As I said before, airplanes really are beautiful machines. Our mastery of heavier than air flight is a testament to the advancement of human technology, and a beautiful one at that. Many aircraft have some very unique features, coming in all shapes and sizes, built for all sorts of roles. Each different flying machine is beautiful in its own little way, much like ourselves.

Well..... not all of them. Like us humans, there are just some that are so absolutely shitty that they shouldn't have even existed in the first place (like Juggalos and Lil' Wayne). And yet, someone went out of their way to fund the construction of these aircraft, a feat of sheer inhuman stupidity. So, let's take a look into the unbelievably stupid underbelly of the beast that is innovation.


10. The "Spruce Goose", AKA "the biggest waste of money of all time."


derpa...

You might know the iconic Hughes H-4 Hercules, also known as the "Spruce Goose", from the movie "The Aviator", starring Leonardo Dicaprio. While the film was about Howard Hughes (the obsessive-compulsive mentally deranged debonaire who built the spruce goose), you did get to see the construction of the plane, and its first flight at the end. Most of us watching the movie, however, were more concerned with the mental health of our protagonist than the crappy plane he made.


The Hercules is coming along well...... but first, time to go arrange bottles of my own urine!

Leonardo Dicaprio aside, the "Spruce Goose" saw its inception (cwutididthere) in 1942, when aircraft engineer and hollywood playboy Howard Hughes had his company contracted by the US military to design a military transport craft. Now, this was in the age when the US had to fly their tanks, soldiers, and supplies overseas, and taking a ship would just take too damn long. Having a large scale transport craft was somewhat of a necessity at the time, so his road was paved with good intentions. And Hughes had all the money in the world to work with, too. Howard Hughes was literally one of the richest men in the entire world at the time, so he could take whatever resources he needed and throw them at this project. And boy, did he ever.

The US military had Hughes under a 2 year contract, allowing him to take whatever resources required to finish it in the two years he was given, so we could ship our boys off overseas with greater speed and efficiency. However, over the course of 2 years with literally any resource he needed at his disposal, Hughes couldn't even finish the goddamn plane. The plane itself saw its first flight in 1945, right after the war ended, and after the military just said 'to hell with you' to Hughes. Not to mention, his design was rendered completely obsolete by other aircraft designs at that point in time.

However, enough about the story, what makes this plane so stupid?

The spruce goose has a wingspan of 319 feet, and a length of 218 feet, making it literally the biggest plane ever to have been constructed. It required 8 4,000 horsepower engines to keep it afloat. This fat goose remains literally the BIGGEST waste of money anyone has ever made, since this monster was only built once, and only saw a SINGLE flight. It had no influence on modern aviation, and no purpose other to look big and pretty. You know, in a sense, it's a reflection of the worst parts of American culture. It's bloated, useless, and has had more money thrown at it than any single person should be able to afford.

Fuck you spruce goose.


9. The "Christmas Bullet"


don't stand on those wings....... you'll break them!

You know, there's something to be said for a guy throwing all the money in the world at a plane that only flew once, but at least the guy had some experience in aviation. The man who designed this modern marvel of shit had literally no experience in aviation or aeronautics, just money to throw at shit. It was designed by a guy named William D. Christmas (which sounds like some kind of strange supervillian name if you ask me), back in 1919, when people must have CLEARLY had too much money to throw at shit if they let a guy with no knowledge of the craft design a plane. (then again, it was almost the golden 20's, when people were so irresponsible with their cash they caused the great depression...)

Well, the flight record of the plane was probably as you'd all expect. On it's maiden flight in 1919, as it took to the air, it's wings literally peeled away from the fuselage, and it crashed. But it never flew again, right?

Nope. chuck testa A second Christmas Bullet flew soon after, only to crash once again, killing another pilot. And Mr. Christmas had the AUDACITY to ask the US government for more money. The US government of course wanted nothing to do with the guy, rejecting his stupid-ass idea. The only reason that this pile of shit isn't higher in my list is because at least the laws of physics are just enough to make sure that plane destroyed itself for simply trying to stay airbourne.

Of course, that didn't stop this guy from telling his pals that he in fact DID sell it to the government. Mr. Christmas, to this day, is widely known as a fucking idiot and a horrible liar.


"AT LEAST I'VE GOT MY CHRISTMAS BULLET...."


8. Royal Aircraft Factory BE9 "Pulpit"



The brits have brought us some pretty impressive planes, including the Spitfire and the Harrier. However, British aviation had a bit of a rocky start, with some pretty shitty ideas coming out of it. Actually, the initial design for this plane wasn't a bad one at all. It was a decent single seat biplane. It was, however, when they attempted to put a combat application to this craft that they fucked up horribly.

