Aircraft appreciation thread

After the hullabaloo over the spitfire thread. Lets have a picture thread of your favourite aircraft.

On of my favourites, the Lockheed F104 Starfighter.

Looks a bit too phallic!

I think that’s secretly why lots of men like certain ‘planes….

Anyway, sorry to do this so early on, but…

END OF THREAD.

Ah the widowmaker, thats a good start:

And I’ll see your Starfighter with a Sunderland

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.beehivehockey.com/images/history_images/12sunderland.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.beehivehockey.com/photo_12sunderland.htm&usg=__lfo4GQomisF4Mq_MPjz-IRFniLU=&h=302&w=450&sz=25&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=2RF3X2TYjhBFhM:&tbnh=157&tbnw=208&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsunderland%2Bplane%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dig%26rlz%3D1R2ACAW_enGB373%26biw%3D1283%26bih%3D628%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=219&ei=df6ZTNymF8fKjAeA1dUM&oei=Rf6ZTICzKciQjAeR7Kn4Dw&esq=4&page=1&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:10,s:0&tx=68&ty=92

coz it means I’m off somewhere nice

Yummy

At risk of upsetting the hippies..

CaptainFlashheart started a thread like this ages ago, it ran to about 8 pages!

The Ligntning

A few bits of frippery and a pilot strapped to two socking great huge engines. Lovely.

Is it true they never got one to it’s top speed becasue it was a bit too ‘lively’?

The F4-U corsair very pretty.

Darn it Andituk beat me to it, awesome machines.

Nippy.

DeHaviland Vampire, just a bit different, no other reason.

YouTube
Love the Vulcan though.

An excellent choice joolsburger. ^^
I love the stories about the Blackbird – when the RAF first spotted one it was a Lightning pilot who saw it and, on closing the gap with it, the Blackbird just buggered off.
No-one believed the pilot because everyone knew (or thought they knew!) that the fastest thing around was the Lightning…

Saab Viggen

My fave would have to be the aircraft my Gramps flew 8)

Any Harrier, but the Shar in particular.

END OF THREAD.

He was right. The shot of the underside was the one I went on, G-BOAF. Happy times.

These put on quite a display fo sho:

Saw one of these at Eastbourne a few years ago. Make a fantastic noise.

B1 bomber

Can I have 2?

Icarus C42, for the simple reason that I flew one on Monday!

P51-D Mustang

Piaggio Avanti

Comanche

These things were just amazing when they first came out

Agricultural…

Tupolev Tu-95 Bear

Can’t post any pics works filter 🙁

@PetePoddy

You beat me to it.

My father designed bits of Lightnings and knew a few pilots too. During the Cold War years I’d heard most of the Lightning stories, some apocryphal and some that turned out to be true, like the interception of a Lockheed U2 at 78,000 feet and some wild reports of the top speed.

I’ve also heard one or two stories that aren’t widely known, for example the rivalry between Lighting and Phantom crews allegedly resulted in an extremely low pass of a Phantom airfield by a Lightning that resulted in several perforated eardrums of the maintenence staff working in an open hanger at the time and that Lightning pilots were warned against goading Phantom pilots into mock dogfights after complaints from demoralized Phantom crews… All hearsay of course.

the single greatest british invention

But I always drew Lightnings in my exercise books at school.

Purely for conversational value (also featured on the Chinook thread):

Love the vampire and the harrier, but this always gets me.
They used to use my old school as a practise target, it was on a big hill and they would often fly past down in the valley below us. Awesome.

I’ve also heard one or two stories that aren’t widely known, for example the rivalry between Lighting and Phantom crews allegedly resulted in an extremely low pass of a Phantom airfield by a Lightning that resulted in several perforated eardrums of the maintenence staff working in an open hanger at the time and that Lightning pilots were warned against goading Phantom pilots into mock dogfights after complaints from demoralized Phantom crews… All hearsay of course.

There was similar rivalry between the Chinook crews and Phantoms in the Falklands (post war when they kept a squadron of Phantoms there). The Chinooks apparently won when they dropped tons of water from an firfighting bucket all over the airfield…

TU-144 deserves a mention I guess, so near, and yet so far…

Is it true they never got one to it’s top speed becasue it was a bit too ‘lively’?

My father flew them. there were few in Germany that in his words were “sporty, even by Lightning standards”, that would outrun most things (early 70’s) including 104’s. He tells a story once of diving from a great height and the thing was still accelerating as he pulled out of the dive… There were reports of taking gun camera shots of U2, but he reckoned that was just to piss off the ‘mericans. Low down Spey engined (British Phantoms) were pretty fast, but above 20K ft or so the Lightnings would out turn them and it was game over. He always said the hardest things to shot down were Buccaneers.

He always loved flying the Hunter, lousy fighter though as it was so docile, he hated the Phantom (big, heavy, bloke in the back telling you what to do) and he thought the Tornado would kill him: In the early days there was trouble with some of the flight systems not ‘talking’ to each other which made flying it a bit interesting some times…

It has to be the Lightning for me too – awesome machine.

And all V-Bombers together (for Elfin)

Not really a plane ‘geek’ but finishing work in Knutsford this week so I thought I’d have a trip during my lunch hour to Manc airport to see the Emirates A380 (?) leave. Impressive. Very, very impressive…

Some great photos. Recommend Skunk Works as a great book on the subject.