Companion to Athanasius' thread about cars.

Admittedly, most of these are going to be military aircraft, but that's what I grew up loving as a boy, and of course all those years I spent in the Air Force reinforced it.

Feel free to add your own favorites if you so desire.

Some of my faves:

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress:



Boeing B-29 Superfortress:



Consolidated B-36 Peacemaker:



Consolidated B-24 Liberator (my aunt spent the war at the Ford plant at Willow Run riveting these together....):



North American B-25 Mitchell (these are the aircraft General Doolittle flew off the deck of the aircraft carrier Hornet to bomb Japan in 1942---a feat that many said couldn't be done):

The P-51 Mustang (this is a "D" model---you can tell from the bubble canopy):



P-47 Thunderbolt:



P-38 Lightning (the Germans hated these because of their superb maneuverability---they called it "the fork-tailed devil"):



P-40 Warhawk (of "Flying Tigers" fame; the "tiger shark" insignia was painted on the nose to scare the daylights out of the Japanese):



C-47 Skytrain (my Dad flew on these "over the hump", or the Himalayan mountain range, from India to China and back again):

British Lancaster bomber:



Supermarine Spitfire:



Hawker Hurricane (this is the plane which did the bulk of the fighting during the Battle of Britian, despite what Spitfire enthusiasts would have you believe):



Vought F4U Corsair, used extensively in the Pacific:



A6M Mitsubishi Zero (my Dad was wounded by one of these making a strafing run---he had a lot of things to say about them ):

My top pics for American beauties of the sky...

Messerschmitt Me 109:



Focke-Wulf FW 190:



Messerschmitt Me 110:



Messerschmitt Me 262 (the first operational jet fighter; love these---what a gorgeous airplane!):



Messerschmitt P1101 (an experimental swept-wing aircraft that never saw combat; however, the Americans and the Russians both captured prototypes, and both the American F-86 Sabre and the Russian MiG 15---pictured below---were developed from this aircraft):



American F-86 Sabre:



Russian MiG 15:

Not much argument from me.

My uncle was an 8th AF waist gunner in B-17Gs, 36 missions over Europe. One of my premier hobby areas is the end of the PTO war, so I have a soft spot for the Lady of the 20th. My daughter spent two tours in the modern incarnation. Another of my hobbies is the Doolittle Raid, so I likewise admire the Mitchell. One Raider was a friend of my mother's family.

The Peacemaker seemed more awesome to me than beautiful, and the Liberator more a flying boxcar.

I have little personal contact with the others, though I've seen many at air shows. And a friend of the family, in that model Mustang, got half credit for a Swallow, jumping it when it was landing. Got a signed print of him and his flight leader, in the air, hanging in the living room over the sofa. And I worked the competition, test and evaluation, and acquisition programs on the Fighting Falcon.

No pic of my personal favorite, though: the Warthog. Hard to call it beautiful, I know. But I got a small model on the shelf. Another of my programs.

Good choices.

GKC

Grumman F9F Panther (very clean-looking airplane; saw extensive service during the Korean War):



Republic F-105 Thunderchief (affectionately known as the "Thud" or the "Lead Sled"):



McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom (these are what they flew out of my very first permanent duty station):



F-15 Eagle (a few years later, they replaced all the F-4s on base with these):



F-16 Fighting Falcon:



MiG-25 Foxbat (this is what the F-15 was developed to counter):



Tupolev Tu-95 Bear bomber (these had the weirdest sound in flight):

Those are ok, but I've made better out of Construx.

B-52 bomber (they flew these out of Griffiss AFB when I was there):





I had an older cousin on my mother's side who was a B-17 pilot, 9th AF out of Italy. He was shot down over Hannover and ended up in a Luftstalag until the end of the war; I still remember he came over to see my Dad on the same day that my mother was cooking cabbage. He caught one whiff, turned about fourteen shades of green, did an about-face, and walked out of the house. My Dad walked out in the yard and asked if he was okay, and he said, "I can't take the smell of boiled cabbage." Dad kind of grinned and said, "Don't you like boiled cabbage, Don?", and he said, "Listen, if you spent 31 months in a German prison camp where all they fed you was boiled cabbage, you wouldn't like boiled cabbage either!"



Yes, the B-36 was titanically huge---very majestic in the air.

I remember working at the end of the runway one day (well off the airfield), and I had aural protectors on, so all sound was muted. This gigantic shadow engulfed me, and when I looked up, directly over my head there was a C-5A Galaxy taking off. It looked like a whale hovering over my head, and I just about had a coronary.



They flew those out of Hancock Field, NY, when I was stationed there (NYANG---our side of the base [active duty] was strictly scope dopes for the northeast NORAD sector), so I saw them every day. They also had a weird sound in flight:





Thank you. But you realize those are only some of the aircraft I like....if I were to list them all, it would probably take forever.

My uncle was never a POW. But he came home with the same attitude toward Brussell Sprouts, they being ubiquitous on the English menu in the day.

You added the A-10, and a B-52 (G or H, I think). I worked a number of mods to the Ds. Gs and Hs. In fact, I used to "own" 2 B-52s used as munitions loader trainers.

And the A-10 made a right interesting noise, not only from those 2 TF-34-100s, but when it fired the GAU-8.

More pics won't bother me.

GKC

オスカー

Oscar. Ugly.

GKC

You mean "OSUKAH"? Japanese can only say their words in simple syllables.

Nope. I mean the Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa, Allied code name "Oscar", a tactical fighter aircraft used by the Japanese in WWII.

GKC

I remember reading Steve Canyon comic books, flying a F-86, one of my favorites...

You were reading while flying an F-86?

When first seen in 1947, Steve was running an air transport business. But, of course, he could fly anything, including F-86s in Korea.

I collect reprints of Caniff's work.

GKC

Gee, and all I have is an old "Connie Rodd" comic book that tells me how to maintain an M-16A1 rifle.

Here's three more---and these are aircraft that I actually flew in:

C-130 Hercules:



C-141 Starlifter:



and the UH1B Huey (ours were gray, however, and they didn't say "Army" on the side. They flew us up to a forsaken stretch of tundra in Alaska and made us jump out while they hovered about six feet off the deck, then they took off and left us there; half an hour later some 130's came over and airdropped all of our gear to us.)

You're ahead of me, there. Though I did meet Will Eisner and got my SPIRIT reprints signed.

GKC

(double post)