In imitation of my recent effort this is a thread to discuss the finest aircraft that never should have been built. Aircraft that while technically superior in some aspect shouldn't have seen production because of economic/industrial realities or because the specific role it was intended for was obsolete before it saw service.
The best aircraft that never should have been built
- Thread starter Father Maryland
- Start date
Concorde? Great achievement, poorly timed. Not to mention that while it was impressive, it could not use its full potential over land (noise pollution + protests), leading to a dearth of orders following initial enthusiasm.
VC-10. Good aircraft, too few, too late. A good aircraft. Steamrolled by the 707 and DC-8
Convair 880. Too small, too fast, too expensive to operate in seat per mile. The market for a speed demon never developed. Steamrolled by the 707 and DC-8 ala VC-10
DC-10. A wide body competitor on the cheap. Never should have been built as it was. Needed seperation of various systems to avoid potential catastrophic failures
Douglas A3D (aka All Three Dead). Basically the same aircraft as the B-66 which was derived from it. The lack of ejection seats in a military aircraft was bordering on criminal.
Martin P6M Seamaster. Beautiful flying boat. Think of it as a flying boat version of the Handley Page Victor. It also suffered from some similar design issues that plagued the Victor primarily issues involving the T-tail. Never entered service. A concept that was dated before it left the drawing board.
Lockheed Tri-Star. A midsized widebody not done on the cheap. Just too expensive to seriously compete with the DC-10 and not enough capacity to take on the 747.
Martin 202/404. Intended as a replacement for the DC-3 (how many times has that been tried) as was the Convair CV-240/440 family. Both were equipped with possibly the best piston radial engine ever built. The Pratt & Whitney R-2800. Martin through poor decision making used a poor alloy choice leading to scructual cracks in the wing sparks. On top of that Martin went unpressurized limiting altitude (the Curtis CW-20/C-46 was in production ). By the time the Martin caught up they got buried by Convair.
The Beechcraft Starship. Too novel and too strange for the market. I'll give Beechcraft credit for trying though.
The P-63 Kingcobra. Redundant and un-needed. Its single contribution to the US war effort was as the Pinball version used to provide air gunner trainies a fighter aircraft target to shoot at during training with special .30 cal lead/bakelite ammunition that would shatter on impact. Two modified into L-39-2 swept wing test aircraft used to test swept wings at low and stall speed.
The primary problem most of these aircraft faced was a design or intended use set in a flawed idea.
One last one. The absolute worst airplane ever built. Two built, two crashing on their first flight both killing their pilots. The incomparable Christmas Bullet. Actually a good idea in terms of attempting to eliminate all of the struts and wire used on then current aircraft. If just lacked any serious foundation in engineering.
Convair 880. Too small, too fast, too expensive to operate in seat per mile. The market for a speed demon never developed. Steamrolled by the 707 and DC-8 ala VC-10
DC-10. A wide body competitor on the cheap. Never should have been built as it was. Needed seperation of various systems to avoid potential catastrophic failures
Douglas A3D (aka All Three Dead). Basically the same aircraft as the B-66 which was derived from it. The lack of ejection seats in a military aircraft was bordering on criminal.
Martin P6M Seamaster. Beautiful flying boat. Think of it as a flying boat version of the Handley Page Victor. It also suffered from some similar design issues that plagued the Victor primarily issues involving the T-tail. Never entered service. A concept that was dated before it left the drawing board.
Lockheed Tri-Star. A midsized widebody not done on the cheap. Just too expensive to seriously compete with the DC-10 and not enough capacity to take on the 747.
Martin 202/404. Intended as a replacement for the DC-3 (how many times has that been tried) as was the Convair CV-240/440 family. Both were equipped with possibly the best piston radial engine ever built. The Pratt & Whitney R-2800. Martin through poor decision making used a poor alloy choice leading to scructual cracks in the wing sparks. On top of that Martin went unpressurized limiting altitude (the Curtis CW-20/C-46 was in production ). By the time the Martin caught up they got buried by Convair.
The Beechcraft Starship. Too novel and too strange for the market. I'll give Beechcraft credit for trying though.
The P-63 Kingcobra. Redundant and un-needed. Its single contribution to the US war effort was as the Pinball version used to provide air gunner trainies a fighter aircraft target to shoot at during training with special .30 cal lead/bakelite ammunition that would shatter on impact. Two modified into L-39-2 swept wing test aircraft used to test swept wings at low and stall speed.
The primary problem most of these aircraft faced was a design or intended use set in a flawed idea.
One last one. The absolute worst airplane ever built. Two built, two crashing on their first flight both killing their pilots. The incomparable Christmas Bullet. Actually a good idea in terms of attempting to eliminate all of the struts and wire used on then current aircraft. If just lacked any serious foundation in engineering.
The A-10. By the time it entered service in the late 70s it was already much too vulnerable to Warsaw Pact grade AA being slow and having no pgms other than short-range Mavericks gave it no stand-off attack capability to keep it out of enemy threat rings. The Air Force realized this relatively quickly and were already moving away from low-altitude tactics as well as looking for a replacement but then the Gulf War restored it's reputation. We should have kept the A-7 as our main cas platform and upgraded to the YA-7F when it became available; much faster, greater range, all weather precision attack capabilities, and a larger payload to boot. And if the gau-8 means that much to people Vought had proposals for mounting it on the A-7 too.
