The best from the smallest?

Finnish VL Pyörremyrsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VL_Py%C3%B6rremyrsky

I’m well aware that the original Airtourer design was Australian – it was also designed by a Britsih-trained Pole and was made from wood and highly underpowered compared to NZ produced metal versions.

Your link claiming that the Airtrainer was a New Zealand version of the Aircruiser is yet another perpetuation of the total rubbish Aussie myth. The CT/4 is structurally a totally new design, despite resembling the Airtourer and Aircruiser from a distance. Ask people who’ve worked on them. The Airtrainer is far stronger and more aerobatic. The Kiwi team took a good design, stripped it back, reworked everything, and made it a much better design with whole new original ideas. It just looks similar on the outside, that’s all.

Saying a CT/4 is an Australian design, like many books do (I know you were not) is as bad as saying a Wirraway or Boomerang or CA-15 were designed by North American, because a few parts were interchangable or they look similar to a Harvard or Mustang.

As for the Fletcher, I also knew that was originally an American concept, designed as a military COIN aircraft, where it failed to impress. The New Zealanders redeveloped the aircraft into a successful role of topdressing. (As it happens New Zealanders invented topdressing by the way.)

Anyway the question was never about who “designed” what, it asks about what the best aircraft “produced” are. As military trainers go the CT/4 has proven to be excellent. The RAAF is again considering buying a new fleet of them! And they continue to served in new Zealand, Thailand, Indonesia, etc. But I think the best NZ-designed aircraft for its role has to be the Cresco, who’s lineage harks back in looks to that American Fletcher design but the design work in between is far removed and is strictly a native of these shores.

Designer of the CT/4 and the Cresco, among many other types? The late Pat Monk, a British New Zealander, and thoroughly bloody nice chap.

At the risk of offending our antipodean cousins, might I suggest the Commonwealth CA15 Kangaroo? Whilst not wanting to do down the Australian aircraft industry, which became very strong, very quickly, it had until that time basically licence built fairly straightforward designs or produced modifications of existing designs. The CA15 it seems was up there with the best immediately-postwar piston engined fighters such as the Sea Fury and P-51H, and probably better than the likes of the Spiteful.

New Zealand’s CT/4 Airtrainer has done very well, and there are few country’s less significant militarily than us. The same company has also produced Airtourers and Fletchers and Crescos and PAC750XL’s in quantity too.

To paraphrase JDK…
All credit to NZ for the work on the designs, but the original Fletcher design was American.

What is the best aircraft that has been produced but from a small, militarily insignificant country?

Typhoon, UK, 😀

New Zealand’s CT/4 Airtrainer has done very well, and there are few country’s less significant militarily than us. The same company has also produced Airtourers…

All credit to NZ for the work on the designs, but the original Airtourer design was Australian.

Developed in New Zealand by New Zealand Aerospace Industries as a military training version of the Australian-designed Victa Aircruiser, the prototype of the CT4 first flew on 23 February 1972.

http://www.defence.gov.au/RAAF/raafmuseum/exhibitions/training_hang/ct4a.htm

You are quite right to point it up as an essentially Kiwi achievement, as Australia capitally failed to develop the design. Post-war Australian military aircraft design and development has been an appalling, almost total failure.

Belgium’s Stampe SV4 biplane. A very good basic trainer and well known and respected on the acrobatic scene from the forties until the late seventies! Also built under license in large numbers in France.

Not bad for a small, militarily insignificant country as Belgium!:D

Stieglitz

New Zealand’s CT/4 Airtrainer has done very well, and there are few country’s less significant militarily than us. The same company has also produced Airtourers and Fletchers and Crescos and PAC750XL’s in quantity too.

What is the best aircraft that has been produced but from a small, militarily insignificant country?

The Martin Baker MB5 was reckoned to be outstanding.

:confused:

The Martin Baker MB5 was reckoned to be outstanding.

It was just rather too late to make a difference, as the jet era arrived.

OOOPS. Have just cleaned glasses and realised it asked country, not company. Still that can be a whole new thread!

…as Sweden is not known for it’s military might.

Given that anyone who thought of invading in the last century or so thought twice, I’d say Sweden’s ‘military might’ does a perfect job…

‘militarily insignificant’. No variable parameter there, then. 😉

“What is the best aircraft that has been produced but from a small, militarily insignificant country?”

Eurofighter Typhoon! 😀

Hardly a small country, but not exactly a military or industrial powerhouse..

Brazil’s Embraer has done a fantastic job in both military and civil aviation in a fairly short perid of time.

Their first sucessful airliner, the EMB-110, hit the world market in 1978-9 and look how far they’ve come.
Not bad for a country with a proud aviation heritage (remember Alberto Santos-Dumont?) but not much aviation industrial capacity.

Civilian, military or either?

As an example, you could possibly describe the Saab range of aircraft as fitting the bill as Sweden is not known for it’s military might.