Last week, I got an email from the publisher Unbound saying they’d gone into administration and my books would be cancelled. After all the support from you, seven years of my and many others’ work on all three, and a vol 2 design that is 99% finished, I’m pretty devastated. I was told a few weeks ago that the release for volume 2 was delayed by a year, I am now told it is cancelled. I’m sad and bewildered, trying to comprehend what has happened.
Here’s the email I got:
I am in dozens of conversations (I have had little sleep this week) trying to make sense of this and ensure it resolves fairly.
I want to find a way to publish the books, and I’m talking to many people. It’s utterly frustrating to have a project that is hours away from completion (and features some mind-bending artworks of exotic amazing warplanes like cancelled Swedish warplanes) to meet cancellation. The Hush-Kit writers, photographers, artists and interview subjects are rightfully proud of this book and we want to find a way to share it. If there is anything positive in this horrible situation, it’s that I might find a way to publish Hush-Kit’s superb books in a much faster manner.
Unlikely as it is, the main competitor of the F-35 is the Saab Gripen-E. These two fighter types, are as different as they could get, one akin to a bulky people carrier, the other a stripped-down scrambler. The unlikely arch-rivals faced off in pitches for the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the Nordic countries, were proposed to Canada, and competed in the Czech Republic. We go even deeper into the unheimlich wizardry of Sweden’s new fighter with Jussi Halmetoja and find out how it compares to the F-35. This ain’t for the faint-hearted; it’s a detailed snoop into the world of the things that really count: exotic datalinks, sizzling electronic warfare and the vital need for technological sovereignty. Pour yourself a glass of wine and get comfortable; this is over 10,000 words long and reveals all you need to know about the F-35 versus the Gripen E.
“As a result, now that stealthy target is not so stealthy anymore. Now I can see you, and that means that you’re in trouble!”
Andy Tuma met Saab’s Jussi Halmetoja for an insightful tour of the magic of the Gripen E’s engineering and tactical systems, something that can be easily overlooked, and learned of the areas in which it matches, or even exceeds, the F-35’s capabilities.
“Hello. I’m Jussi Halmetoja, and I now work for Saab as an operational advisor for the Air Domain. I’ve had over 2,300 hours in the cockpit. Before joining Saab, I was a frontline squadron pilot on both Viggen and Gripen systems and a Weapons Instructor on the squadron. I was also on the operational test job. After that, I was also involved in some developmental and experimental flight testing with the Gripen C, and also when we started working with the Czech Republic and Hungary as the first export nations.
After my flying career, I’ve had staff positions at the Meteor missile programme office in the UK MOD and then at the Swedish procurement agency FMV as the head of the air-to-air missile capabilities. I was also the requirements manager for the Gripen E.
Over the years, I’ve had the privilege to fly in and with pretty much every Western fighter that you see in service today. My role today is to bring this experience into the Saab fighter domain business, where I get involved in system requirements and programme development. But I also do a lot of marketing and sales support across the whole Gripen programme domain.”
The F-35 pitches several key areas as gamechangers compared to the previous generation of fighter jets*. Let’s start with the advanced sensor fusion. Lockheed Martin boasts of the F-35’s autonomous fused sensors management, what they call ‘Active Sensor Management’. This refers to the way the aircraft itself manages, steers and tasks the various on-board sensors not just to correlate tracks from different sensors passively but to actively build the most accurate and reliable tactical picture by managing all sensors. Can Gripen E can do this?
“The mission to reliably detect, track and verify real objects in a complex battlespace using a lot of sensor input from multiple sources is one of the biggest challenges for fighter platforms today. To create full situational awareness, it demands fully fused data. This is a matter of life or death for any pilot.
Credit: Tibboh
At Saab, we’ve been working with this complex data fusion challenge or technology across our domains for probably at least 50 years, if not more. It is one of our core capabilities. We’ve realized long ago the necessity to implement sensor fusion throughout the entire command and control networks – not only on a singular aircraft, but also the entire networks such as aircraft, the early warning radars, other sensors. This development in the early sense of sensor fusion dates back to the Draken era in Sweden. It was, in fact, pioneered here in the 1980s, where we already deployed integrated, high-rate datalink systems on many platforms. And it’s fair to say that we’ve gathered a lot of experience over those decades, always prioritizing the mission the best way possible for the pilots.
