Unless an 88 went through the wing.:o

I like the Rumpler Taube,sat in one but never flew it.

Piloted a Stearman Scout once for 20 minutes,keeping the torque under control scared me silly.

With a looooong driveway!

Messerschmitt BF 109
 

The highest number of kills of any warplane in history, and likely to remain that way for all time. Flown by the worlds most successfull aces who shall likely remain so for all time. And of course it's Daimler Benz engine has the forerunner of our car's fuel injection systems.

- Peter.

Howdy Emmerich,
Still is. About 10 acres of airplane stuff. Had a fire recently and lost half his library, still the largest private library of aircraft manuals in the country.

Mustang, Blackbird, and that F22. Whoa.

I'd sure like to know what's come out of the skunkworks since they retired the Blackbird. It's gotta be faster'n a speeding bullet and damned-near invisible.

My favorite airplane that I've been a passenger on is tied between a Dakota and a Galaxy. For dang-near exactly the opposite reasons. I also liked the C-130. Comfortable..., like riding across cobbles on a D-8.

Not especially fascinating anymore, but I really like water landings in a float plane. Talk about a short landing. I guess the only thing shorter would be a flight deck with arresting gear. Taking off can be exciting--it takes a loooooong time compared to wheels.

B

Boeing B-17.

Hands down the icon of the 20th century American aircraft industry, IMHO.
Boeing and several other companies built over 12,000 from 1935-1945.
Rugged, durable and armed to the teeth, the Flying Fortress was remarkable war horse. It could take tremendous punishment and still fly.
Over 4,700 were lost in combat. With a crew of 10 men, crew losses were huge.
I was aboard one (Texas Raiders) a few years ago and was really jolted by the reality of the conditions: Open fuselage, no armor plating. Flying above 30,000 ft, on oxygen, freezing your a$$ off.

You have to have enormous respect for the plane and the brave men who flew in them.

Sadly, there are less than twenty still flying. Thanks to all the organizations and individuals who are dedicated to preserving vintage and historic aircraft of all types.

Quite possibly the most beautiful aircraft ever, the Supermarine Spitfire.

http://www.aviation.technomuses.ca/databases/images/10705.jpg

Someone had made a comment about Hitler's hubris with the Me 262. That aircraft could have been operational in late 1943 if Hitler hadn't decided to try and turn it into a bomber (?!?). That one decision had more impact on the air war over Europe than pretty much anything else. If he had let it go into service, it could have been tearing allied bombers to shreds before the Mustangs came to service in any meaningful numbers. And the engineers could have been throwing resources at improving the engines to hopefully get them off the ground faster. Take off and landing were the two most exposed times for the 262.

Post war BDA of allied strategic bombing of Germany indicated no significant effect on German arms manufacturing until nearly the end of the war. I think the BDA analysis was done by McClone for the USA. (I'll try a Google search and see if I can find it.) Mythology, largely due to the effective efforts of Curtis LeMay, has built up around the tremendous effort and loss of life (both airmen and civilians on the ground) to indicate that strategic bombing was a key component of winning the war in Europe. The actual winning of the war was accomplished through the horrific attrition suffered by Germany on the Russian front. Sometime look at the relative strength of the German forces on Germany's eastern and western fronts. Europe was a rear-guard action.

Strategic bombing was a cheap way to convince Stalin to stay in the fight until the western allies could muster the political will and amphibious forces to overwhelm German defenses in Europe.

Bot

The greatest benefit from strategic bombing was the fact that the German population actually knew they had been beaten. I know that sounds absurd, but I read some very interesting analysis in Margaret MacMillan's "Paris: 1919", discussing the rise of German nationalism through the 1920's. I was familiar with all the stock reasons (war reparations, inflation, loss of national prestige, a weak democratic goverment, etc) but one new reason forwarded was the fact that the German people were never exposed to the horrors of war at home in the way that the French and Belgians were. This helped fuel the idea that Versailles was an unnecessarily punitive agreement, and an atrocious injustice for a country that had just decided to stop fighting as opposed to having been defeated. She made an interesting connection between this and the WW2 fire-bombing of Dresden, largely considered to be one of the allies greatest crimes of the war. She offers that Dresden was to make sure the Germans knew they had been defeated.

As you said, it was largely about attrition/depleted resources. I can't remember where I read it, but there was an observation from a German officer durning the war about the point where he realized Germany had no hope of winning. His unit had intercepted some mail from the US for the troops on the ground, and there was a tin with a home-made chocolate cake that a wife had sent to her husband. He realized that if the US had the resources to transport a chocolate cake to the front line of the war, there was no way Germany could compete.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/USSBS/#eto

A counter to my argument above is that allied war production continued to increase on a very steep curve while Germany's war production, though it continued to increase for most of the war, did not increase as rapidly. If just industrial capacity curves are compared, the allies overwhelmed Germany by late 1942. The argument has weight since war production and logistics are as important as numerous battlefield outcomes. In other words, you can win lots of decisive battles and lose the war due to manufacturing and logistical differentials.

Look at the American Civil War as an example of that (or the Italian campaign of the Greeks, or the Punic Wars--Rome's with Carthage, ...). The Confederate side won most of the great battles but simply didn't have the depth of manufacturing nor the population necessary to sustain any major losses. This is why Gettysburg was so important--not that it was an important battle of itself (there were far more important battles in terms of losses) but that it was impossible for the Confederates to lose a battle and continue to fight an aggressive campaign.

This is Texas we are talking about my friend....everything is bigger out there. :eek:

But seriously, many years ago I was corporae counsel for a big oil company. At that time real estate prices and, the joke was, the only deposit on a new Benz were bird droppings.

I was considering transferring to Houston and we were looking at some nice homes, with their own airstrip on the back. I ended up staying put in L.A. and I was not a flyer. But for anyone into flying the house and the adjacent landing strip would have been a great buy...the prices were ridiculously low at the time.

For overall fascination no plane can beat the Spruce goose and the man behind it.

I am also partial to the AC-47 and AC-130 gunships aka Puff the Magic Dragon.

For overal toughness nothing can beat the Warthog.

The Spruce Goose is housed in the Evergreen Aviation Museum here in McMinnville. It's close to Portland. If you ever go to Portland, you should really check it out. If you don't want to pay the admission fee ($12 or something like that), it's well worth it just to walk in to the museum, witness, the Goose, and leave. You can easily see the giant plane from the foyer before you pay. It really is one fascinating piece of machinery.

The museum is well-worth it if you're not too strapped, though. They have a Blackbird, a MiG or two, some unusual specimens from the early days of aviation (those are generally my fave), and many more.

Speaking of planes...I'm really impressed with the quality of the cheaper prop planes that are avialable like Cessna 150's, Piper Cubs, and certain Bonanzas. My dad had a Bonanza since before I was born and I've spent a lot of time at municipal airports. Seems like most of those planes were built many decades ago but with proper care are still in great shape. And if you know what you're doing, a lot of the work on those can be DIY!

I saw it when it was in Long Beach. :D

I've also flown in DC-3, Puff, a Tri-Motor and several other vintage planes.

There is an airport nearby and one of those WWII restoration groups, the formerly named Confederate Air Force (now known as the Commemorative Air force :( ) has a "wing" there.

My kid and I get to see a lot of planes.