I want to point you at that little seat at the front of the plane, right in front of the propeller blade. That seat was a gunners seat, not a pilots seat. The pilot sat right BEHIND the propeller blade. That gunners seat was constructed so the aircraft could fire forward, before the introduction of synchronized cowling guns, which could be fired through propellers without hitting the blades. The forward gunners seat was literally one of the dumbest ideas in combat aviation. You look back, your face is cut up by a propeller blade. You lean back, your head is cut up by a propeller blade. You get your scarf caught in the propeller blade, you get cut up by a propeller blade. If you weren't holding on for dear life onto whatever was in that little gunners seat, you were guaranteed to get sucked into the propeller behind you, and cut to pieces. Did I mention it's not very easy to pilot a plane when you've got a guy sitting right in front of you obscuring your view?

Yeah, not an easy task..... especially when his guts are splattered on your face.

7. Heinkel He-162 "Salamander"


Germany has always been known for its top of the line engineering and innovation. If you don't believe me, just look at how many cars are developed over there these days! Of course, back in the day, they were building top of the line aircraft too. Hell, it was the Germans who were the first to get an effective jet fighter into combat! Of course, that jet fighter, the ME-262, was unparalleled by any other nations fighter planes of the day. It was so dangerous that allied pilots were told that their best defense against one was to shoot it before it could take off.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is no ME-262. While yes, the Germans had developed a deadly jet fighter, they had very little supplies to mass-produce it with, being on the losing end of a world war. So, German engineers devised a solution, the salamander. It was a jet fighter design that was literally meant to be built out of wood by a bunch of civilians, since aluminum and skilled workers were in especially short supply. Of course, the result was what you'd expect from such a last-ditch effort.

It was a flimsy plane with an engine far too powerful for what the little wooden frame could handle. I'm sure you can imagine what sort of problems that would cause...... but believe it or not, that wasn't the biggest problem with this crappy little plane. It was the fact that it had a jet engine situated RIGHT behind the cockpit. So your plane is going down? Yeah, you don't want to eject, because when you do, you're gonna get sucked RIGHT into that engine. Needless to say, when you went up in a Salamander, more often than not, you weren't gonna come back in one piece.


...you'd probably look something like that when you land.

To the Salamanders credit, it was cheap to produce, and was one of the fastest planes of the war. But fast don't mean shit if you get killed simply trying to fly the damn thing.

6. FI 103R-IV "Reichenberg"


Okay, fuck you Germany, seriously. You made such good planes, like the ME-109 and the ME-262, but goddamn why do you make me put not one, but TWO of your damned planes on this list? Well, this plane kind of deserves to be right next to the goddamn salamander of all places, considering it suffered a lot of the same stupidity. Then again, when you flew this plane, you were not meant to come back down in one piece. This was LITERALLY a flying bomb, except, unlike it's brother, the V2 rocket, this actually had a pilot. You see that little cockpit back there? Yep, throw a hitler youth in there, and you're flying! like the Salamander, this plane has the major problem of putting the cockpit right in front of a jet engine. The big problem here is..... the cockpit is even CLOSER to the jet engine on the reichenberg than it was on the salamander! Make no mistake, if you went up in this plane, you were dead. You had signed your death warrant right then and there. Of course, also more often than not, these piles of crap couldn't even maneuver towards a goddamn target because of their crappy-ass design.


5. McDonnell XF-85 Goblin


So, the fact that this pile of shit is incredibly ugly wasn't the ONLY reason it was in my top 10 worst aircraft. The goblin was developed as a 'parasite' aircraft, which is a type of plane meant to be mounted on another plane, and launched from said aircraft as a sort of improvised escort if the larger plane was to become under attack. As you can probably already tell, the whole 'parasite' aircraft thing never really took off. The goblin was America's big attempt at the Parasite aircraft, designed during WWII, and never put into use because it was entirely ineffective at flying. Or docking with another aircraft, you know, one of the things it was intended for. Oh yeah, the maiden flight almost killed the pilot, and turned out to be yet another complete disaster.

Its short wings, and the fact that it was pretty much just a flying engine, made any flight capabilities it has quite limited. I'm not sure WHO thought this design was a good idea, but goddamn who ever it was is probably dumber than the guy who designed the reichenberg! Thank god this one never saw any more use than a couple test flights....

And they actually have recorded footage of this one, so you can see just how shitty it was!


...the goblin, failing at everything.

4. Martin B-26 Marauder


While this plane isn't as aesthetically unappealing, or as absolutely ineffective to the point of not even making a madien flight out alive, this plane has a bit more of a special reason for being so high. The plane had many many instances of crashing upon takeoff and landing, mainly for being so incredibly hard to pilot. It had to be flown at VERY exact speeds, or it would just crash on you, like some kind of spoiled bitchy kid who ALWAYS has to get EXACTLY what he wants, or else he just has to bring everyone else down with him. To the credit of the Marauder, it was quite fast, especially for a bomber class.

However, you see, they acheived such speed by reducing the wing area. Ah yes, the B-26 had a very SPECIAL nickname because of the disproportionally small wing area for the size and weight of the aircraft.

