World's Worst Aircraft [Hardcover]

And it's a great read, not limiting itself to simplistic dismissals of airplane's that didn't measure up. I mean, aviation lore is full of stories about the visionaries, the heroes and their great planes, but little to the more interesting stories of the losers, the hucksters and opportunists who saw a chance for a quick buck, or for the arrogant who thought they knew better - all of whom saddled others in the fatally flawed products of their imagination.

From the heady days of aviation's infancy, through world wars and the cold war, Yenne takes no prisoners (or is "passengers" the correct word?).

If the book has a flaw, it is in the choice of airplanes targeted. As in a similar book by James Gilbert, Yenne enshrines Brewster Buffalo as one of the worst (going after its makers as hucksters out for defense dollars at the cost of the lives of airmen equipped to fly the plane; Yenne also typifies the plane as the perfect answer to the west's arrogance against the Japanese - white male planners knew the Buffalo's deficiencies, but figured they could hold their own against Japanese planes which they arrogantly assumed would fly worse). Though the Buffalo was cursed with horrifically poor performance against the Japanese (whose Zero had the best stats of the early war years, even outclassing the famed Spitfire), those sent to Finland performed superlatively.

The Convair 880/990 weren't really bad planes, as Yenne aknowledges. But the story behind it contains too much drama, history, poor judgement and bad luck to be ignored. Supposedly built for Howard Hughes's TWA, the 880 was Convair's entry in the jet race run by Douglas and Boeing. Stymied by Howard Hughes's bizarre whims, 880 development languished. In trying to catch up, and pining their hopes on somehow exceeding the performance of the DC-8 and the 707, Convair unwisely skipped the prototype stage and went into production before working out the bugs. When the 880 doesn't achieve the prize, Convair goes back and re-works the plane, bearing the 990. In the end, neither plane achieves the promised performance, and the abbreviated production runs of either produce a few planes which are soldiering on, somehwere. Including the 880/990 would have made more sense had its career been cut short by some horrific accident ala the Hindenburg (or the Dehavilland Comet, which does not get similar blame here), but Yenne confuses unsuccessful with undeserving.

The same goes for the F-20 Tigershark, Northrop's failed bid to design a new generation of high-performance/low cost fighter planes. The Tigershark was the victim of poor circumstances - the slightly inferior but already existent F-16 already owned the market Northrop looked to exploit (one partly created by Northrop's F-5). And when Yenne tosses in the B-2 as a future possible entrant (because of its astronomic cost, and the possibility that it may be too expensive to send into combat), it looks like he's going for the headlines. The F-105 was also considered a costly mistake when it debuted - but try telling that to anybody who flew one in Vietnam. And why doesn't the B-70 rate a mention? Sure it was gorgeous, and it achieved its specs of triple sonic, high alititude flight, but its underlying mission proved so out of touch with contemproary technology of missiles and radar defenses designed to hunt and destroy high speed planes at high altitudes, that it's got to rate a mention. (The author does fault the Bristol Brabazon for also being behind the times).

Still, even if you disagree with Yenne, since including planes means that he's got more stories to tell. I mean, does anybody really want to hear more P-51 legends.