For aircraft enthusiasts: The meanest looking aircraft

[Blazer]

Okay it's a given that if you're going to fight, you ought to look the business making sure that with looks alone you could scare the living daylights out of people. And none more is that evident in warplanes, if it were done on purpose I can't say but some warplanes really looked scary. Let's put down our top five of the meanest looking aircraft.

To start off I'll name the Fairchild Republic A 10 Thunderbolt II or to call it by the affectionate nickname "The Warthog"

With the warthog it's function over looks and this tankbuster does its job well, it can sustain incredible punishment and come back for more and with its HUGE nose fitted seven barrel cannon it can inflict serious damage in its own right. That nose with the off-center mounted cannon looks a bit like a Mobster with a cigar in his mouth ready to have somebody "Sleeping with the fishes."
"You want some of this, ya punk?"

Then there's the Messerschmitt 262 "Shwalbe" (Swallow) which looked a lot like a shark.

If the great white shark was an airborne animal he'd probably ended up looking like this: sleek, fast and deadly. Even the way it was camoflaged was sharky, the grey on top made it difficult to spot from the top while the light colored belly was difficult to see from below, just like it is with a Great white.
Even the shark's trademark, the triangle shaped dorsal fin is there in the profile of the Me 262

MIG-built fighters themselves were scary opponents for many pilot unfortunate enough to oppose one but the scariest looking of them was no doubt the MIG 17 PF "Fresco"

The MIG 17 series reached its pinnacle with the PF model which was an all weather radar equipped version. That then state-of-the-art radar is also what makes the "Fresco" look as scary as it does. Early versions of the MIG 17 had a flat ring shaped air intake but with the radar done in the middle of that air intake and a ground  detection radar in a lip on top of that air intake it ends up looking like a monster with its mouth wide open and tongue extended, ready to snap you up and devour you.
In contrast, this is the nose and air intake of an older model MIG 17

However, the scariest looking aircraft of all time must be the Junkers Ju 87 STUKA

The large cowling under the nose, its inverted gull wings and fixed under carriage made it look like a bird of prey with its beak open and its talons extended, ready to dive right at you. And that's exactly what the Sturz kampf flugzueg (Diving fighter aircraft) was designed to do, to dive at you like a bird of prey, drop the lethal payload and then pull up again. It basically was the fore runner of smart weapons, the entire airframe was used to direct the bomb straight onto its target. When used in that role during the Blitzkrieg, they were highly effective and were the scourge of many cyvilian or allied soldier who encountered them.

A surviving Stuka, this picture clearly shows its eagle-like appearence

[sniper]

looking at janes ww2 aircraft i became a fan of the mitsubishi j2m raiden which could fly as high as a B-29 and did down some. i also became a fan of the nakajima ki84 which actually was faster and had a higher rate of climb than a p-51. the problem with both of those planes is that the americans bombed the factories so much that they couldn't do a good quality control; kind of hard to fly a plane with confidence when the landing gear snapped off when you land.

Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate'Frank'

Ki-84 of HQ Chutai, 29th Sentai in the summer of 1945

"Forget it - it's a Frank." It is said that this comment was made frequently by USAAF personnel watching radar screens on Okinawa in the closing weeks of the Pacific War.  It was customary to watch for a contact to appear and then to scramble P-51 Mustangs to intercept the enemy aircraft.  But when the blip was moving so fast that it was inferred to be one of the advanced new Japanese Hayate fighters it would be assumed that the P-51s would stand no chance of catching the intruder.

Generally regarded as the best Japanese fighter of World War Two, the Hayate{'Hurricane') was nonetheless not without its problems.  Much of its superlative all-round performance stemmed from its extremely advanced direct-injection engine, the Army's first version of the Navy NK9A.  Yet this same engine gave constant trouble and demanded skilled maintenance.

T. Koyama designed the Ki-84 to greater strength factors than any previous Japanese warplane - yet poor heat-treatment of high-strength steel had the consequence that the landing gears often snapped. Progressive deterioration in quality control meant that pilots never knew how individual aircraft would perform, whether the brakes would work, and even whether - in attampting to intercept B-29 Superfortresses over Japan - they would be able to climb high enough.

Despite these problems the Hayate was essentially a superb fighter - a captured Ki-84-1a was to outclimb and outmanoeuvre a P-47 Thunderbolt, and a P-51.

The first batches were sent to China, where the 22nd. Sentai, when equipped with the new fighter, were able to fly rings  around Chennault's 14th. Air Force.

The 22nd. Sentai was later moved to the Philippines, where problems overtook them, with many accidents and shortages and extremely poor serviceability.

Frequent bombing of the Musashi engine factory, and the desperate need to conserve raw materials (the shortages resulting primarily from the American submarine blockade) led to various projects and prototypes made of wood or steel.

Total production of the Ki-84 reached 3,514.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_J2M

[TBird1958]

 A personal favorite from the Vietnam era. F105 Thunderchief, or "Thud"

 

I always like a shark mouth............I should paint this on a T Bird pickguard 

 

[Barklessdog]

The A-10 of WWII



The Russian HInd

[TBird1958]

 John, they should paint that helicopter up like one of your dogs........Scare anybody 

[gweimer]

I haven't been able to locate a photo, but the Japanese had a fighter plane that was housed inside a submarine.  They came out right at the end of the war.  There were so few that the US forces never came up with a nickname for it.  The only surviving one was the one I saw at the Paul Garber Restoration facility that is part of the Smithsonian Institute.  They no longer have public tours, though.  The guide that talked about the plane said that the Japanese sunk all the planes they could at the end of the war, because they didn't want the Allied Forces to know of the plane's existence.

