Which aircraft looks most like a warplane?
War is ugly.
We weren't asked for the prettiest plane, or the most graceful, or anything like that, which would rightly yield the names you're talking about. The thread asks for warplane, which to me conjures up the image of a gnarled, grizzly, battered, hairy chested plane. The types for which there is beauty in their ugliness.
Happy to yield to the floor if there's a disagreement, but the comments so far seem to follow the same pattern.
We weren't asked for the prettiest plane, or the most graceful, or anything like that, which would rightly yield the names you're talking about. The thread asks for warplane, which to me conjures up the image of a gnarled, grizzly, battered, hairy chested plane. The types for which there is beauty in their ugliness.
Happy to yield to the floor if there's a disagreement, but the comments so far seem to follow the same pattern.
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Having experienced an Exercise airfield attack by 2 x Buccaneers, I found the head-on eye-level view from Local rather 'warry'
[inserts 6p coin in the slot]
[inserts 6p coin in the slot]
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
This one made for the Serbian Army, vintage 1915, a plane made for war.
First Armed Serbian Aircraft 1915.png
First Armed Serbian Aircraft 1915.png
Some while ago I found myself wandering around a parked Tornado in a HAS at Marham while scouting locations for a film production. As a cameraman, my reaction was "there is no way to make this thing look like anything other than a bruiser."
Blunt nose, huge tail fin, bulbous fuel tanks, and a general aesthetic of chipped and filthy metal with prominent drip trays underneath. I mean, seriously: soot? On a fighter jet? This thing is supposed to be the zenith of technology, for crying out loud! But it wasn't.
There were the prints of those aircrew boots with the circular patterned soles all over the seats. I didn't want to sit in it, in case it wouldn't wash out, and when I did sit in it, I was reminded immediately of the vintage of the design. Big clunky pushbuttons! Latching toggle switches! CRT displays! It looked like something out of a particularly convincing 1960s sci-fi movie, and it smelled of partially-burned paraffin.
If I hadn't been able to recognise it, I'd have assumed it was something recovered from a hangar in an ex-Soviet client state where it had been sitting since the end of the cold war, and that's without any weapons hanging on it. Pretty it definitely ain't. I assumed the nickname "Tonka" was because it looked like a toy in the Japanese super-deformed style. Which it sort of does.
P
PS - Gotta love 'em, my formative memories are of the 1991 gulf war.
Blunt nose, huge tail fin, bulbous fuel tanks, and a general aesthetic of chipped and filthy metal with prominent drip trays underneath. I mean, seriously: soot? On a fighter jet? This thing is supposed to be the zenith of technology, for crying out loud! But it wasn't.
There were the prints of those aircrew boots with the circular patterned soles all over the seats. I didn't want to sit in it, in case it wouldn't wash out, and when I did sit in it, I was reminded immediately of the vintage of the design. Big clunky pushbuttons! Latching toggle switches! CRT displays! It looked like something out of a particularly convincing 1960s sci-fi movie, and it smelled of partially-burned paraffin.
If I hadn't been able to recognise it, I'd have assumed it was something recovered from a hangar in an ex-Soviet client state where it had been sitting since the end of the cold war, and that's without any weapons hanging on it. Pretty it definitely ain't. I assumed the nickname "Tonka" was because it looked like a toy in the Japanese super-deformed style. Which it sort of does.
P
PS - Gotta love 'em, my formative memories are of the 1991 gulf war.
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Gotta tell you - with that load on board it would be one hell of a take-off roll....
Even the small WW2 era Essex class carriers had steam catapults.
Even the small WW2 era Essex class carriers had steam catapults.
Well...
The pic depicts a VMA 214 jet. Old eyes, hard to tell the tail or other markings, if they indicated if it was part of a carrier air group. Otherwise chances are it depicts a shore based Marine aircraft.
Even the small WW2 era Essex class carriers had steam catapults
I remember as a boy at Farnborough in the mid 50s a Victor doing a slow fly-past. A grizzled adult next to me said in an awed voice, "My God, that thing's evil".
To be honest.....I have always fancied "Jugs"!