In the Gripen E, the pilot is now assisted by a new, task-based high-level command structure. The sensors automatically steer and tune parameters to optimize their performance.
That task is done in a very similar way you mentioned that the F-35 allegedly does. No more frantic “switchology” and lists of complex routines for the pilot in the cockpit. That’s gone long ago now.
We’ve developed evolved automation – we even use aspects of things like AI and machine learning-based technology to help predict outcomes of events throughout the mission and offer the pilot advanced decision support to make the right actions at the right time in every moment. For example, how to launch a weapon and still maintain survivability against an enemy, complete situational awareness for when and how to act and when and how not to.
The ultimate point of Sensor Fusion, to sum it up, is to maintain a constant low workload for the pilots so they can entirely focus on the fight and the mission. And if you can’t do that, you’ve failed your pilots and your capability. This is a concept we call human-machine collaboration (Saab’s term).
This is what you need to fight and survive in today’s and tomorrow’s complex battle spaces against multiple threats.
You mentioned the active management or tasking of the sensors similarly to the way that the F-35 claims. So how does that work in more detail? Does it mean that, for example, on the tactical situation display, the pilot merely increases or decreases the range of the range circle, and he doesn’t have to set up the radar range or so forth manually anymore? Is it all of this done seamlessly in the background?
You can read the rest of this article here (we’re moving some of our articles to Substack to combat plagiarism issues).
“After an impressively short time, all their weapons systems lit up our warning receivers..”
Operation Friston was the UK response when Soviet ships passed through waters near the UK. It was regularly activated as Northern Fleet Soviet warships often transited the Iceland – Faroes gap en route to the Atlantic. The Operation Order, which we were regularly required to read and sign for, laid down very strict rules about how close, how fast and how often we could approach the Soviet ships. No rules in the entire RAF were so universally disregarded as those!
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One spring day in 1985, we were tasked against the Soviet aircraft carrier Kiev and her escorts transiting the gaps North of the UK. It may have been a period of tense relations because the decision was made to make our presence well and truly felt. An experienced four-ship was put together ( I was in number 4 – so no responsibilities!), and we planned to make a radio and radar silent approach and try and take them by surprise.
So, once we ditched UK Air Traffic Control we went silent – we met a VC10 tanker and refuelled – itself an achievement radio silent- and headed North. A Nimrod was on station broadcasting the task group’s position, and well outside their radar coverage, we let down to a low level – fifty feet over the sea where the Buccaneer was happiest. We headed in towards the targets listening to the Nimrod and watching the leader for his changes of heading and speed, and once close, we accelerated to 550knots, still at 50 feet!
“Scary? Night close formation over the sea at low level was very scary. I swear we went thirty minutes without daring to blink!”
We received no warning indications that they were aware of our approach, and sure enough, they appeared right on the nose.
As we went as low and as close as we dared past the Kiev, successive aircraft taking bow and stern below the level of their deck, we saw they were having a parade on the flight deck! It must have been quite a shock! They maintained their formation for the second pass, but they scattered during the third.
After an impressively short time all their weapons systems lit up our warning receivers, and we decided that enough fun had been had for one day, and we went home feeling very satisfied.
We did wonder whether we might have caused a diplomatic incident but no complaint came. I think the Soviet Navy saw it as “fair game”.
“The front cockpit was an absolute slum.”
CREDIT: Mike Looseley
What was the best thing about the Buccaneer? It can fly VERY….
THE REST OF THIS LONG, EXCITING BUCCANEER ARTICLE, FULL OF SALTY REVELATIONS, CAN BE READ HERE
When this popped up on a Facebook page (I think it was The Aviation Enthusiast Book Club), the aviation writer Bill Sweetman wryly replied that 384 pages devoted to the Cutlass were rather too generous a treatment and compared it to a boxset of the music of Yoko Ono. Now, as a fan of both Yoko Ono and the Cutlass, I must disagree. This book roundly avoids a plague that has affected some recent aircraft books, and that is filler. I get it, an author commits to X number of pages on a B or C-list aircraft and runs out of material, and suddenly, you have historical context going back to the Stone Age and 80 pages of serial numbers. There is absolutely no filler in this superb book; it is a lavishly illustrated, superbly researched celebration of one of the best-looking aircraft in history. Some of the reproduced documents of the time are a real treat.
