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10 Of The Worst Jet Aircraft Of All Time

Rolls-Royce Thrust Measuring Rig

Just by looking at this airplane, you can tell that it was absurdly dangerous. The Rolls-Royce Thrust Measuring Rig (known colloquially as the “Flying Bedstead”) tested the feasibility of VTOL aircraft. It may not look like much, and that is because the Flying Bedstead was just two jet engines attached to a small frame. The airplane had no inherent stability. Rolls-Royce did not fit it with any sort of fuselage, wings, or control surfaces—just fuel tanks and engines with a pilot placed on top ...

Good read, thanks for posting.

Cheers
Rich

Yes a good read...a lot of useful positive information could have been added but was left out.

Found the comments at the bottom interesting...

I swear if I read or hear one more comment about the F-104 being a terrible airplane!!!! (see the comments)

Eric Brown himself said it was NOT a bad plane at all, just that with the Germans, you had folks going from 400hrs in low wing-loading simple aircraft that were well under Mach 1 to suddenly a Mach 2 capable sophisticated and high wing loading aircraft. USAF pilots flying the 104 had more than double the flight time with high performance time included had did not have the problem either....now the F-100 WAS the worst century series. Horrid handling (look up the 'saber dance'); the Hun had a whole slew of stability & control faults.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZL0x-gEDM8

Notice the vertical stab does nothing for yaw stability and a sharp tip stall also emerges. The 104 had no such handling faults other than being eye watering fast.

At the moment I am drawing up plans to build an RC XF-85 Goblin. My boss asked why I would build an RC of such a terrible airplane my response: Because it WAS a terrible airplane! Besides, I am building it so it could crash and I wont have a bunch of time & $ into it.

Typically predictable that the Comet made the list. It was a very good aeroplane, but suffered on major design fault in the early Mk 1. Without that another manufacturer may have made exactly the same mistake. After it was fixed the Comet was obviously so bad that they made even more Mk1s, the Mk 2s and all the way to Mk4s, which served both in civilian hands and military purposes up until the 80s and 90s. It also derived what was, until 2010, the most advanced ASW aircraft in the world.

As usual, these lists are one person views and nothing else. I would say that the flying bedstead was a successful test bed, it spawned the Harrier's puffer duct system. The Yak38 was an in service aircraft with similar capabilities to the Harrier Gr3, and the Comet in later marks was a very successful aircraft and went on to become the Nimrod.

Matt

expat wrote:As usual, these lists are one person views and nothing else.

Indeed. Ask 10 people which was the worst jet aircraft of all time & you will most likely get 10 different answers.

As for the "Flying Bedstead" it was purely a test bed, nothing more, nothing less. As such it did the job it was designed for.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8W2SI4c93s[/youtube]

Loss of time

How about that old Dassault Mercure?

Is it possible for the Lockheed Martin F-35 to make the list, considering how long and over-expensive it has taken and it's not even in service yet!