I hate to think how many Paras broke their jaw dropping through it, something known as ringing the bell.
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These two proposals from 1964 thankfully never left the drawing boards as they would have most certainly ruined the reputation of one of the last and best British designed airliners, the Vickers VC10. These were concepts for a "jumbo jet" variant based on that beauty.
The P.579 would have two VC10 standard fuselages coupled into a single airframe side by side, powered by four tail mounted Rolls Royce Medway RB 177 engines, span 182 ft, 5in, length 143ft, 10in, maximum take-off weight of 500,000 lbs and a total passenger capacity of 300 seats.
The P.580 went one better and had three fuselages powered by six tail mounted Rolls Royce Medways, span 201 ft, 8in, length 175ft, 10in, maximum take-off weight of 675,000 lbs and a total passenger capacity of 450 seats.
How would liked to have been seated in that middle tube. No view and hopefully no need to ever evacuate.
Someone mentioned a Fleet Air Arm AEW bird as butt ugly as the AEW Avenger. It occurred to me that this beast might be this critter:
Fairey Gannet, with the radome in the wrong place, to make it worse?
A whole row of them.
And even in the clean ASW version, they look screwed up.
Short version of ugly.
The folding wing tended to stick at the top of the Z-joint.
Quick release harness buckle for the pilot tended to get stuck. Not too bad if you had to cut yourself out of the harness after a trap, cause the plane captain could always replace the harness, but a bit awkward if you had to bail out cause the Double Mamba turbo-prop engine ingested gear filings and bits of housing casing from the contra-rotator gear assemblies as the gears tore themselves to bits. This happened more often than the RAF or the Luftwaffe liked to admit. The pilot loss was bad enough, but the Gannet was EXPENSIVE in either the AEW or ASW role.
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Not necessarily ugly, but just weird. Does anyone know what this bird is? I take it that it is French built, but I have never seen it before.
How the heck did the pilot see out of the airplane?How about this dazzler?:
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Vickers Vulcan Type 74 (this one was “G-EBLB”, she was delivered to Imperial Airways in May 1925, crashed at Purley July 1928).
How the heck did the pilot see out of the airplane?
Something else from the time of the Gannet
They were doing research into whether there were any advantages to the pilot being prone in high G maneuvers.
That just raises even more questions! How did they maneuver planes on the ground?
That just raises even more questions! How did they maneuver planes on the ground?
Ladies and gentlemen, the Westland-Hill Pterodactyl Mk V
Pilot view on the Pterodactyl is better than on a lot of Biplanes.How did the pilot see anything in that abomination?
It was made to test the concept of a flying wing. However I think the Hortons did it better.WHY? WHY?
WHO ON EARTH WOULD MAKE SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!?
It looks like it was made by a 3 year old using parts from 10 different planes.
I vote this monstrosity for most ugly.