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23.09.2025 23:37
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[2/2] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 300-301. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation
[1/2] The Lohner #TypeAA was an Austro-Hungarian aircraft built in 1916 for a German Air Service competition. Flight stability was disastrous notably due to its large proportions. Many of these planes were deployed during WW1. Its losses were however very high.
[3/3] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 60-61. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation
[2/3] Many think it was actually a good thing that this glider never came to pass. Combat experience showed the strength of beach defences and vulnerability of armoured equipment. Landing small gliders on fortresses surrounded by jungle was simply a bad idea.
[1/3] 🧵 In spring 1941, the U.S. Navy began to work on a n assault glider that could carry Marines on beaches. The #XLRA was built to recapture islands taken by the Japanese in the first months of the Pacific Wars. The program was however cancelled.
[4/4] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 124-125. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation
[3/4] Four senior naval officers were then forced into retirement. A long legal battle between General Dynamics/McDonnell Douglas and the U.S. Navy followed. The litigation was finally settled in 2014. Boeing and General Dynamics agreed to pay $200 million each to the U.S. Navy.
[2/4] The A-12 Avenger II was however a fiasco. General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas failed to deliver. There was also a lack of oversight by the government. The cost rose. After pouring $5 billion, only a mockup was ever produced. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney cancelled the program in 1991.
[1/4] 🧵 Intended to use more sophisticated stealth techniques than the F-117A Nighhawk, the #A12AvengerII was a trapezoidal shape with smooth surfaces for scattering radar beams. It would have been able to carry more weapons and had an air-to-air capability. The entire program was a secret.
[3/3] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 160-161. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation
[2/3] Unfortunately, one of these aeroplanes crashed while practising aerobatics and another sank after hitting a piece of wood. The remaining S.R./A.1 was subject to more testing, but was sent to a museum when the Korean War broke due to the outperformance of its potential adversaries.
[1/3] 🧵 The Saunders #Roe #SRA1 was the world’s first jet fighter flying boat. The British were largely influenced by the Japanese seaplane fighters due to their ability to operate from islands with no airfields. The first flight of the S.R./A.1 took place in 1947.
[3/3] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 164-165. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation
[2/3] The only foreign pilot to board the ANT-20 was French aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He wrote his experience in the Paris-Soir. The day after, the ANT-20 crashed after an over-exuberant fighter pilot hit the giant aeroplane.
[1/3] 🧵 The Tupolev #ANT20 Maksim Gorkii was built for propaganda purposes. The goal was to fly this giant aeroplane across the USSR to bring the communist message to the masses. The ANT-20 contained a small printing plant, a photographic studio, a cinema and a radio station.
[5/5] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 122-123. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation
[4/5] After only 55 hours of flight testing, the RAF decided to abandon the project.
[3/5] Tests showed the pilot could endure slightly more g, but suffered from vertigo (dreadful feeling), had bad visibility, and became tired quickly. Moreover, he expressed concerns when he took off and landed the aeroplane due the runway apparently uncomfortably close to the pilot’s nose.
[2/5] The RAF thought lying prone would give pilots an advantage during dogfights. They designed the Gloster #Meteor for this specific purpose. The aeroplane had two cockpits: one conventional as a safety measure and one in a prone position to conduct flight tests.
[1/5] 🧵 After WW2, aviation experienced significant performance advancements. Aircrews were subject to greater acceleration and g forces during manoeuvres. Reducing the distance that blood has to pump from the heart to the brain increases tolerance to g forces.
[3/3] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 202-203. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation
[2/3] This aircraft had a corpulent annular fuselage which concealed a Gipsy engine and two-bladed propeller. All this achieved was high drag and low noise with landing speed reduced to 31 knots. Performance was otherwise lower than a conventional airframe with the same engine.
[1/3] 🧵 In the 1930s, Luigi Stipa convinced the Caproni Company to build an aircraft to test his theory that a tubular fuselage gave significant extra thrust to a conventional engine and propeller. The concept behind the Caproni #Stipa wasn’t so successful.
[3/3] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 100-101. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation
[2/3] The USAF was so frightened that the Crusader crashed that several support planes with paratroopers followed the aircraft on every flight. These paratroopers would intervene should the aircraft crashed or jettisoned its reactor. Even a hotline to the president’s office was set up.
[1/3] 🧵 The Convair NB-36 #Crusader was a bold concept. It was intended to prove the feasibility of carrying a nuclear reactor in flight, towards an eventual goal of a nuclear-powered aircraft with unlimited endurance.
[3/3] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 134-135. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation
[2/3] However, the XH-17 was just too cumbersome and large to be effective. Its range was only 40 miles (64 KM). Plus, vibrations caused by the powerful rotor blades stressed the entire structure of the aircraft. The whole program was ended after three years of testing
[1/3] 🧵 In 1949, Hughes Aircraft got a contract to build the massive #XH17. The gigantic rotors promised a huge lifting capacity and were attached to stilt-like legs and a box like fuselage. Large cargo such as radar vans and tanks could be lifted away.