When I asked Bill if I could feature his Yoko joke above, he said on condition I acknowledge that he agrees with the book’s authors that the Cutlass is often unfairly singled out for criticism when all early carrier jet operations were very hairy (and the Scimitar and Crusader sometimes do not get the criticism they deserve). This is a fair point, and one the authors attack with brilliant data, and one particularly revealing graph. This book is a gorgeous object and is the only Cutlass reference work you need. Essential reading for Cold War aircraft enthusiasts . I strongly recommend this book
Kawanishi H6K ‘Mavis’ and H8K ‘Emily’ Units
Edward M. Young
Osprey Publishing, 2024
A fascinating insight into Japanese air power in World War II, author Edward M Young has packed a mass of information into this 96-page book. No stone is left unturned in his dogged research into these rather elegant flying boats and their (often thwarted) operations. This serious reference book is backed up with high-quality digital artworks, which bring some welcome colour. Historical details bring the horrors of warfare to life, “During the attack on Cairns, a single H8K1 dropped bombs in error on the town of Mossman, north of Cairns, wounding a small child”. Something about the small scale of this event stuck with me in a way that bigger, more epic events do not, and this book, with its multiple references from war diaries, is full of these human moments. This useful, well-researched book contains facts that will educate and entertain the most seasoned aviation historian.
Video of a new Chinese aircraft of novel configuration has caused a stir. We ask Jim Smith, former British aircraft technical liaison to Washington, his thoughts.
The size is consistent with a multi-role aircraft with potential for strategic air defence and strike roles. The configuration is clearly aimed at low signature, particularly the absence of a tailfin, and the use of B-2-like split ailerons for roll, yaw, and (possibly) airbrake functions. The hint of VSTOL (elsewhere) is utterly unlikely, given the absence of nozzles, the impact on internal volume, and the probability of major suckdown issues on landing. The three intake configuration is interesting and novel. There are two clear intakes below wing, with rear nozzles exhausting over the upper surface at the rear of the wing. Then there is the upper fuselage intake.
The cutaway model seen in some images appears to feature some sort of turbine engine, and the aircraft does appear to have a third central nozzle, so this does appear to be a 3rd engine of some sort. It is far from clear, however, whether the model is closely representative of the flying aircraft. The same model appears to suggest long internal weapons bays outside of the intakes. The very long-chord of the wing in this area would provide adequate volume for this, but the central and forward fuselage would appear to offer more space, perhaps for air to surface or other weapons. What could be the mission? The size suggests a design with significant fuel and payload, potential for supersonic cruise, and potentially all-aspect reduced signature.
The long weapons bays could be used for long-range (and possibly high-speed) AAMs, and there is potential for carriage of air to surface stores or stand-off weapons, if additional weapons bays are available.
There’s a lot one could do with such an aircraft, particularly in concert with the J-20 fighter. Area Denial of the South China Sea would be an obvious role, as would the strategic air defence of the Chinese mainland. It could also offer a stand-off capability against naval targets. I suggest these strategic roles for the aircraft because it looks more suited to Beyond-Visual-Range combat and strike against difficult targets, than manoeuvring air combat. There are still lots of questions to be addressed, and all of the above is guesswork based on very limited images. The upper intake location is a puzzle, as it looks challenging for use in aggressive manoeuvring flight.
I did wonder if the third engine provides an auxiliary function, such as air for a circulation control system, and perhaps for IR signature reduction. The weight and volume penalty would be significant, however, so propulsion is the most likely option, particularly since the exhaust arrangement looks similar for all three engines
“Air-to-Air? No problem. Air-to-Mud? No problem. Close Air Support? No problem. It is easy to maintain and quick-turn capable. It’s not a glamour jet; it just can do everything well.”