[sniper]

"Design and development

It was intended to be used with the I-400, a 4500-ton submarine dubbed a "submersible aircraft carrier". Two to three of the craft would be stowed aboard in disassembled form, and launched by catapult. The twin floats could be jettisonned, and the aircraft was essentially meant to be ditched at sea upon completion of its mission.

An alternate version with landing gear instead of floats was designated M6A1-K and named Nanzan (??, "Southern Mountain"). While generally described as a land-based trainer, some sources indicate that it was designed for the attack role, to be launched from the submarine and then landed. Besides the difference in landing gear, the vertical stabilizer's top portion, which was foldable on the Seiran, was removed.

[edit] Operational history

The first M6A1 was completed in November 1943, and 28 examples (including M6A1-Ks) were completed by 1945. The type was never used in combat."

engine: Powerplant: 1× Aichi Atsuta Type 32 inverted V12 liquid-cooled engine, 1,400 hp (1,000 kW)  almost makes me wonder if Japan used that Daimler DB601 license they got from Germany for this thing?

[godofthunder]

 Mark the F-105 is my favorite of the century fighters ! I always thought the Hawker Typhoon had a brutish qualtiy.

[gweimer]

An alternate version with landing gear instead of floats was designated M6A1-K and named Nanzan (??, "Southern Mountain").

That's the one!  And the guide also told us that the Japanese had several aircraft manufacturing facilities buried in the mountains of Japan, where they could not be detected.  That's likely the source of the English nickname for the plane.

[uwe]

A lumbering amphibic airplane with limited bomb load, clumsily transported with a submarine behind enemy lines where it would eventually have to be emergency landed for lack of fuel, thus sacrificing the pilot? No doubt the most dangerous weapon of Nippon's sons ever!

I can really see how that would have changed the course of war ... It would have snuck up on those yank carriers (I mean sleek as it was you could hardly see it at the horizon, right?), engage successfully with the intercepting Hellcats and Corsairs in a vicious dogfight, pierce the antiaircraft gun barrage and then drop its deadly load - all 250 kilos of it - on the defenseless carrier, sinking it to the bottom of the ocean with one hit.

 

PS: Re the Stuka's qualities: Only if German air superiority was guaranteed. Without that, Stukas became target practice for Allied pilots. It did alright as an anti-tank plane towards the end of the war, but again only at the Eastern front where the Luftwaffe never really relinquished its air superiority until it ran out of fuel.

PPS: That Russian battlecopter: What kind of fin ist that? It looks great, but I can't imagine that "buzzard look" to have been employed with the Red Airforce. Or did they have so much downtime in Afghanistan that they could paint lavishly like that?

[rahock]

I've got an old buddy whose father was a Mitsu Zero pilot in WWII and I've got to say that the scariest thing that the Japanese had in WWII was the freakin' pilots. When my buddy Yoshio was in danger of flunking out of college, his father told him if his grades didin't turn around he was going to give him his sword so he could "do the right thing" rather than disgrace the family name.

Rick

[Blazer]

PS: Re the Stuka's qualities: Only if German air superiority was guaranteed. Without that, Stukas became target practice for Allied pilots. It did alright as an anti-tank plane towards the end of the war, but again only at the Eastern front where the Luftwaffe never really relinquished its air superiority until it ran out of fuel.

Yeah, when the Battle of Brittain erupted, the pilots of the RAF frequently tore the fearsome raptors a new one. The Stuka was never designed to be a fighter aircraft, it was meant as an airborne artillery battery.

[uwe]

Actually an American invention, the dive bomber. I think it was Ernst Udet (a great influence on the secret build-up of the Luftwaffe during the thirties)who witnessed in the early thirties  or even late twenties how a navy ship was sunk by a US dive bomber during a public demonstration. He came away impressed which is how the Stuka came about.

That said, I think that the US Navy dive bombers from the Pacific such as the Dauntless and the Helldiver were far superior to the menacing-looking Junkers 87. What made the Ju 87 valuable as a dive bomber was what also made it a sitting duck to fighters: Its ability to fly utterly stable at very low speeds. Gives you more time to target properly. (And others more time to target you!!!)

One of the most sinister looking war aircraft was the Northrop P-61 Black Widow. With four cannons in its belly and four browning machine guns in its tanklike turret plus a nose filled with then state of the art radar gadgetry, this is one night fighter I would have hated to encounter as a Japanese or German bomber pilot on a night raid. 

[TBird1958]

 From what I've read about the Dauntless and Helldiver I gather pilots who flew both preferred the former. A very workhorse aircraft with an incredible combat record for the Navy and Marines.

[uwe]

Yes, the Helldiver though superior in every respect on paper was supposedly a bitch to fly.

"The Curtiss Helldiver, despite a reputation for being difficult to handle at low speeds, was responsible for the destruction of more Japanese targets than any other aircraft. The Curtiss SB2C single-engine dive-bomber joined the fleet late in 1943, joining the Douglas Dauntless as the primary attack/bombing planes for the US Navy. The two-man Helldiver had a top speed of 295 mph and good range, making it an essential tool in the far reaches of the Pacific war.

With underwing and bomb attachments, the Helldiver could carry 1,000 pounds of bombs or an internal torpedo; later improvements included an up-rated Wright Cyclone engine and rocket hard-points. It carried two fixed forward 20mm cannon and machine guns in the rear cockpit.

Only 26 of the 7,000 Helldivers built found their way to the other services; the plane was so valuable in the Pacific theater that the Navy absorbed nearly every plane."

It looked a bit like an elongated Thunderbolt, that is probably why I like it.