Lockheed
Constellation - It was love at first sight the day I
touched one at an air show. Sure, I'd seen stills and the occasional
shot of a Connie in movies - for example, Night of the Demon (1957)
and The Godfather, Part
II (1974) - and they made no lasting impression on me. But to see
one up close, walk around underneath it, have hot oil drip on me from
beneath the engine cowling, and then see it fly...I was hooked. This has to be
the most beautiful and graceful passenger airliner ever built. I hope
to fly on one someday. You can see the specific Connie that zapped me
here; it's been
restored, and is operated, by Save-A-Connie (see their
home page at http://www.airlinehistorymuseum.com/).
Convair Sea
Dart - A supersonic jet fighter that was supposed to take off
and land on water? Well, that was the idea, anyway,
and it worked (to the extent that it did indeed fly off and land on
water). It never entered full-scale production. For a description, see
http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/f7.html;
for pictures, try http://wingshots.foxalpha.com/SeaDart.php.
(You might also try http://avia.russian.ee/air/usa/convair_seadart.html, for both).
Convair B-36
Peacemaker - If you're looking for a single military artifact that sums up the Cold War, this is it, as far as
I'm concerned. Think about it: they're huge, incredibly expensive, complex, way more powerful than other aircraft at the time, and basically useless.
This bomber needed four jet engines to complement the six propeller engines. Check out the Peacemaker at the Air Force Museum, http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/air_power/ap39.htm. A longer and
more detailed history/description begins at http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/research/bombers/b3-68.htm. When I say these
suckers were big, well, you may think "yeah, yeah, a big plane. Ho hum." See if this wakes you up: the B-36 was so big that it could carry its own fighter escort on board. See next entry.
The last flight of a Peacemaker took place before I was born, so although it's a terrible movie in itself, the extended B-36 flight sequences in Strategic Air Command (1955)
are very much appreciated. (This movie is to Jimmy Stewart's career what The Green Berets is to John Wayne's.)
McDonnell XF-85
Goblin - No lie, these were intended to be flown from the bomb
bay of the B-36! See the Air Force Museum's display on this aircraft
at http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/air_power/ap38.htm.
Tell me whether this logic makes sense: the B-36 had such a long range
that it would either have to carry an on-board fighter aircraft, or do
without fighter escort altogether. Right? OK, but in order to carry the XF-85 (had it
been successful), the B-36 modified the large open space of the bomb bay.
Now, if the bomb bay is taken up with the Goblin and the 'trapeze'
assembly needed to launch and recover it, is there room left for a
significant bomb load? In other words, does providing fighter
escort for the bomber nullify the entire reason a bomber
needs fighter escort - carrying bombs?
But even though the Goblin didn't work out, the idea of a B-36 carrying its own parasitic fighter lived on - long enough to test one more approach to the problem, project FICON (FIghter CONveyor). This involved modifying an F-84, later an RF-84K Thunderflash to be carried beneath a B-36 (also significantly modified). As a thoughtful description of the project dryly states, it was "achievable but not practical." (As a side note, the F-84 seems to have served as a test bed for more odd ideas than any other production fighter, at least as far as I'm aware. The Air Force has a nifty overview of these, including mention of the FICON project.)
Douglas DC-3 - Absolutely classic. Try http://www.centercomp.com/dc3/.
Rigid Airships: Dirigibles or Zeppelins - http://www.airships.net/index.shtml/
Sikorsky S-38 Amphibian - So ugly it's beautiful. I mean, this thing looks like
the offspring of a love affair between a wooden Chris Craft runabout and a Curtis Jenny, with a dash of wood-sided station wagon thrown in. Add to that the
fact that the plane shown on the S. C. Johnson Company's pages (starting at http://www.scjcarnauba.com/)
was built completely from scratch, since none have survived. You can get a better look at the plane itself at http://www.scjcarnauba.com/planepph.htm.
That's dedication.
SO-9050 Trident II - We tend to forget that
Cold War-era research into combination jet/rocket planes was not confined solely to the U.S. and the
Soviet Union. France's Trident II and III pushed the envelope, literally and figuratively, before
the combination of rocket-assisted jet engines was largely abandoned. And the Trident didn't do
too badly: one of the three Trident II prototypes set a world altitude record on May 2 1958 when test
pilot Roger Carpentier took it to 24,217 meters (15 miles and change). I had a plastic model of
the Trident II as a kid and found it ineffably cool.
http://www.aviafrance.com/5872.htm
http://jpcolliat.free.fr/trident/trident-1.htm