Strangest Aircraft

Strangest Aircraft - Aerospace engineers have come up with some revolutionary forward-thinking amazing straight-up insane designs. Sometimes these dreams never make it off the drawing board, but sometimes—some wonderful times—they become real. And when these alien bodies lift off into the firmament, it's like watching a spaceship transporting the human race directly into the future.

Check these amazing planes out: If someone asks you what material aircraft are usually made of, “metal” seems like a safe generic answer, right? Usually yes, but in the case of the Hughes H4 Hercules, more commonly known as the “Spruce Goose,” you would be wrong.

Strangest Aircraft

Unlike the V-1 rockets, which were launched from the ground, Fi-103R piloted missiles were meant to be carried into the air and launched from He-111 bombers. Once the missile was launched, the pilot would need to visually acquire his target, aim his aircraft at the ship, and then bail out.

The early days of aviation were like the wild west, and designers could basically do whatever they wanted. There were no computer simulations to help test the feasibility of a design. You simply dreamed it up, built it and went for it.

This all-out style of hands-on learning yielded some true gems as far as weird airplanes go. Case in point – the Caproni CA 60 built in Italy in 1921. Wocke's design was originally intended as an aerodynamic test bed, with many of the components taken from other airplanes, including captured Allied bombers.

During test flights, the Ju-287 performed excellently, meeting all the proposed performance characteristics. Unfortunately for Wocke, interest in a fast jet bomber waned and his design was shelved until March 1945. By that point, desperate Luftwaffe commanders were searching for any new design that could damage the Allies, and production was quickly started on the Ju-287,

only for the war to end two months later after only a few prototypes had been built. It would take another 40 years for forward-swept wings to begin seeing renewed popularity with American and Russian aerospace engineers.

As Allied bombing missions undermined the German war effort, Luftwaffe commanders realized that their reluctance to develop any multi-engined heavy bombers had been a huge mistake. As the brass began issuing orders for heavy bombers, most German aircraft manufacturers jumped at the opportunity.

This included the Horten Brothers (as mentioned above) and Junkers, who already had experience in creating bombers. Junkers engineer Hans Wocke led the design on arguably the most forward-thinking German aircraft of World War II: the Ju-287.

The Goodyear Inflatoplane, or GA-33 as the Army called it, seems to be an example of a plan that wasn't thought out clearly prior to execution. Goodyear pitched an idea for a compact, portable aircraft that could be dropped to downed airmen trapped behind enemy lines.

The entire airplane could be carried in the back of a Jeep or truck. How is this possible? That's the problem – as you can guess from its name, the Goodyear Inflatoplane is indeed inflatable. The Beluga definitely deserves a place on any list of odd airplanes, yet it is a highly functional and reliable plane.

It is more than 56 feet high and roughly 184 feet long, and it has an impressive maximum take-off weight of more than 340,000 lbs. Despite lofty expectations, testing revealed major problems. The engines were prone to overheating and did not deliver enough thrust.

Because of this, the Airacuda actually had a slower top speed than the bombers it was supposed to intercept or defend. The unusual gun positions caused more problems, since they tended to fill up with smoke during firing, rendering the job of the gunners impossible.

To make matters worse, gunners would be unable to bail out in an emergency, since the propellers right behind them escaped a death sentence. As a result of these problems, the USAAF only purchased 13 of the aircraft, none of which saw combat service.

The remaining airframes were distributed around the country to allow pilots to add the unusual aircraft to their logbooks, and Bell went on to more successful attempts at combat aircraft design. The Tacit Blue had several nicknames, including the Alien School Bus and the Whale, and it had a gross weight of 30,000 lbs.

Its maximum flying speed reached 290 MPH and it was over 50 feet long. It is currently housed at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton, Ohio. Considered one of the many odd airplanes mostly because of its current sleek, modern design, the Boeing X-48 plane has a gross weight of 500 lbs.

and can fly at roughly 135 MPH, and since its very first flight it has proven to be perfect for studying varying aspects of flying an airplane, including engine yaw control and much more. So far, the plane's capabilities have proven very promising.

The holy grail was to have the tank crew fly the tank to the ground and be in fighting condition within a few minutes. To this end, Soviet planners turned to the ideas of American engineer John Walter Christie, who had originally developed the flying tank concept in the 1930s.

