Least favorite WW II aircraft manufacturer?

[mexchiwa]

Hey.

New here, don't think this has been posted before. But I've got a rant I've been thinking about for a while. Sure, Curtiss, Brewster, and Blackburn weren't great during WW II, but my least favorite plane maker has to be Hawker.

Sure, their designs served well and we're well made, but the company is so amazingly boring. Their designs were so evolutionary: (and this is off the top of my head so there will be some mistakes here)

Hart - all of its derivatives
Fury - built just like the Hart
Hind - based on the Hart, then all of its derivatives
Hurricane - monoplane Hind, plus the dive bomber/turret fighter derivatives (I forget their names...), plus it barely changed over the course of the war, except for armament, wing construction
Typhoon - Hurricane wing aerodynamics
Tempest -typhoon with a new engine
Fury - Tempest with a new engine
Sea Hawk - jet Fury
Hunter - swept wing Sea Hawk
Harrier - Sea Hawk with vectoring nozzles (look at engine installation)

It's an oversimplification, but They never made anything other than single engined military aircraft, in incredibly predictable stages. Sorry about the rant. Any thoughts?

 

[GregP]

The Tempest was so much faster than anything a Hurricane could ever do that your claim seems doubtful.

Hurricane used a Clark YH airfoil. So did the Curtiss Sparrowhawk and the Nanchang CJ-6.

The Typhoon used an NACA 22 4-digit wing section with a thickness to chord ratio of 19.5 % at the root tapering to 12% at the tip. The front fuselage was similar to the Hurricane in concept, but the rest of the aircraft wasn't.

The Tempest had a laminar flow wing that tapered from 14.5% at the root to 10% at the tip and is not related to the Typhoon's wing airfoil at all.

The Fury / Sea Fury was one of the fastest of all mass-produced piston service aircraft. I've been up close and personal with both the Hurricane and the Sea Fury, and the designs show nothing much in common other than being single engine fighters. The construction is not smiliar. The airfoil is similar to the Tempest and is not related to the Hurricane or Typhoon. The wing fold mecahnism is robust and simple.

The Hunter was a very good fighter with one glaring weakness. That was the placement of the guns, but had little to do with Hurricanes, Typhoons, or Tempests other than having Hawker as the maker.

All of the people I know who flew or still fly Sea Furies or Hunters love them to this day. That includes over 20 people. I don't know any at all who dislike them as aircraft ... except when the engine needed massive influxes of money at overhaul time.

My least favorite design goup was either Ermolayev or Morane Saulnier. Both are fighting for the bottom of the WWII barrel, though it might be argued somewhat successfully that Brewster came pretty close to them. There never was an MS that I liked until well after WWII. The Paris Jet was nice but, again, missed WWII.

 

[tengu1979]

I am actually on the opposite. Hawker being my Favourite manufacturer including after the war.....

The least favourite i think it is going to be Glenn L. Martin Company - Maybe with exception of B-26 I found their aircraft just simply Ugly.

 

[pbehn]

The Hurricane was originally titled Fury monoplane I believe. The BoB was sorted out on numbers, numbers of Aircraft and numbers of pilots. The Hurricane wasnt on par with the Bf109 but was just good enough and could be thrown out in enough numbers to ensure Hermann didnt win.

BTW I think the tempest got a new name because of its lamelar flow wing not a new engine

 

[tomo pauk]

Hawker was a part of a conglomerate. They were in business building fighters, other parts of the conglomerate were building bombers, or engines. In the time Hart was issued, it was one of fastest bombers of the day. Hurricane was a worldbeater when introduced. Tempest and Sea Fury were excellent aircraft; when someone calls Tempest as 'Typhoon with new engine', that signals to me that some reading is long over due. No offense.

With that said, Brewster seems like a contender for the thread's title IMO.

 

[pbehn]

The Hurricane was originally titled Fury monoplane I believe. The BoB was sorted out on numbers, numbers of Aircraft and numbers of pilots. The Hurricane wasnt on par with the Bf109 but was just good enough and could be thrown out in enough numbers to ensure Hermann didnt win.

