Most beautiful in flight?

Modeling Subjects Aircraft
41

I like just about any thing that flies, even balloons. Notice however I said “just”. That doesn’t include helicopters. They don’t really fly. They usually do one or all of the following:

  1. Beat the air into submission.
  2. So ugly the earth rejects them
  3. Merely a crude form of levitation

Besides which I learned 40 or so years ago

A. Helicopters fall on you
B. If you paint them green, people shoot at you and then they fall on you.

lol

42

I’ll throw in the Stuka Ju-87. So ugly and mean in that downward angle, it’s a most a thing of beauty?!!! And with that image, the accompanying siren wail. The fact that the Luftwaffe wanted to scare the snot out of ya prior to bombing ya; what a testament to the horrors of war.[}:)]

43

Indeed size does matter in delta wings

AVRO VULCAN

Man I wish I’d seen one of those birds fly.

44

Mirage 2000
Su-27
B-1

45

B-1 bones (or lancer if ya stuffy) are HUGEEEEE!

46

This is impossible for me, because my picks would change from hour to hour, moment to moment, but at this moment, I’m remembering (and dating myself):

  1. The B-58 Hustler that flew over my head when I was 8 or 9 years old.
  2. I agree that some of the ugliest aircraft on the ground are some of the most beautiful in the air, and perhaps the most beautiful aviation sight I ever beheld was from the back seat of a Phantom. We were already at altitude and orbiting in a two-ship, waiting for another flight of four to come up and fight. On the ground it was cold, iron gray and drizzling on the Texas coast. But at our altitude above the clouds the sun shone like a welding torch, reflecting off a thick, solid white undercast that spread out from horizon to horizon like God’s own bedsheet. Suddenly, one Phantom popped through the undercast to below me and to the right, climbing at about a 60-degree angle. His wingman popped out an instant later. Then another F-4, and another. It was just so breathtaking because it was the first time I’d witnessed it and…well, just because it was breathtaking. I know many people will think this absurd, but on the wing, the F-4 is beautiful, especially the earlier recce versions, the RF-4B/Cs. Still, on this particular flight we were in what is probably the “ugliest” Phantom of them all, the Rhino, the F-4C, in ADC gray with the bright red, white and Blue Texas flag of the TANG on the tail. It may have been a "rhino, but on that day, in my eyes, it was a perigrine falcon, and there was nothing but beauty in those bent wings, fat nose and bird-of-prey tailfeathers.
  3. As I said, my picks will change in the next 20 minutes, but one year at Oshkosh I heard the lovely, purring song of Merlin engines. I looked up just in time to see two Mosquitos and two Spitfires beating up the field line abreast at what looked like a hundred feet off the deck. I was just mesmerized for that moment. Until then, I’d never given a Mosquito much attention as a modeler/aviation buff. But the combination of the sight of the planes and sound of six Merlins made it a beautiful scene.
    Tom
    PS: Oh, and for me, the B-47E need not even be mentioned. It’s just understood – IMHO – to top a list like this. Hardly a lump, bump, bulge or antenna appears anywhere on that elegantly sculpted craft.
47

  1. Spitfire, any Mark - beautiful!

  2. F14 Tomcat- wings swept back…

  3. A peregrine falcon in a dive on a green-wing teal…talk about air superiority… [:D]
    (I know they’re not planes, but d*** they’re beautiful in flight…)

48

My Favorite planes in flight are ,
#1 B-1 Lancer , Full burner with wings swept back
#2 P-51 nothing sounds better than the merlin engine
#3 F-14 Tomcat .

49

ok… this IS a hard one… been sitting here thinking for 15 minutes…

#1. A-10 Warthog … used to see them back about 1986 when I was stationed in San Antonio… to see them coming in over the scrub brush about 20 feet off the ground the ROOOOOLLLLLLL to the right without gaining much altitude and be going back the same direction they came was AWESOME!!!

#2 Spitfire of course… something about those wings and the shape just make my blood heat up…

#3. this is a hard one because I can think of two that really should be here… but I won’t cheat and stick them both down… The B-26, saw one at an airshow going through some manuevers and it was nice… very tight turns for its size, fast… and LOUD!!! and it was being followed by a P-39 Airacobra… which would have been my other choice had I had 4… (OOOOPS! I spilled it anyway!) Not the fastest or most heavily armed fighter of the time but could it dance in the air!!!

50

B-1
B-25B and
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
B-52

yeah yeah, I like Bombers, Because they’re Big.[8D]

51

I have to agree with falcon039 on the "hog,. When I was in Saudi for Gulf War 1 we had them stationed with us. Formation flights were Mega-cool!
#2 C-130’s doing airdrops
#3 any gliders!

52

After reading all the other nominations you guys submitted, I finally realized why my vote for the B-49 flying wing bomber was so out of line. I must be the oldest OF on the forum, and none of you kids ever got to see it. For your own edification, if you ever get the chance, check out the old sci-fi movie “War of the Worlds”. They have inflight clips of a B-49, allegedly dropping an A-bomb on the “Martian invaders”. Don’t know whether it could even have carried one in real life, but even in the movie it didn’t work. Aliens are tough!

In any case, you guys go with your A-10s and B-52s. I have my memories (until they go, too). [:D][:D]

Dick

53

Heres mine…
small formation of stangs in tight and at full throttle over the runway at 85 ft.
F-15 with the cans wide open (MikeV I lived in Anchorage AK for years near big Mac and would watch the Eagles take off the runway, hold their noses down then pop it at the end of the run way vertical, creating holles in the clouds as they passed through excellerating, I am with ya there bro)
Hawker sea fury… awesome plane.

54

my next 3 [;)]
Any 190
any P-38
and for us Phantom Phans… yes the f4… I grew up near Edwards… real near. I used to watch the weasels practices… climb, roll, dive hehe

55

Dick, I can’t see where age has anything to do with it. I just happened to be born on a B-47 base in 1955, so I saw them from the time my memories began. But I’m too young to be around when the YB-49 was flying. A classic like “War of the Worlds,” well, it came out a year before I was born, but I’ve seen the movie and its Flying Wing a dozen times. In the cinematic context, the B-49 looks entirely appropriate. And, I couldn’t agree with you more. It looked like bent hospital gurney on the ground, but in the air it was just stunningly graceful, elegant and all around pleasurable to look at it.
As a footnote, imagine a pair of modern test pilots going up in a B-2 prototype, quite literally worth three times its weight in gold, and when they arrive at altitude one says, “OK, let’s see if we can ge tis baby to spin. OK, there it goes: one turn, two turns, three turns…now let’s figure out how to recover…”
That’s how flight test was done back then. And that very test I mentioned was what killed Glenn Edwards.
Tom