With a tank attached to a set of biplane wings, Christie believed that any war would be over quickly, since nobody could defend against a flying tank. Of all the aircraft on this list, the Boulton Paul Defiant saw the most active service.

Unfortunately, that resulted in the deaths of many young airmen. The plane was designed due to a 1930s misunderstanding about how air warfare would develop. British commanders believed that bombers attacking Britain would be largely unescorted and undefended.

In theory, a fighter with all of his weapons concentrated in a powered turret would be able to work his way into bomber formations and wreak havoc from the inside. The turret would give a large range of fire while freeing the pilot from the task of gunnery, allowing him to concentrate on putting the aircraft in the optimal firing position.

Luke may have had his x-wing fighter a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but we humans didn't venture into X-wings until the late 1980's. The Sikorsky X-wing is an airplane-meets-helicopter mashup intended to combine the best of both worlds with the speed of a jet paired with the vertical takeoff capabilities of a helicopter.

Deck space is limited on Navy ships, so there has long been an interest in developing vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) fighters to protect convoys. The XFV, another Skunkworks production, was designed to fill that need.

The theory was that this craft could be a low-cost reconnaissance vehicle that would be steered by the pilot shifting his body weight, much like today's Segue or hover board. Unfortunately, the reality was that the maneuverability was horrible, and soldiers were understandably reluctant to be assigned to pilot this death-trap of a contraption.

But just as the British and Americans were discontinuing their experiments, the Soviet Air Force (VVS) was just starting. In 1931, aviation engineer Vladimir Vakhmistrov proposed using large Tupolev bombers to carry smaller fighters into the air.

This gave the fighters a significantly increased range and allowed them to carry larger bomb loads than usually possible when configured for dive-bombing. Without the bombs, the fighters would also be able to defend the Tupolevs against enemy interceptors.

Throughout the 1930s, Vakhmistrov experimented with various configurations, reaching the point where he was attaching five fighter planes to one bomber aircraft. By the start of World War II, Vakhmistrov had scaled back his ideas to a more practical design with two I-16 fighter-bombers attached to a TB-3 mothership.

Unlike their Japanese counterparts, German pilots would not be sealed into their cockpits and were expected to attempt escaping. However, with a roaring engine directly behind the canopy, bailing out would probably be fatal anyway. These slim chances of pilot survival gave Luftwaffe commanders a bad impression of the program, and no operational missions were ever carried out.

However, 175 V-1 missiles were still converted into Fi-103Rs, most of which fell into Allied hands at the end of the war. Americans weren't the only ones experimenting with an airborne Jeep. The UK toyed with their own version, called the Hafner Rotabuggy.

This version took a Willy's Jeep and added helicopter blades on top to make a cartoon-like vehicle of which only one was ever produced. Initially, the Ho 229 was simply seen as a curiosity. However, when the B-2 stealth bomber entered service with a similar flying wing design, aerospace experts became curious about the Ho 229's stealth characteristics.

In 2008, engineers at Northrop Grumman created a replica Ho 229 based on the surviving prototype, which is housed at the Smithsonian Institute. Using radar frequencies similar to those developed during World War II, it was discovered that the Ho 229 did in fact have stealth characteristics, with a radar signature much smaller than contemporary fighters.

Completely unintentionally, the Horten brothers had created the first stealth fighter. Starting in the 1930s, Vought engineer Charles H. Zimmerman began experimenting with disk-shaped aircraft. The first flying model was the V-173 (pictured above), which took to the air in 1942. It had problems with the engine gearbox, but overall proved to be a strong, highly maneuverable airframe that was virtually stall-proof.

While his company was churning out the famous F4U Corsair, Zimmerman continued to work on a disk-shaped fighter plane, which eventually became known as the XF5U. The Airbus A300-600ST (Super Transporter) or Beluga, is a version of the standard A300-600 wide-body airliner modified to carry aircraft parts and oversized cargo.

It was officially called the Super Transporter at first, but the name Beluga became popular and has now been officially adopted. With its bloated look and fish-like appearance, it is easy to see how this aircraft got its nickname.

Only one Pregnant Guppy was ever built, but it flew for 15 years from 1962 to 1977. It is a very large, wide-bodied cargo plane that was used most frequently by NASA to transport components of the Apollo moon program.

