The World's Worst Aircraft

by Bill Yenne

159 pages of excellent text, filled with fabulous black & white and color photos. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0880294906
• ISBN13: 9780880294904
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Marboro Books
• Length: 159 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Good Read on Some Bad and Really Bad Aircraft

For some reason, the folks at Barnes & Noble have published two books with exactly the same title; Jim Winchester's book is the more recent of the two. So what is an aviation enthusiast to do? I own and have read both books and enjoyed each one. Both Bill Yenne and Jim Winchester are established authors in the field of aviation history. Each author takes a somewhat tongue-in-cheek approach in describing these aerial oddballs, especially when the design or concept was so bad that one is left wondering, "What were these people thinking?"; when confronted with utter absurdity, humor is perhaps the only reaction. Mr. Yenne covers fewer aircraft in greater detail, whereas Mr. Winchester covers more aircraft with less detail. I found both books worthwhile. Mr. Yenne covers aerial Edsels from every era, from the dawn of aviation to the futuristic designs of the close of the twentieth century. Some planes were barely big enough to accommodate their pilot; othes, with wingspans exceeding that of the Boeing 747, were as large as their designers' egos. Most major airplane-producing countries are represented; no nation holds a monopoly on producing aeronautical junkheaps. Many readers with knowledge of aircraft are sure to have their ideas as to other aircraft that should have been included in this book. My nominations are these: the North American XB-70, a huge, futuristic supersonic bomber that cost more to develop had the plane been made of solid gold; the Shanghai Y-10, a Chinese version of the Boeing 707 or 720 that first flew more than a quarter century after Dash 80 first took to the air; and the Antonov An-10 Ukraine (not to be confused with the Antonov An-8 and An-12, both of which were very fine aircraft), which has the dishonorable distinction of having lost about half the total production run to its poor handling, often with lethal consequences. For the aviation historian and hobbyist, this is an enjoyable and informative book.

Do we really want another story about how great the F-16 is?

These planes are bad. They've killed people and destroyed lives. Not all of them were warplanes, and most of them were more dangerous to those who flew them anybody else. That's right, these are the worst planes in history.And it's a great read, not limiting itself to simplistic dismissals of airplane's that didn't measure up. I mean, aviation lore is full of stories about the visionaries, the heroes and their great planes, but little to the more interesting stories of the losers, the hucksters and opportunists who saw a chance for a quick buck, or for the arrogant who thought they knew better - all of whom saddled others in the fatally flawed products of their imagination. From the heady days of aviation's infancy, through world wars and the cold war, Yenne takes no prisoners (or is "passengers" the correct word?).If the book has a flaw, it is in the choice of airplanes targeted. As in a similar book by James Gilbert, Yenne enshrines Brewster Buffalo as one of the worst (going after its makers as hucksters out for defense dollars at the cost of the lives of airmen equipped to fly the plane; Yenne also typifies the plane as the perfect answer to the west's arrogance against the Japanese - white male planners knew the Buffalo's deficiencies, but figured they could hold their own against Japanese planes which they arrogantly assumed would fly worse). Though the Buffalo was cursed with horrifically poor performance against the Japanese (whose Zero had the best stats of the early war years, even outclassing the famed Spitfire), those sent to Finland performed superlatively. The Convair 880/990 weren't really bad planes, as Yenne aknowledges. But the story behind it contains too much drama, history, poor judgement and bad luck to be ignored. Supposedly built for Howard Hughes's TWA, the 880 was Convair's entry in the jet race run by Douglas and Boeing. Stymied by Howard Hughes's bizarre whims, 880 development languished. In trying to catch up, and pining their hopes on somehow exceeding the performance of the DC-8 and the 707, Convair unwisely skipped the prototype stage and went into production before working out the bugs. When the 880 doesn't achieve the prize, Convair goes back and re-works the plane, bearing the 990. In the end, neither plane achieves the promised performance, and the abbreviated production runs of either produce a few planes which are soldiering on, somehwere. Including the 880/990 would have made more sense had its career been cut short by some horrific accident ala the Hindenburg (or the Dehavilland Comet, which does not get similar blame here), but Yenne confuses unsuccessful with undeserving.The same goes for the F-20 Tigershark, Northrop's failed bid to design a new generation of high-performance/low cost fighter planes. The Tigershark was the victim of poor circumstances - the slightly inferior but already existent F-16 already owned the market Northrop looked to exploit (one partly created by Northrop's F-5