The World's Worst Aircraft: from pioneering failures to multimillion dollar disasters

The Story

The great leaps in aviation history - the Wright brothers'first flight, Lindbergh's first crossing of the Atlantic, Yeager breaking the sound barrier - were all made by pushing the boundaries of aeronautical science, wringing extraordinary performance out of experimental and untested aircraft. However, for every success like these there were new aircraft designs which flew badly (or not at all), crashed on landing, burned up fuel at an alarming rate, exploded without warning, or pointlessly wasted millions of dollars. The World's Worst Aircraft takes a lighthearted look at 150 of these flying failures - old and new - and asks the pertinent questions. Why did they ever get off the drawing board? What went wrong? Why were they so unreliable, and how much money was wasted by governments, manufacturers and individuals trying to make them a success? Each aircraft is illustrated with a full-page photograph, annotated to show particularly bad, dangerous or unusual features. The lively text provides an insight into the history and (lack of) development of each type, alongside archive images from the aircraft's heyday, artworks or diagrams. Featuring some of the world's weirdest, strangest and most dangerous planes, this book is a perfect illustration of how not to build aircraft.