Military aviation is a domain stitched from many different stories of technological wins and defeats. For each fighter that rises to legendary status, there is another that becomes a cautionary tale about costly mistakes and lethal miscalculations. These tragedies sometimes came in aircraft touted as marvels of engineering that ended up as tragic footnotes in the annals of aviation history.
One of the most notorious examples is the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. Although it was the first production aircraft to achieve Mach 2, due to its notorious flying difficulties, this plane got such a grim nickname as the “flying coffin.” German Luftwaffe alone lost 116 pilots, which gave it its nickname “Widowmaker.”
The first British supersonic aircraft, the de Havilland Sea Vixen, met a rather inglorious end: its prototype crashed at the Farnborough Airshow, killing 31 spectators and its pilot. Subsequent design changes stripped it of its supersonic capabilities. That caused the Royal Air Force to lose interest in the aircraft.
Another example is the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger, which was also a disappointment, not being able to attain Mach 1 right from the start and requiring serious redesign. Eventually, it did enter service with the United States Air Force but soon found itself outdated, relegated to target drone duties.
The Su-57 of Russia, designed to compete with fifth-generation Western aircraft, has shared similarly in very comparable problem issues: from its poor stealth capability to defects in manufacturing, it is vastly outnumbered compared to American aircraft like the F-35.
The Yakovlev Yak-38 was designed for the soviet aircraft carriers but had many design flaws that led to its abandonment. Among those fatal flaws was the integration of the rear thrust engine with two lift turbofans since a mechanical failure would result in an uncontrollable spin of the aircraft.
Outstanding among these was France’s Leduc 022, a radical innovation continually dogged by insurmountable obstacles in the form of a prone-position cockpit and huge ramjet engine; its high-risk configuration for engine fires eventually had the 022 axed, despite some promise as a supersonic fighter.
In a nutshell, the YF-12 was an ancestor to the SR-71 Blackbird that could attain unmatched performance with sustained flights at Mach 3. On the other hand, due to strategic priorities and budgetary pressures from the Vietnam War, the project was shelved before the full potential of this formidable interceptor could be realized.
But while these are the stories of catastrophes, Russia looks ahead with plans for modernization: ambitious and large-scale modernization of the Russian air fleet is underway. On Tuesday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called on the country’s military industry to begin working on a new strategic bomber after wrapping up work on the fifth-generation fighter jet, the T-50. The new bomber is meant to replace the Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers, both built during the Soviet era.
The Tu-95, which entered service in 1956, is a large four-engine turboprop strategic bomber and missile platform, codenamed Bear by NATO. The Tu-160, designed in the 1980s, remains the largest jet-powered combat aircraft ever built. Putin’s call for a new bomber underscores Moscow’s eagerness to update its military capabilities.
The move would usher in a mega-program for the Russian aviation industry, buoyed with multiple orders and large financial aid packages in recent years. “Moscow has planned to commission 1,500 new planes and helicopters to modernize the air force by 80 percent sure shot signal for the major overhaul of its air fleet.
Behind all that glory of air superiority lies a shadow of those forgotten crafts, the whispers of what could have been but wasn’t each being another chapter in a saga without end, yet called military aviation.