‘Lovely Bristols’

To many the Bristol 170 Freighter conjures up nostalgic thoughts of  mid-century air travel. The idea of Triumph convertibles or Rolls-Royce Silver Wraiths disgorged onto French airfields from a giant aluminium nose now seems utterly exotic, and sadly they are gone for ever. Less glamorous but far more important was the Bristol Freighters role in Berlin, as part of the mixed collection of types operated by Silver City Airway. 

Loaded weight: 34,473 kg / 76,000 lbs
Favourite cargo: Leica cameras for export, Life magazine, tinned sardines, bricks, sewing pins, pianos.

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6. Handley Page Hastings ‘The cattle of Hastings’

The largest aircraft ever designed for the RAF

A heavyweight champion of the airlift, with a physical resemblance to the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor, the Hastings was a massive tail-dragger with 6,700 horsepower turning a set of four-bladed props. Its service adoption was accelerated by the demands of the airlift, especially the need for coal. The three RAF squadrons operating the type delivered 55,000 tons of supplies. 

Loaded weight: 80,000 lb (36,287 kg)
Favourite cargo: coal, lumber, Mars bars, books, rope, anvils, printing presses, fabric swatches, cigars.

5. Fairchild C-82 Packet ‘The Boomers’

Like the Sunderlands, the Packets were given a specific job to do in support of Berlin. Graders, bulldozers and other machinery, sometimes partially disassembled, were loaded into these aircraft and sent over to Berlin’s airports. There to be employed building and maintaining the aprons, taxiways, cargo dumps, parking areas and runways.  The twin-boom tail on the Packet, found later on the C-119 Flying Boxcar and the Nord Noratlas, allowed loading clearance for objects of almost any kind and for trucks to reverse directly up to the aircraft.

Loaded weight: 24,500 kg / 54,000 lbs
Favourite cargo: earth-moving equipment, racks of bottled milk, evening wear, eggs

 4. Douglas C-47 Skytrain/DC-3 Dakota ‘Dakota spanning’

We sell fantastic high quality aviation-themed gifts here

The C-47 was arguably the most important transport aircraft of the Allied nations in the 1940s. It had served at D-Day, Market Garden and the Burma-India theatres with aplomb and developed a reputation for rugged do-anything reliability.  In the Berlin Airlift it performed thousands of sorties into Tempelhof and Gatow airports. Many Dakotas even remained in their wartime camouflage schemes while doing so. All ranks in the C-47 units must have felt as if the war days had come right seeing row upon roaring row of the beloved aircraft loaded and dispatched for Berlin. But the Skytrain’s day was over and it was time to make way for the bigger, more capable, C-54.

Loaded weight: 13,200 kg / 29,000 lbs
Favourite cargo: accordions, X-ray equipment, cats, atlases, vacuum tubes, dentist’s chairs.

Sadly, this site will pause operations if it does not hit its funding targets. Donate here and keep this aviation site going. Many thanks

3. Avro 685 York ‘The Grand Old Duke’

Into this list of butch utilitarian designs arrives the feminine triple-tailed Avro York. Churchill and Charles de Gaulle used one each during the war and whatever else those men got up to, you can’t blame them for wanting to be seen next to one of these silver Art Deco beauts. Not just a pretty thing with portholes*, no, the York had Merlin XXs and the same wings as the Lancaster. Still a fairly fresh design in 1948, Yorks performed sterling service during the airlift. Nearly half of the British contribution to supplying Berlin was carried by Yorks: a million tons, over 58,000 sorties.

(*Ed: This is bit ’70s and borderline sexist. Stephen, you have been warned)

Loaded weight: 29,500 kg / 65,000 lbs
Favourite cargo: coal, flat-pack furniture, plaster-and-lathe supplies, bronze statues of classical musicians, shoes, umbrellas, Jazz LPs.

2. Vickers VC.1 Viking ‘Horny Vickers’ 

An evolution of the successful Wellington bomber, much was anticipated of the Viking as the world returned to peace.  First flying in 1946, the Viking would go on to become a global success story.  In 1948, a mid-air collision between a Soviet Yak-3 and a British European Airways Viking over Berlin killed 15 people. This incident would set the stage for the airlift, in which the Viking would participate and quickly prove itself.  The controversy and tension created by the’ Gatow air disaster’ further soured the already hostile mess of Germany’s diplomatic, political and economic relationships to her former enemies, allies and subjects.  This encouraged Stalin to isolate Berlin, and to further test western resolve. From such a dramatic and pivotal youth, the Viking enjoyed a happier later life and become a common sight at airports all over the world.

Loaded weight: 15,422 kg / 34,000 lbs
Favourite cargo: machine tools, nail files, lead ingots, concrete blocks, mail, passengers.

1. Douglas C-54/R-5D ‘Candy Bomber’

Absolutely the icon of the entire operation and the immortal ‘candy bomber’, was an ocean-spanning, four-engined cousin of the DC-3. What a machine. After a respectable wartime career, the C-54 came into its own during the airlift. The famous photograph of a C-54 passing over German civilians gazing up with hearts full of democratic warmth illustrates the success of the operation in both humanitarian and public relations terms.

