Two of the most popular questions, at least for pilots and other students of aviation history, are: What are the top 10 planes of all time, and which one’s the greatest of them all?
At first glance, it seems a silly idea that you could even come up with an answer. After all, planes come in so many different shapes and sizes, with an equal number of mission types to match. How could you possibly choose just one?
This is how.
We started with a group of really great airplanes, or at least we tried to. We started with 10 of them before deciding, as they did in Spinal Tap, to make this one go all the way up to 11. We thought of consciously working to make it a cross-section of aircraft types, but that happened automatically.
But looking at the different kinds of mission types, i.e., training, personal transportation, commercial transportation, fighters, bombers, reconnaissance and more, we decided to narrow things down even more by asking ourselves if there were a top dog among those planes. Surprisingly, the answer to that question was often an unequivocal, “Yes!” Who knew?
Before you begin, consider these bizarre facts about the most outrageous top 10 list of planes you’ll ever see. For starters, there are only two non-American planes on the list. There are five planes that are advertised as supersonic, one other that might have gotten there, four with propellers, three with rocket motors, eight that are no longer being produced, and one that was first built in 1956 and is still in production today.
Finally, after our Greatest Airplanes Of All Time, we present 25 others that a lot of you will argue belong on the main list. In many cases, you’d have a strong argument. Enjoy!
Douglas DC-3
What in the world is this plane doing on this list? The DC-3, a radial-engine toting, taildragging, mud-bellied, heavy-hauling twin designed in the mid-1930s surely doesnât belong on a list alongside supersonics and space planes, does it? It does. Launched as a domestic airliner in the days when piston engines were a clearer choice than turboprops for the important reason that turboprops didnât yet exist, the DC-3, with its seating for up to 32 passengers, immediately earned a lot of business from the fledgling U.S. airline industry.
And when World War II started heating up, Douglas went into overdrive, producing around 10,000 DC-3s for the war effortâin all, the company cranked out more than 16,000 of the aircraft, which were known as the Gooney Bird, Dakota and C-47 (the latter among numerous other military designations). The Soviet Union built almost 5,000 of them under license, and even Imperial Japan cranked out nearly 500 DC-3 clones. In addition to its passenger-carrying pedigree, the DC-3 has been a parachute jump plane, an agricultural sprayer, a freighter and an executive transport. As of the turn of the century, there were nearly 500 DC-3s still in commercial use in dozens of countries around the world.
Margin of error: 1%. Contenders: Beech D-18 Twin Beech; de Havilland Twin Otter.
