fredc@bmcg.UUCP (Fred Cordes) (07/31/85)
I'd like to nominate the Fairey Gannet as the most ugly aircraft. Like the A6, it was a carrier plane and it had VERY strange folding wings that were double jointed looking (the A6 had the standard fold up). The gannet's wings seemed to accordion out from the fuselage. The plane was turboprop powered with large counter-rotating props. It sat high off the deck and had a canopy almost as lrge as the A6. The tail was "half T" with the stabilizor midway up the tail and there were smaller fins at the ends of the horizontal stab. Man, was it ugly. I saw pictures of a gannet in a couple of magazine articles about NASA using one for research purposes (with Hamilton Standard I think). The looks aside, the craft was reported to have served well and I presume its strange appearance was "form following function", which seems to me a good way to design a/c. Fred Cordes