Along with the Vigilante, I also agree that the Spitfire was nice looking. Also for a transport plane the Super Connie is beautiful. I was in a Super Connie squadron VR-7 from 58 to 61. I ran the Connie Flight Simulator. Also the B-29 and the B-70 were good looking for such large aircraft.

There is an old saying that says that if a plane looks right it will fly right.

Hopefully Boeing learned a few things from the Rockwell engineering staff!!!!

The Skyray was one noisy plane on takeoff on burner, with a huge flame.

The J57 in the F8Us at Moffett Field around 1960 had two AB positions, off and very on!!! Big boom and huge flame on take off. On the other hand the staged burners on the J79s were not so impressive. A couple of Hamilton’s 104s landed at Moffett due to fog. I was expecting an impressive show when they took off. But after brakes off there was just some fairly quiet whuffs when the burner stages came on.

Also at Moffett Ames Labs had one of the F8U-3 Crusaders. It had the J75. I saw it fly a few times. Now there was an impressive take off. Release brakes, huge boom when the burner lit, almost an immediate take off, wheels up and the two horizonal stabs came down to the verticle so the plane had in effect 3 rudders. Then———–a climb out at about 70 degrees.

The one size fits all has almost never worked. The machine that is all things to all people, usually isnt really good at any thing.

Classic example was the F-111. It was a mouse built to government specs that turned into an elephant. Even the B model for the Navy was too big.

When they finally got it thru their heads is was no fighter, I was made into a fairly good med bomber.