An Early Lifting Body
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Designed just two years after the end of the Great War. A lifting body design that added more than 1/4 to the available
HistoricWings.com :: A Magazine for Aviators, Pilots and Adventurers
A Magazine for Aviators, Adventurers and Pilots
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Designed just two years after the end of the Great War. A lifting body design that added more than 1/4 to the available
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A brilliant combat design, fast and with fine maneuverability. Wings and fuselage were made of plywood; didn’t fare well in the weather. Powered
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Designed by two college dropouts in their 20s. However, neither designer knew how to fly a helicopter! Body styling reminiscent of a Ford
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Lost out in the bid to be the leading CAS aircraft. A brilliant design, even with its Hersey Bar wing. Amazing visibility, slow
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A record-setter showcasing advancing streamlining. A fuel tank atop the fuselage, blocks the pilot’s view. Nearly 200 mph, yet still a very slow
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A Nenadovich design, fairly unique in aeronautical engineering. Designed by one nation, finished and flown by another. A wartime experimental design that showed
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A rotary engine fighter from the Great War. 80 hp when more powerful engines were preferred. Looks like French wings on a German
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Two cylinders and 150 hp. No combustion required in the cylinders! Can rotate the prop either direction — reversing thrust! Based on, well,
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A 1950s, fully aerobatic job that still amazes. Belgian, but most popular in the UK. Not a home built, but a full production
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Not everything in the skies that looks weird is French. A German’s first foreign production plane after WWII. A late-1950s effort that helped
This Week’s Hints to help you along: From 55 years ago, before the home-builder revolution. Perfectly at home on wheels, skies or floats. Less than 350 lbs empty weight, a
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Designed as a sensor platform for counterinsurgency. A twin-boom design reminiscent of the Skymaster and Mohawk. To carry wing-loads of rockets and other
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Designed to replace a venerable, well-used type. Outlasted by the plane it was designed to replace. Named after a demon because of the
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A single prototype of a highly innovative design. It crash-landed, killing the test pilot when it hit a tree. A fighter to be
This Week’s Hints to help you along: An old design from a classic designer. So underpowered and yet it flew. The rudder cables are below the fuselage. Tricycle gear yet
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Twin-engine and those look like American cowlings. The rudders give a good hint, but not Earhart. A wartime design but relatively unknown. This
This Week’s Hints to help you along: The wing really is elliptical and it flies! Little wingtip vortices improves performance 30%. Structurally more sound than conventional designs. Made for civilian
This Week’s Hints to help you along: The first plane designed for mass production. Used any of at least five engines. It was all the rage in Mexico! Pressed into
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Designed at war using captured Nazi jet engines. Paved the way to 30 years of design development. Delayed as the factory didn’t know
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Four wings, the top and bottom ones nearly identical. A heavy night interceptor with a headlamp! A crew of four with two engines,
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Yes, those are American insignia on the wings. Clearly inspired by the famed Fokker Dr.I Triplane. Fast and well-designed, setting speed records. Set
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A two-seat trainer that was quite reliable. Once displayed huge swastikas on the wings. Le Rhone powered, licensed rotary engine manufacturing. Flew commercial,
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Patrol, reconnaissance and anti-submarine roles. Deployed late in the Great War in small numbers. Successfully attacked and nearly sank a submarine! Pioneered new
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A sub-mach mystery aircraft with a short history. The ultimate “V-tailed Doctor Killer” perhaps? Seats two — a pilot and the “guy in
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Form follows function and thus, it appears like a Salamander. The wings appear the same as on the Bell X-1 “Glamorous Glennis”. Never
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Played a key role in an early WWII battle bombing shipping. Despite its age, still the bomber with the highest performance. Once the
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Featured a boat propeller at the back to get up to speed. A flight propeller at front — only one prop could operate
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A brilliant tilt-rotor design, yet from over 50 years ago. Yes, those are tandem wings, a rather unusual configuration. The stubbiest nose wheel
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Designed from one of the first flying wing plans that was for leisure flying. Later developed into a fighter aircraft with two cannons
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A dozen in service, only 3 to 5 at a time rose to face hundreds of the enemy. Battles raged for just a
This Week’s Hints to help you along: The designer taught himself everything by trial and error in the mid-1900s. Innovative in every way and featuring tandem wings. This was the
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Its wings are circular spindles that spin to create lift. A 1930s era experimental plane that didn’t work so well. A motorcycle engine
This Week’s Hints to help you along: A twin-tail, pusher plane meant for military service. Yes, those insignia are crosses, but whose? And when? Beautiful candy-stripe coloration on the twin-booms!
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Streamlined and bearing the classic curves of the late 1930s. The exhaust pipe is a flyover in front of the windshield. Control systems
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Another wartime design, this one meant to press supersonic speeds. Flight tested as a glider successfully before the end of World War II.
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Created in tough times by one of the world’s leading design firms. Flight tested extensively but never meant for production. A product of
This Week’s Hints to help you along: Set three world records between 1927 and 1930 — none for speed. Featured a 3-cylinder radial engine with just 18 hp. Seen in
This Week’s Hints to help you along: In a secret hangar, this flying saucer languished due to budget limitations. It was not quite in Roswell, but nonetheless Roswellian in nature
This Week’s Hints to help you along: The product of a well-mustached, wide-eyed French aviator. Just 200 kg, 9 meters long and 10 meters in wingspan. A 70 hp Gnome
This Week’s Hints to help you along: What may be the world’s first flying saucer. Couldn’t compare to the popular Blériot planes. An innovative design from a designer who would