BTW I think the tempest got a new name because of its lamelar flow wing not a new engine

And the Harrier was the only VTOL aircraft that ever went into front line service and one of very few aircraft not produced in the USA that was bought by the USA military. It is some sort of evolution to go from a piston engined bi plane to a jet powered vertical take off monoplane. The Hurricane won the BoB the Tempest was one of the best piston engined WW2 fighters the sea Fury was up there with the best piston engined fighters ever and the Harrier was completely unique. I dont see your point at all except perhaps the wing of the Typhoon but that was (I believe) the received wisdom of the times thin wings stall easily.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Brewster - nuff said!

 

[Glider]

I think the company that disappointed me the most was Curtis. At the start of the war the P40 was a good machine but they never developed anything else. They seemed to sit back on their laurels and try to make as much money as they could out of it. Hawkers did develop a string of first class aircraft for many years.

 

[pbehn]

hawker hurricane ..........14,500 produced
Typhoon 3,300
Tempest 1,700
sea fury 864
Total 20,364


Spitfire 20, 351


They did the biz when needed

 

[GregP]

This thread is about the worst manufacturer.

If it had been about most disappointing, I'd have said Curtiss, too.

Disappointing though Curtiss may have been, nothing they made during the war was bad as the Buffalo. I'd take any P-40 or P-36 over a Buffalo and even over a Buccaneer.

But, that's just me. Everyone has the opposite of their favorite, and there probably is no single worst aircraft.

Surely the PZL Zubr has a place of honor in there, though ...

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Actually it is about least favorite, not worst. At least that is what the title says.

As for me, I don't have a least favorite.

 

[pbehn]

Blohm and Voss.....only ever designed half of a twin engined aeroplane

 

[GregP]

Ahhh Der Adler, never met an airplane you didn't like, huh? I can empathize with that.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Ahhh Der Adler, never met an airplane you didn't like, huh? I can empathize with that.

Oh there are plenty of aircraft that I do not like. Just no particular manufacturer that I don't like.

Blohm and Voss.....only ever designed half of a twin engined aeroplane

 

[GrauGeist]

Blohm and Voss.....only ever designed half of a twin engined aeroplane

(Aside from building the Bismark, Admiral Hipper and several series of U-Boats), Blohm und Voss also made the Bv138 seaplane. The Bv222 flying boat was awesome in it's own right and still holds several distinctions due to it's size.

The asymmetric Bv141 may not have looked "normal", but it performed well.

I would certainly say there's other aircraft manufacturers that deserve the "worst" title besides Blohm und Voss

 

[Shortround6]

I think the company that disappointed me the most was Curtis. At the start of the war the P40 was a good machine but they never developed anything else. They seemed to sit back on their laurels and try to make as much money as they could out of it. Hawkers did develop a string of first class aircraft for many years.

This is a common misconception or perhaps one should say myth.

Curtiss actually worked on/produced 13 or 14 different designs/aircraft after the P-40. The P-40 was initially ordered as an interim fighter while the P-38, P-39 and P-47 were brought up to production standard so only the dumbest of business men could have thought they could sit on their hands and make a profit on the P-40 for 4 more years after the initial order. Granted many Curtiss designs did not turn out so well but it was not for lack of trying. In fact they may have tried too hard and scattered what talent they did have over too many projects instead of focusing on a few.

Almost 3200 C-46 Commando transports
795 Curtiss Seamew
577 Curtiss Seahawk
7140 SB2C Helldivers
719 AT-9 Jeeps
over 400 SNC-1 trainers

and a bunch of prototypes. In fact I am not sure if any other company in the US or Britain flew as many different designs as Curtiss did during WW II. Granted some of them were abject failures (like the C-76 Caravan) but one can hardly say that Curtiss was NOT trying.

 

[Thorlifter]

For me, anything Blackburn made. They all started out as ugly and went downhill from there. Some may have been fine aircraft, but every plane was a wart on the butt of a buffalo.

 

[muskeg13]

Bell

 

[parsifal]

I dont have a least favourite aircraft manufacturer either. Possibly the british air ministry for what they did to the Australian aircraft industry but they arent actually an aircraft manufacturer

 

[Kryten]

Blackburn gets my vote too, never understood how this company didn't go bust!