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!
7. Space Shuttle
To those who might argue that this is more a spaceship than a plane, weâd counter, true! But the fact is, it was both a plane and a spaceship. If Concordeâs designers set out to do the impossible, the Space Shuttleâs creators were on a mission to do the impossibleâer, to build and field a spaceship that could serve as a launch vehicle, orbiting space station and re-entry vehicle, all in one. The idea was really a simple one, to make a reusable space vehicle, so you didnât have to build an enormously expensive and time-consuming one for every launch.
There were 135 missions, one of which, Challenger, was a launch failure that killed seven, and one was a re-entry failure, in which the craft broke up when it re-entered Earthâs atmosphere. It is a huge aircraft, too, capable of transporting payloads of 60,000 pounds to low Earth orbit and 35,000 pounds to the International Space Station. The airplane part was extraordinary. After it reentered the Earthâs atmosphere, the Shuttle would be a really fast glider, its pilots trained to bring that big craft back to a nose-high landing, no go-arounds available, and they nailed it every single time.
Margin of error: Zero. Contenders: None. Pretenders: The Soviet space shuttle Buran. Number of Buran missions: One. Buranâs Fate: Destroyed when its hangar collapsed upon it.