Canadian-built H.P. Hampden. It had serious yaw problems and was obsolete by the time it entered Canadian production.
Canadian-built Lysanders were obsolete before 1 Squadron RCAF arrived in Britain during the winter of 1940. Thankfully , their mission to Dunkirk was cancelled. Phew!
Fleet Finches and DHC TigerMothswere obsoleteby thestartofWW 2. The production tion efforts could have been better spent on Fairchild Cornell’s.
Post war Fairchild Husky had too small an engine (DHC-2 Beaver) but too big a cabin (DHC-3 Otter). Husky’s only advantage was its canoe hatch under the tail.
Bristol Bolingbroke may have been the be fastest light bomber during the 1930s but were rendered obsolete by faster German fighters.
AvRO Jetliner was a dud with the original RR Derwent engines. It might have been profitable if they waited a few more years for more fuel-efficient engines.
Bristol Bolinbrokes were mildly amusing but quickly rendered too slow for anything more than coastal patrol. RCAF Bolingbrokes filled in as trainers and coastal patrol.
Canadian-built Lysanders were obsolete before 1 Squadron RCAF arrived in Britain during the winter of 1940. Thankfully , their mission to Dunkirk was cancelled. Phew!
Fleet Finches and DHC TigerMothswere obsoleteby thestartofWW 2. The production tion efforts could have been better spent on Fairchild Cornell’s.
Post war Fairchild Husky had too small an engine (DHC-2 Beaver) but too big a cabin (DHC-3 Otter). Husky’s only advantage was its canoe hatch under the tail.
Bristol Bolingbroke may have been the be fastest light bomber during the 1930s but were rendered obsolete by faster German fighters.
AvRO Jetliner was a dud with the original RR Derwent engines. It might have been profitable if they waited a few more years for more fuel-efficient engines.
Bristol Bolinbrokes were mildly amusing but quickly rendered too slow for anything more than coastal patrol. RCAF Bolingbrokes filled in as trainers and coastal patrol.
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Boulton-Paul Defiant: In some ways- many ways- a fine aircraft. Which just happened to be a single-engine fighter hauling around a turret for some reason.
If we stretch this to include prototypes I'm also fond of the Convair Sea Dart and Saunders-Roe S/R.A1- not one but two surprisingly well-designed jet fighters that take off from the surface of the water. Terrible idea, very handsome planes.
If we stretch this to include prototypes I'm also fond of the Convair Sea Dart and Saunders-Roe S/R.A1- not one but two surprisingly well-designed jet fighters that take off from the surface of the water. Terrible idea, very handsome planes.
Wait, what? But the GAU-8 is huge! The A-10 was literally designed around the cannon! How on God's green Earth could you mount it on the A-7?!?
The fatal flaw of both the Death Cruiser 10 and the TriStar was the fact that they were competing in a market for 600 planes that could only support one three-engine widebody. Boeing delivered about 400 747s in the 1970s and 400 in the 1980s, but they weren't competing against anyone in that product sector so they didn't really face any pricing pressure outside the Soviet bloc.
The P-63 Kingcobra was built as a Lendlease aircraft for the Soviet Union, where it did very valuable service. The P-63 was what the P-39 should have been.
It was a thing of beauty, a technical marvel and a total waste of valuable resources, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Brabazon.
Finally somebody said it. This aircraft has a great reputation for its performance in certain asymmetric wars but its actual survivability in the face of moderately sophisticated air defenses is dubious unless total air superiority is already attained.
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The Brabazon was built around the idea that only a few rich people and companies would pay for long distance air flight but the Brabazon was capacious and the large wing area made it a potential good weight lifter. Possibly with modern high density seating it could have made it's market with low price high volume transport. Not unlike the Loftleidair Candair Cl44.
Derek Pullem
Donor
TSR-2 - almost the perfect embodiment of the phrase "The perfect is the enemy of the good"
People at the time said it was called the Defiant because it defied reality. Regards.
They could have easily just stuck a couple of forward firing guns on it but nobody ever tried that.
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I read once that they claimed the extra guns would be too heavy. BS, in my opinion someone had a theory they weren't needed and staked his career on it. He was right , everyone else was wrong and he'd damn well make sure he was proved right by fair means or foul.
Can the whole turret idea, stick guns in wings and the resulting fighter should be at least as good as Hurricane.
A turret-less Defiant with forward-firing guns is every bit a 1st line fighter as Hurricane.
Driftless
Donor
I know the turret-less Defiant has been a discussion topic here in the past. IIRC, it requires a fair bit of re-design work beyond the turret removal and guns added to the wings. I believe there were fuel tanks in the wings where the guns should go and some resultant shifts in the CoG to be worked through, but B-P offered up a turret-less version for consideration.
How much did the turret itself weigh and how much of a drag penalty was it? (I'm discounting the weight of the guns and ammo, as they're being moved to the wings)