Challenge: name an airplane uglier than the Lloyd Luftkreuzer

McPherson

Banned
It's another soviet project for a wing-on-efect craft, and that it is indeed the name.

11f6bdd71b524a8612f7e617f78cb743.jpg


It just daisy chains from awful to ridiculous, does it not?
 
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Driftless

Donor
My Google-foo is weak today. I have looked, but failed to find this one: a Soviet interwar twin-radial engined, twin-boomed fighter design. The cockpit was in the central section of the wing. I don't know the designer either and I'm not sure if it actually got off the drawing board. It's perhaps more odd than ugly.

How is that for vague?
 
My Google-foo is weak today. I have looked, but failed to find this one: a Soviet interwar twin-radial engined, twin-boomed fighter design. The cockpit was in the central section of the wing. I don't know the designer either and I'm not sure if it actually got off the drawing board. It's perhaps more odd than ugly.

How is that for vague?

Sukhoi started designing their SU-12 artillery spotter airplane in November 1943, but the prototype only made its first flight in 1947. Russians clumsily tried to copy the assymetric Blohm & Voss 141 Focke-Wulf 189 gondolas, but suspended them between a pair of Shevnetsov radial engines producing more like 1300 horsepower. After missing a bunch of performance goals, the program died in 1949.
 

McPherson

Banned
My Google-foo is weak today. I have looked, but failed to find this one: a Soviet interwar twin-radial engined, twin-boomed fighter design. The cockpit was in the central section of the wing. I don't know the designer either and I'm not sure if it actually got off the drawing board. It's perhaps more odd than ugly.

How is that for vague?

Try the Grokhovsky G-38 "Light Cruiser" (1938) and see what happens.
 

Driftless

Donor
Sukhoi started designing their SU-12 artillery spotter airplane in November 1943, but the prototype only made its first flight in 1947. Russians clumsily tried to copy the assymetric Blohm & Voss 141 Focke-Wulf 189 gondolas, but suspended them between a pair of Shevnetsov radial engines producing more like 1300 horsepower. After missing a bunch of performance goals, the program died in 1949.

It fits the very vague description I put forward, but not the one I'm thinking of. That one was a smaller plane, with no gondola (as I remember), the cockpit being built right into the thicker forward section of the wing.
 
My Google-foo is weak today. I have looked, but failed to find this one: a Soviet interwar twin-radial engined, twin-boomed fighter design. The cockpit was in the central section of the wing. I don't know the designer either and I'm not sure if it actually got off the drawing board. It's perhaps more odd than ugly.

How is that for vague?

Are you fantasizing about the Grokhovsky G-38 two-seater fighter?
It was a beautiful piece of diesel-punk art that vaguely resembled an American P-38 Lightning, but the two crew members were half-submerged in the thick wing centre-section. Only the tandem canopy protruded above the wing. There was centre fuselage per say. In that respect, the G-38 concept looked more like Northrop's first attempt at a flying wing.
Dramatically sculpted spinners and engine nacelles led a pair of booms.
Work started in 1934, but the prototype was incomplete when Moscow cancelled the project in 1938. It never flew. Fantastic Plastic will cheerfully sell you a Unicraft model of the G-38.

Dear Driftless posted a picture of the G-38 box-art.
 
These Aircraft fall into two very separate categories: 1) Planes that are mistakes, that failed in testing or went into production and were considered horrible decisions and 2) Planes like the Dreamlifter and the A-10 Warthog that while not being particularly "pretty" fit their requirements (which were different than a normal plane) and proved worthwhile to build.

Honestly, if a Military Designer of today (which an appreciation of historical material abilities) were sent back to 1967-1970 to one of the companies putting together a bid for what became the A-10, I'm not sure that you'd end up with a particularly more "pretty" plane.

Note the other finalist for this contract was Northrup which produced the YA-9. Not significantly "prettier" in my mind.
 

McPherson

Banned
Northrop_YA-9_prototype.jpg


vs.

Su25_Shootdown-top.jpg


The Northrop plane beats the Frogfoot for ugly and useless. OTOH, the Sukhoi Su-25 Grach (Gry or Gamer?) has a known history of engine outs and fail to ejects (Democratic Republic of the Congo lost a couple in 2006. Some have crashed in Syria due to the same cause.) and the silly thing's fire control system is so hair trigger that if the pilot coughs in a two ship element, he will shoot down his buddy by accident. (That one was near Vladisvostok 2008.) That makes it UGLY in the air.
 
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