Few expected such a vast, complicated and dangerous operation could succeed in the face of abysmal winter weather. How could aircraft take over the daily mass bulk movement of goods like coal and flour normally handled by trucks, canal barges, and rail cars?  The handsome C-54 would more than answer the doomsayers and Premier Stalin in equal measure.

Loaded weight: 33,100 kg / 73,000 lbs
Favourite cargo: refrigerators, switchblade knives, juke boxes, chocolate bars, toys and raisins and the feeling that we all really cared and had something to stand up for.

Stephen Caulfield (with Joe Coles, Ed Ward and Thomas Newdick)

This book can only happen with your support. Preorder your copy today here. 

From the cocaine, blood and flying scarves of World War One dogfighting to the dark arts of modern air combat, here is an enthralling ode to these brutally exciting killing machines.

The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is a beautifully designed, highly visual, collection of the best articles from the fascinating world of military aviation –hand-picked from the highly acclaimed Hush-kit online magazine (and mixed with a heavy punch of new exclusive material). It is packed with a feast of material, ranging from interviews with fighter pilots (including the English Electric Lightning, stealthy F-35B and Mach 3 MiG-25 ‘Foxbat’), to wicked satire, expert historical analysis, top 10s and all manner of things aeronautical, from the site described as:

“the thinking-man’s Top Gear… but for planes”.

The solid well-researched information about aeroplanes is brilliantly combined with an irreverent attitude and real insight into the dangerous romantic world of combat aircraft.

FEATURING

• Interviews with pilots of the F-14 Tomcat, Mirage, Typhoon, MiG-25, MiG-27, English Electric Lighting, Harrier, F-15, B-52 and many more.
• Engaging Top (and bottom) 10s including: Greatest fighter aircraft of World War II, Worst British aircraft, Worst Soviet aircraft and many more insanely specific ones.
• Expert analysis of weapons, tactics and technology.
• A look into art and culture’s love affair with the aeroplane.
• Bizarre moments in aviation history.
• Fascinating insights into exceptionally obscure warplanes.

The book will be a stunning object: an essential addition to the library of anyone with even a passing interest in the high-flying world of warplanes, and featuring first-rate photography and a wealth of new world-class illustrations.

Who? English aircraft designer, William Edward Willoughby ‘Teddy’ Petter

 

Who would play him in a film? Charles Hawtrey with a fake nose or  Phoebe Waller-Bridge

 

Born: Highgate, London

 

When? 1908

 

Famous for: Lysander, Gnat, Canberra

 

Estimated boxing weight class: Bantam

They should have listened to him:

He was an early proponent of Britain’s thwarted supersonic efforts.

He thought simple very light agile fighters were a good idea, the Gnat/Ajeet proved successful in India but was relegated to the trainer role in the UK. 

The almost brilliant: Whirlwind.

Did he work on the Spitfire? Yes, he worked on the ‘Westland Elevator’ which produced a ‘remarkable’ improvement in longitudinal stability.

Didn’t know that he also worked on the: No surprises here I can find

Support Hush-Kit with our high quality aviation themed merchandise here

Weird fact

In January 1960 Petter left the aircraft industry forever to become a holy man. He joined the religious commune of ‘Father Forget’ in Switzerland. 

This book can only happen with your support. Preorder your copy today here. 

From the cocaine, blood and flying scarves of World War One dogfighting to the dark arts of modern air combat, here is an enthralling ode to these brutally exciting killing machines.

The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes is a beautifully designed, highly visual, collection of the best articles from the fascinating world of military aviation –hand-picked from the highly acclaimed Hush-kit online magazine (and mixed with a heavy punch of new exclusive material). It is packed with a feast of material, ranging from interviews with fighter pilots (including the English Electric Lightning, stealthy F-35B and Mach 3 MiG-25 ‘Foxbat’), to wicked satire, expert historical analysis, top 10s and all manner of things aeronautical, from the site described as:

“the thinking-man’s Top Gear… but for planes”.

The solid well-researched information about aeroplanes is brilliantly combined with an irreverent attitude and real insight into the dangerous romantic world of combat aircraft.

FEATURING

• Interviews with pilots of the F-14 Tomcat, Mirage, Typhoon, MiG-25, MiG-27, English Electric Lighting, Harrier, F-15, B-52 and many more.
• Engaging Top (and bottom) 10s including: Greatest fighter aircraft of World War II, Worst British aircraft, Worst Soviet aircraft and many more insanely specific ones.
• Expert analysis of weapons, tactics and technology.
• A look into art and culture’s love affair with the aeroplane.
• Bizarre moments in aviation history.
• Fascinating insights into exceptionally obscure warplanes.

The book will be a stunning object: an essential addition to the library of anyone with even a passing interest in the high-flying world of warplanes, and featuring first-rate photography and a wealth of new world-class illustrations.