[2/2] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 300-301. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation

[3/3] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 60-61. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation

[2/3] Many think it was actually a good thing that this glider never came to pass. Combat experience showed the strength of beach defences and vulnerability of armoured equipment. Landing small gliders on fortresses surrounded by jungle was simply a bad idea.

[4/4] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 124-125. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation

[3/4] Four senior naval officers were then forced into retirement. A long legal battle between General Dynamics/McDonnell Douglas and the U.S. Navy followed. The litigation was finally settled in 2014. Boeing and General Dynamics agreed to pay $200 million each to the U.S. Navy.

[2/4] The A-12 Avenger II was however a fiasco. General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas failed to deliver. There was also a lack of oversight by the government. The cost rose. After pouring $5 billion, only a mockup was ever produced. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney cancelled the program in 1991.

[3/3] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 160-161. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation

[2/3] Unfortunately, one of these aeroplanes crashed while practising aerobatics and another sank after hitting a piece of wood. The remaining S.R./A.1 was subject to more testing, but was sent to a museum when the Korean War broke due to the outperformance of its potential adversaries.

[3/3] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 164-165. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation

[2/3] The only foreign pilot to board the ANT-20 was French aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He wrote his experience in the Paris-Soir. The day after, the ANT-20 crashed after an over-exuberant fighter pilot hit the giant aeroplane.

[5/5] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 122-123. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation

[4/5] After only 55 hours of flight testing, the RAF decided to abandon the project.

[3/5] Tests showed the pilot could endure slightly more g, but suffered from vertigo (dreadful feeling), had bad visibility, and became tired quickly. Moreover, he expressed concerns when he took off and landed the aeroplane due the runway apparently uncomfortably close to the pilot’s nose.

[2/5] The RAF thought lying prone would give pilots an advantage during dogfights. They designed the Gloster #Meteor for this specific purpose. The aeroplane had two cockpits: one conventional as a safety measure and one in a prone position to conduct flight tests.

[3/3] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 202-203. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation

[2/3] This aircraft had a corpulent annular fuselage which concealed a Gipsy engine and two-bladed propeller. All this achieved was high drag and low noise with landing speed reduced to 31 knots. Performance was otherwise lower than a conventional airframe with the same engine.

[3/3] Source: J. Winchester, The World’s Worst Aircraft, (London: Grange Books, 2007), at pp. 100-101. #WeirdAircraftWednesday #avgeek #aviation