What airplanes fascinate you?
 

What 's plane floats your boat, or is your favorite?

For me there is little more delightful than seeing a bright red Pitts Stearman biplane going through its paces at an aerobatic show, doing Immelmans, barrel rolls, flying upside down and zooming up high, trailing white smoke,riveting to see it!!!

It was also fun to fly in a small plane over the Golden Gate Bridge, and the San Francisco skyline, down the Penilnsula and across the Bay to Hayward.
Also got the chance to fly over SF at night, that's heady stuff too

I was also fascinated by the first significant production combat jet fighter, the German ME262 www.stormbirds.com

More were destroyed on the ground and shot up than actually saw combat, as the airfields and factories were being bombed by the allied fighters in late4 1944 through April 1945, but they could outfly anything the allies could put in the air by over 150 mph, though the P51 Mustangs could get them in the corners, and flew MUCH higher when they escorted the allied bombers, so they could attack them by diving from above.

The ME 262 came into production much too late to affect the outcome of the war, and by then many were grounded for lack of fuel.

Things could have been a LOT different if they were operational in the Battle of Britain in 1940, I'd wager...

Jim

What was the U.S. WW2 plane that had the sort of triple fusilage looking effect, an engine on each side? I watched a documentary on the pulling of one up from like a hundred or more feet below the surface of part of Greenlands ice sheet. Several had to land there in distress -- out of fuel, I believe, and were never retrieved. The ice swallowed them up soon enough.

I also dig the planes by uhhh, the guy who spearheaded Paul Allen's private space launch vehicle -- the planes with the small canard wing on the nose. Incredible stuff.

A distinctive look
 

It was a P38, cmac

This airplane was the inspiration for the tailfins on the 1948 Cadillac, which was the first iteration of the tailfin craze, which reached its zenith with the 1959 Cadillac (a NYPD mounted officer's horse was reputedly impaled on the tailfin of a 1961 Cadillac)

A distinctive look
 

It was a P38, cmac

This airplane was the inspiration for the tailfins on the 1948 Cadillac, which was the first iteration of the tailfin craze, which reached its zenith with the 1959 Cadillac (a NYPD mounted officer's horse was reputedly impaled on the tailfin of a 1961 Cadillac)

Even Mercedes was influenced with the Heckflosse sedans, the tailfin ones from 1960-68.

Planes, ah if only O had the money to get started in flying.....

The ME 262 was a significant place, to be sure. Invented early enough in the war to have made an impact, it was only stopped by Hitlar's hubris.

Other cool planes;
Ford Tri-Motor
DC3
the aforemention Stearman
That big Russian single engine plane that is still in service

Antonov An-2

The SR71. Designed by Kelly Johnsons team at the skunk works. And if i'm not mistaken
Kelly Johnson was also responsible for the design of the P38.

F22 the picture says it all.
[IMG]http://www.hostmypiconline.com/image...w_2006_013.jpg[/IMG]

Dc6.

I like the V35B. This design goes way back to the late 1940's.

Yep........amazing what they accomplished without any computer to assist.........

747. Smooth as the prom queen's thighs during takeoff and especially landing compared with the others I have flown.

Graceful to watch taking off too

Anything Skunkworks.
I would really like to know what they've been working on since the Stealth Fighter 20 years ago. I don't think they've just been sweeping the floor for 20 years.

Lockheed Constellation/Supper Connie, long, slim fuselage, triple tail, just a great looking prop liner.

Exactly the Aurora would be the plane I would like to see.