Your favorite fighter jet or plane

[Wallydawg]

Hands down, my favorite is the F6F Hellcat. If my Pops flew anything else, I might not be here to comment. :D

[SwampDonkey]

DH-98  De Havilland Mosquito

I believe this one is now in a US collection, Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach I think.

There's one at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum.
https://ingeniumcanada.org/aviation/artifact/de-havilland-dh98-mosquito-b-xx
and De-Havilland aircraft museum
de Havilland DH98 Mosquito B.Mk.35 ? de Havilland Aircraft Museum

Most of the wood came from Canada to build it. On one of the Islands off British Columbia in Haida Gwaii is Mosquito Lake where timber was cut for the veneers.

[Don P]

F-86, Dad flew them.
At least one forward squadron in Korea had to transition from P-51's to F-86's without missing a beat, that was some serious on the job training.

This is Dad's great grandad on his first flight in '29, a Confederate vet, he saw some changes.




Our public radio station has a BBC program around dawn on Sunday mornings. A few months ago they did a multi part series on the production of the Spitfire and all its trials and victories during the war. Very well done.

Edit;
There is a Blackbird in the museum in Mobile, along with the Buick Wildcat start cart.

[Ianab]

There's one at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum.
https://ingeniumcanada.org/aviation/artifact/de-havilland-dh98-mosquito-b-xx
and De-Havilland aircraft museum
de Havilland DH98 Mosquito B.Mk.35 ? de Havilland Aircraft Museum

Most of the wood came from Canada to build it. On one of the Islands off British Columbia in Haida Gwaii is Mosquito Lake where timber was cut for the veneers.

They were (are) laminated from layers of Spruce, Birch and Balsa. I'm thinking the Spruce would have come from BC.
During the war they were built in England, Canada and Aussie. Wood wasn't a critical "war material" like aluminium etc.

[SwampDonkey]

Yep, and we would have had lot's of birch veneer in the rest of the country. As far as birch size goes, I've seen bigger birch in New Brunswick than I ever did across British Columbia and I worked out there where white birch grows some. A 10" white birch out there was a big one in my travels, and I worked in old forests and forest born from fires. Yellow birch would be preferred, that's an eastern birch.

[WV Sawmiller]

   This thread reminds me of when I worked a project in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. We had a British teammate, Andy, who flew for the RAF and a German teammate, Gerry, who flew for the Luftwaffe. They would get together at a function and argue about who had the best planes. I always thought Andy should have just agreed with Gerry that the Germans had the best planes then tell him "If they'd had competent pilots they'd have won the war." :D I figure there would have been no comeback for that. ;)