While the plane's asymmetric layout seems like an engineer's fever dream, it did serve a purpose. By clearing up the right side of the aircraft, the Bv 141 offered an unparalleled field of vision for the pilot and observers, especially to the right and to the front, where the pilot was unencumbered by the huge engine and spinning rotors of a conventional single

-engine aircraft. The Defiant did well on its first sorties, since many unsuspecting German fighter pilots misidentified the plane as the similar-looking Hawker Hurricane and attacked from above or from the rear—perfect firing positions for a Defiant gunner.

But Luftwaffe pilots quickly learned to avoid attacking Defiants from behind, instead attacking from below or to the front. With no forward-firing weaponry and poor maneuverability due to the heavy turret, Defiant pilots incurred huge losses during the Battle of Britain.

Whole fighter squadrons were nearly lost, and Defiant gunners found it impossible to escape the turret in an emergency. A brand-new plane currently under construction, the Boeing X-48 airplane has a very unusual wing shape and a wingspan of 21 feet.

There are three versions of the plane – the X-48A, which has already been cancelled, the X-48B, and the X-48C. It is being developed as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to investigate the many characteristics of blended wing body (BWB) aircraft.

Responding to the requirement, the Horten Brothers began designing a flying wing aircraft (a type of aircraft with no tail or distinct fuselage, like later stealth bombers). During the 1930s, the brothers had experimented with flying wing gliders, which showed superior handling characteristics.

Using this experience, the brothers built an unpowered glider design as proof of concept for their bomber. The design impressed Goering, who transferred the project to the aircraft company Gothaer Waggonfaebrik for mass production. With some tinkering, the brothers' glider was given jet propulsion.

It was also reworked as a fighter to respond to the Luftwaffe's need for emergency fighter aircraft in 1945. Only one prototype was built, which was captured by Allied forces as the war ended. If one pair of wings is good, then three sets of triple wings is even better, right?

Wrong…so very wrong. Still, hats off to the pilot who managed to get this 77-foot-long, 30-foot-high beast 60 feet in the air and who lived to shake his head and tell about it. This plane is another jewel made by Aero Spacelines, and it is a big cargo plane with a large, wide body.

The alien-faced plane is still in operation today and is used mostly to ferry oversized cargo components. Only five of them were ever made, but the plane played a very important role during the Apollo program because it carried a complete S-IVB stage, the third section of the Saturn V rocket.

Fairly new to the aircraft world since its first completed plane in 2006, the Dreamlifter is more than 235 feet long and has a cruising speed of 474 knots, or Mach 0.82. It can hold a crew of two people and has an impressive 211-foot wingspan.

The Airacuda was Bell's first foray into military aircraft design, and it boasted a host of unusual features. In order to give the Airacuda the best chance at destroying enemy aircraft, Bell opted to give it two forward-firing 37-mm M-4 cannons, placed in front of the unusual "pusher" engines and rear-mounted propellers.

Each cannon had a dedicated gunner to manually reload its five-round clips. The original plan was for the gunners to actually fire the cannons, using tracer-firing machine guns to help them aim. This was a disaster, and the design was changed to allow the pilot to fire the cannons instead.

However, they still had to keep the gunners in order to actually reload the cannons. The Lockheed XFV-1 never took off properly, from a tail-sitting position. It only took off conventionally—horizontally—sitting atop an odd landing-gear cradle.

The Convair Pogo, its competitor, did take off (and land, which is the far more difficult act) vertically a number of times, in the hands of my late friend Skeets Coleman. Funding was given for an improved version with a target landing speed of 20 mph and a top speed of an impressive 425 mph.

Sadly, the initial re-design proved flawed with excessive engine bay vibration and by the time this was corrected, the war was over and the military was focused on jet aircraft development instead. Although pilots were able to come up with some stopgap tactics, the RAF quickly realized that the turret fighter was not cut out for modern air combat.

The Defiant was relegated to night-fighter squadrons, where it had some success sneaking up and destroying bombers flying night missions. The steady airframe was also used for target practice and to test the first Martin Baker ejection seats.

Don't you just love it when a weird plane has a weird name to go with it? The "Pregnant Guppy" as this modified Boeing 377 is fondly referred to, was born from NASA's need for a way to transport bulky components for the Apollo missions.

They came up with this bloated, ungainly looking plane, but clearly it did its job and is one of the lesser-known aircraft to play a supporting role in the space program.

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