Former USAF Crew Chief Derek Palos explains how to keep an F-16 flying, how to avoid ‘Falcon bites’ and the story of inter-unit aircraft graffiti in South Korea.
What’s the easiest way to get injured at an airbase?
On an active flightline the easiest way to get hurt, is not to be aware of your surroundings, and respecting the sheer power of that machine, you see people get falcon bites all the time, getting hit with flight controls, running into static dischargers, I saw a guy get his arm caught in between a horizontal stabilator and the body of the plane, he was very lucky to still have his arm.
What is the most annoying bit of maintenance to do on an F-16?
I never had to personally do one but the Emergency Power Unit Removal and Replacement (EPU R&R) is said to be a legendary pain in the ass, from what I understand it is almost impossible to get in without brute force haha. The most frustrating part about maintaining the F-16 for me personally was all the fasteners on every panel, such overkill. The top and bottom leading edge flap seals had at least 400 hundred screws, with butter-soft torque tip fasteners that would round out if you breathed on them wrong. Late in my career I was the NCO in charge of the second shift phase hanger, we would do programmed maintenance on a hours flown schedule, every phase required those flap seals to be removed. They were the bane of my existence.
“We had a saying at Luke: What’s the difference between a cactus and an F-16? On a cactus, the pricks are on the outside”
The tight spaces in the engine bay made it difficult to safety wire a lot of the engine mounts after R&R, but you made adjustments for that the more you did which was instrumental during one of the challenging times, which I’ll tell you about later
Describe the F-16 in three words
Lawn Dart Baby! That was a common dig on the F-16, since it had one engine; if it fails, it drops like the summertime front-yard game here in the states, where we throw giant darts (yes, giant darts) into a circle, similar to horseshoes.
What was your role?
I was a Crew Chief, responsible for preflight and postflight inspections, servicing the aircraft, including everyday maintenance like refuelling and tyre changing, taking oil samples post-flight for SOAP (Spectrographic Oil Analysis Program) removal and replacement of airframe components like flight controls and landing gear, minor fixes like door latches, and basically anything not related to the Avionics or Weapons system.
What was the most challenging time with the F-16 force?
I was stationed at Luke AFB in Arizona from 1993-97 in the 314th Fighter Squadron and 61st FS (the 314th deactivated, and we became the 61st). There was a giant dust storm, what we call a haboob in Arizona (among other places). The whole base was not prepared, but the 61st was positioned just right, and our planes caught the brunt of the dust storm; every jet that was out on the flightline was filled with dust and small rocks in every opening. There was a freshly painted jet that we had just towed back from the paint barn that looked like half of it had been sandblasted. Every canopy was trashed, and depending on which way it was facing on the ramp, it decided which half of the canopy looked like it was rubbed with sandpaper. We had to take air out of the front struts to then run water through the exhaust, while an airman in raingear spun the blades from the intake. We had to resort to that because we used all the engine trailers for removed engines. The 61st worked night and day for eight days I believe, to get our 30 jets back to mission capable.
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When you’ve flown 52 different aircraft types (and counting), you often get asked what your favourite is. So, it was a welcome change when I was asked to choose the ten worst aircraft. No holds barred, the more brutal, the better, was the brief; but, despite my best efforts, I can only think of seven that truly deserve my savaging.
Sure, I’ve flown aircraft with ‘interesting’ handling characteristics that, if ignored, can cause massive embarrassment massive embarrassment and in some cases a not insignificant amount of paperwork (such as being aggressively flicked out of a turn whilst pushing that little too much and thinking “I’ll just sweeten this shot with a touch of VIFF”, or encountering yaw divergence for the first time after rapid rolling for more than the 360 degree limit you’d read somewhere in the Aircrew Manual but completely forgotten about, that sort of thing), and sat in cockpits that defy all logical design criteria and hide essential switches in the most bizarre of places, or place things like ‘weapon jettison’ buttons adjacent to gear buttons and flap levers (thereby increasing the risk of inadvertent jettison when putting the gear down in the dark and leaving a fuel tank or two in someone’s back garden).
“Hovering a Wessex was like trying to hover a semi-detached house from the upstairs bedroom window.”
