For sheer 'presence' IMHO you can't (or couldn't
) beat the Vulcan. That really did shake the ground - I can still recall my chest cavity reverberating and my eyeballs bouncing to the thunderous cacophony of the 4 Olympusses (Olympi?) as one of these pitched up into a full power climb just above the crowd at the Barton airshow many years ago.
I met the crew that night at the post-show party in the Barton clubhouse. The Vulc was at Manchester for the night, and was due to fly back to its base at 10:00 next day, so me and no 1 duaghter (then about 7 years old) went down to the old brickworks (now under the new runway) at Manch to watch. She taxied out to 24, hidden from us by the famous Manchester hump, but her engines clearly audible. Also, she only had a 360 channel VHF radio so was taxying on the Approach frequency (119.4 back then).
She was given t/o clearance, and a sudden column of back smoke rose from beyond the hump before the mighty roar of her engines at t/o power reached us, down by the 06 end.
With that lovely Vulcan howl, she appeared over the brow of the hump, going very fast indeed, and immediatly pitched up into a very steep climb. By now the intake howl had been replaced by that earth-shaking roar as she climbed seemingly verticallty until she appeared to hover above our heads on four columns of black exhaust, still pointing upwards, then she rotated in a graceful wing-over to recover to level flight and then climb away towards the hills to the east - back home to base, as the world around us resumed normality.
To this day no. 1 daughter has a photo on her bedroom wall of a Vulcan displaying it's massive underside as it pitches into that vertical climb.
Now that's an aeroplane I like to see flying again!
SSD