But does that make them bad aircraft and, hence, the worst to fly? No, that’s just aviation, and having experienced enough variety so far I can compare and contrast and see that repetitive design faults are not deliberate, they just happen. And aerodynamicists don’t purposely make their aircraft dangerous to fly, it’s more that foibles in aircraft handling come about because design compromises have to be made to satisfy an overall design specification. Also, there’s no such thing as a perfect aircraft. It’s a bit like cars – they’ll all get you from A to B in their own unique way, some faster than others, some with higher levels of comfort, some with no comfort at all, and some will inherently pull to one side when you brake, and there’s no international standard when it comes to which side of the steering wheel the indicator stalk lives on. But you get used to all of that and drive accordingly. And so it is with aircraft, but, like cars, some really do stand out from the crowd as unlovable stinkers. So here goes, in no particular order………
Grob Tutor
As a budding RAF pilot, I cut my teeth on the Scottish Aviation Bulldog back in 1988. I didn’t know much as a pilot back then, having only flown the venerable de Havilland Chipmunk and the Cessna 150. But what I did know was that the Bulldog was a joy to fly – with a compact and easy to manage cockpit, agile handling and enough power to fly aerobatics without having to trade height for speed, what more could I want?
Alas, all good things, like civilisation and a bottle of good whisky, come to an end. When the Bulldog went out of service, in stepped the drearily sluggish Grob Tutor. What a contrast – heavy in roll, festooned with checks despite not having much more in the systems department than a Bulldog except for a GPS navigation control unit that alone took hours to get to grips with (the Harrier was easier to flash up and get going), and it always finished aerobatics lower than where it started.
The first time I flew one was 15 years after the Bulldog, 13 years after I joined the RAF, and I’m glad it didn’t figure in any of my flying training. I’ve said it before – would I buy one even if it was the last aircraft on Earth? No, I’d craft an aircraft from coconuts and old bin bags scratch instead.
However, if, and only if, there is a plus side, I suppose it’s passable as a clipped-wing motor glider.
Harrier T.Mk.10‘The Hump-Jet’
“What?!” I hear you scream, as you throw your martini at your butler, and spit your tiramisu out in rage,
“Has he gone mad?”
Well, not exactly. The T10 was a two-seat training variant of the excellent Harrier GR7, and there are two reasons why the T10 is on my list – its general inability to hover because of its extra airframe weight and the use of a Pegasus 105 engine that was the same as the lighter GR7’s, so unless stripped of weight (wing stores) and flying on cold, high atmospheric pressure days, forget about attempting all that fun VSTOL stuff. Oh, and one too many seats. Enough said.
Beagle Bassett‘Shirty Bertie’
This aircraft goes down as the worst aircraft I never flew. Eh? How can that be? Well, ‘Bertie,’ as the Empire Test Pilots’ School Bassett was affectionately known, was a highly modified, variable stability test bed aircraft that until recently was a stalwart of the ETPS fleet.
Capable of simulating the flying characteristics of any other aircraft through the intervention into the right-hand seat flying controls of a very complicated box of tricks on the cabin floor that could be fiddled with and adjusted to change performance through control responses, it really was quite a machine. However, due to the limitation of not allowing the box of tricks to have its say below a minimum height in case it ‘threw a wobbly,’ the person in the right hand seat wasn’t allowed to physically fly Bertie anywhere near the ground. In my capacity as the ETPS Multi-engine Instrument Rating Examiner at the time, it was my job to test the person in the left-hand seat (who had an independent, original, non-modified set of flying controls) and make sure he could fly solely on instruments, predominantly in order to return to an airfield and land in inclement weather.
As a result, the test profile was conducted no higher than about 3000 feet above the ground. And well below the box of tricks minimum height. So despite conducting this annual test around four times at ETPS, I never actually flew Bertie, only in Bertie. And that, as a pilot, is frustrating. Top tip – never fly when you’re angry or frustrated, as it’ll probably mean you rate the experience poorly and end up slagging the aircraft off in an article about the worst ones you’ve flown. (Of course this was not actually Bertie’s fault, bless him, and he’s now enjoying his retirement at the Boscombe Down Aviation Collection).
Westland Wasp‘Balancing a pyramid on a castor’
As a fixed wing pilot, I’ve been lucky enough to have flown eight helicopters over the years. My first experience was the pre-Harrier hover course, a weeklong stint at RAF Shawbury flying the Squirrel helicopter where my brain was taught how to stop then land, as back then it only knew how to land then stop. And I would suggest that’s quite important ahead of being let loose with a Harrier. Since then, I’ve flown the Agusta Westland 109, Lynx, Gazelle, Jet Ranger III, Schweitzer 300 and the US Navy UH-72, all with helicopter instructors and hence all my hands-on from lifting to landing. As I said, I’ve been very lucky. I like helicopters.
And as luck would have it, one day when I was about to take a Piper Warrior for a flight out of Thruxton airfield near Salisbury, I was offered the opportunity, completely out of the blue, to fly in a Wasp that had just had some maintenance performed on it and needed a check flight after something called ‘blade tracking’. I said I like helicopters, but I don’t profess to understand how they work, but I do appreciate that any angry palm tree/large collection of rotating parts flying in very close formation requires a lot of very special and considered care and attention. So, I wasn’t worried when told that we were going to see how much vibration there might be, and hopefully at acceptable levels. After all, helicopters vibrate even when they stand still, so this was just a matter of keeping it all in check. Anyhow, after a successful take off and flight to assess said vibration, during which I have to say I was quite enamoured by the vintage and overall quirkiness of this little helicopter, I was allowed to fly it back to Thruxton to land. It was during the last four feet of the flight that I began to think, ‘I’m not enjoying this’.
I knew how to hover, how to pick a ground reference just forward of the nose on which to ‘formate’ and stay steady against, and yet I had to choose one dandelion after another as I proceeded to move randomly across the airfield in a desperate attempt to stay put and land. This was quite frustrating (see advice above about flying frustrated), and it dampened my initial attraction to the Wasp, but after some time seemingly having to totally relearn how to fly a helicopter (it’s not really that easy in the first place when you’re a novice, made even harder when your steed seems to have a mind of its own), I landed. Subsequently I asked some former Wasp pilot mates of mine whether I was alone in my inability to hover the damn thing, and they said “No, to begin with its a bit like trying to balance a pyramid upside down on a single castor, but you get used to it!” Ah well, maybe I’ll be lucky again in the future and have a second chance to get used to it, but until then, it’s definitely on the list.
(Another favourite helicopter analogy of mine was hearing how hovering a Wessex was like “trying to hover a semi-detached house from the upstairs bedroom window.” Somehow helicopter mates tend to come out with the best analogies, and I add it here for your delectation).
Boeing 767‘The Power Couple’
I’ve only flown the 767 simulator, but due to the fidelity of modern-day simulation, I can only assume the real thing is just as crap. I currently fly the 787-9 as my day job – which, through its fly-by-wire flight control system allows me to hand fly what feels like a big Cessna – and yet I still have to trim the aircraft when changing speeds or changing flap settings, and there’s plenty of feedback, which for any pilot is vitally important. But at least when I put on loads of power to speed up, or conversely take power off to slow down, the aircraft doesn’t try to reach heaven or bury us all in the nearest part of Mother Earth.
Because that’s what a 767 tries to do.
The ‘pitch/power couple’ as it’s called (an aircraft’s want to pitch up with power, or nose down on power reduction) is alarmingly strong on a 767. I’d been warned about it in the briefing before the simulator session (and that alone speaks volumes about this Boeing design), and sure enough, what a handful. There’s something quite alarming about having to dial nose down trim in as you accelerate such that you’re still having to push hard whilst doing so. Let alone pull like a dingbat whilst decelerating as the trim can’t operate fast enough. Overall, sub-optimal, and I’ll stick with my 787, thank you very much.
(Incidentally, my venerable old 747-400 didn’t behave anywhere near as badly either, so what was going on in the 767 planning meetings is anyone’s guess, and my ex-737 colleagues speak of similar things there).
ShortTucano TMk 1
Before I start pulling the Tucano to pieces, I just want to say that I loved flying it. I flew it as a student, so I have some lovely memories of flying solo as high as 25,000ft, strapped to an ejection seat, pulling up to 6g without a g-suit. And I was an instructor on it for my first tour in the RAF, as well as at Empire Test Pilots’ School as their Standards pilot. I flew it to Sweden, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, France and all over the UK. I thoroughly enjoyed flying aerobatics in it, and never had a major emergency in it.
So, how come it’s on this list? When I talk to friends and colleagues about their memories of the Tucano, it’s the worst aircraft they’ve ever flown, so by democractic principles, it’s also one of mine. It has to be, right? It wasn’t a jet, so totally inferior to the Jet Provost it replaced, and the secondary effects of being propellor driven meant it never had ‘jet-like handling’ despite what it said in the Embraer sales catalogue. Its build quality was a little suspect, for sure, but it wasn’t my airbrake that fell off. Apparently, it could have done with automatic rudder trim to compensate for the torque effect of 1100 shaft horsepower, but to be fair using the electric rudder trim on the throttle wasn’t exactly arduous. So according to everyone else, the Tucano was one of the worst aircraft I’ve flown. But actually, according to me, she was one of the nicest and I miss her.
Klemm Kl.25
In another case of being in the right place at the right time, a very good friend of mine was given the responsibility, and it was a huge one, of periodically airing a Klemm 25 down in Wiltshire. Built in Germany between the wars, the Klemm 25 was officially branded as a ‘light leisure, sports and training aircraft’ and no doubt was used to train quite a few ‘civilian’ pilots to get around those pesky Treaty of Versailles rules that prevented Germany from training pilots for a Luftwaffe it wasn’t supposed to have.
Removable wings are quite handy if you don’t own an airfield, or if your hangar is a bit on the small side, and especially useful in the ‘30s when you could tow your aircraft home and park it on the drive. I’m pretty sure if you did that today, well, you can probably imagine what would happen, you’d get Arts Council funding granted and be bothered by culture-vultures treading on your flowerbeds, but I digress.
I found myself standing in a field watching the wings being attached and on closer inspection I began to realise that ‘basic’ is an understatement when it comes to describing the work of Herr Hanns Klemm back in 1928.
Accustomed as I am to all the mod cons and electronic wizardry of 21st century aviation, the Klemm is akin to comparing a 1969 Hillman Imp to a Bentley Continental GT – in an Imp you’re not sure when you insert the key whether it’ll start or not, electronics hadn’t even been invented for the motor car when it was made, you better have a mechanically sympathetic driving style as well as an ear for impending mechanical doom, and best wear a coat as it’ll be cold (no such worries with a Bentley).
And so, it was with the Klemm. Noisy, windy, I couldn’t hear a word Charlie was saying in the front seat as there was no intercom, and no instruments to speak of – there was an airspeed indicator, a clock, an engine rpm gauge, a compass, and a rate of climb and descent indicator. That was it. The Klemm is a true seat—of-the-pants aircraft (as well as just being a pants aircraft) and you have to rely on senses you have but rarely call upon in order to fly it, and I freely admit that I was out of my comfort zone. But am I complaining unduly? Probably, as it is of its time and some 600-odd were built, which even by today’s standards of small aircraft production is really quite an achievement. So, is it truly one of the worst aircraft I’ve flown? I suppose only when compared to aircraft that came after it, and that’s like using hindsight when analysing a historical event and suggesting it would have happened differently had one been involved.
I was very lucky to fly the Klemm, it gave me my one and only insight to date into the very early days of aviation and just how actually cutting edge it would have been almost 100 years ago. And yes, I own a 1969 Hillman Imp that I wouldn’t trade for a Bentley Continental GT even if you paid me because it’s good, clean, honest fun to drive and reminds me of the basics.
So there you have it, my take on what I think are the worst (and indeed not actually worst at all) aircraft I’ve flown to date. My opinion, my list, and I’m sure I’ll get an email or three from some real Tucano haters, and that’s fine.
But as Air Marshall of Necromancy in the Hushkonian Air Force, watch out…….
Matt Doncaster, 787 pilot, former Harrier pilot and Air Marshall of Necromancy in the Hushkonian Air Force
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