Pilots would call the B-26 the "flying prostitute," because, and I quote, "it was so fast, and had no visible means of support." Of course, this was one of the MANY endearing nicknames the marauder got.


she shoulda been painted on the nose of every B-26...

The B-26 was also called "the baltimore whore", the "Widowmaker," the "Martin Murderer", the "Flying Coffin", and "B-Dash-Crash". If those nicknames don't say something about how shitty this plane was, I'm not really sure what would.

3. LWS-6 Żubr, "crown prince of derp"



You know, there are 3 things that the Polish are infamously bad at. MMORPG's, war, and designing airplanes. While being horrifically bad at MMORPG's isnt necessarily a danger to human life, I'm pretty sure the latter two can't be very good for Polish citizens. It's debatable what the Polish are the worst at, but judging on this horrid design, I'd probably have to argue that it might just be the airplanes. There's a good reason the polish pretty much never built aircraft of their own, and instead just bought secondhand crap from other countries.

And that reason can be summed up with the LWS-6 Zubr. It's like if the guy who designed the Christmas Bullet made a breakthrough in military aviation and was comissioned to design a bomber. Except worse. Yes, this plane was useless as it was ugly. Because of its strange and weak wing configuration, the wings had a pretty common habit of falling off of the plane, much like the Christmas Bullet. Of course, it also couldn't actually FLY without having the landing gear down, which does a number on how aerodynamic a plane can be. Of course, on top of this, it should be noted that the Zubr was built as a bomber. Now, the thing is, this thing couldn't carry much more than maybe a crate of oranges. Seriously, try putting bombs on this thing and it'd just crash.

Did I mention this pile of crap crashed multiple times in test flights, but the Polish factories actually denied the crashes happened and just kept building them?

There's DEFINITELY something to be said for Polish engineering.



Pictured: what we can safely assume is the guy who designed the Zubr


2. Kalinin K-7



Okay, seriously, is this thing even an airplane? It looks more like an office building/battleship on wheels. But no matter, that was the LEAST of the Kalinin K-7's problems.

The Russian Kalinin K-7, designed in the early 1930's, like the previously mentioned "Spruce Goose" began with good intentions. It was supposed to be a fucking flying battleship/aircraft carrier. What could POSSIBLY be more badass than that?


this is probably closer to what the Russians had in mind...

Well, the first problem is that we were talking about something being designed by the Russians, who were known for their especially shoddy engineering back in those days.... And secondly, well, we're talking about an aircraft that required at least 7 of the most powerful engines available to the russians at the time to keep its massive chassis afloat. Well, those, combined with the very design of the chassis of the aircraft itself was a recipe for disaster. See, certain vibrations caused by specific sound frequencies can actually cause quite a bit of damage to different objects, depending on the material of the object. Take, for example, the Opera singers that can shatter glass with their high pitched voices. Now, a similar thing happened with the engines of the Kalinin K-7. The extremely low frequency and loud rumble of the 7 engines of the Kalinin K-7 actually caused the aircrafts frame to resonate at such a frequency that the plane literally tore itself apart. Yes, it wasn't getting this beast into the air that was a problem, it was keeping it flying without it literally destroying itself. The one that was built tore itself to shreds before crashing to the ground.

Mr. Stalin had Konstantin Kalinin executed for designing and building this plane.

1. V-22 Osprey



ALRIGHT BRO LETS GO PLAY SOME CALL OF DUTY BRO WE'RE GONNA FLY IN THAT COOL HELICOPTER THING ALRIGHT BRO


The US wanted to make a cool VTOL transport craft. They wanted that craft to combine the functionality of a helicopter with the long range and high speed of a turboprop aircraft like a C-130. The idea first saw light in the early 1980's after the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, when it was made clear that the US needed an aircraft that could fly in fast, airlift out large groups of people without the need of a landing strip, and get out faster than a conventional helicopter. A very sound idea. Except they made an ugly looking PIECE OF SHIT.

The V-22 first started its horrible reign of stupidity in the year 1989, when presumably a test pilot facepalmed so hard when he was asked to fly it he actually gave himself a concussion. The first two flights went fine, but were done as fixed-wing craft. That is, the planes did not yet function as helicopters. Of course, when they did, in the 4th and 5th test flight, they both failed miserably and crashed, killing the pilots. Really, the V-22 was off to a great start. See, the V-22, if suffering engine failure, can't keep itself afloat with autorotation like a Helicopter would be able to. If you don't understand what I'm saying; If a helicopters engine breaks down at a lower altitude, the inertia of the massive helicopter blades is enough to keep the blades spinning fast enough to provide a relatively safe descent. However, since the V-22 osprey has much shorter propeller blades, they slow down much faster, and of course, cause the plane to fall like a rock, that, and since it requires two engines to stay afloat, good luck if only one of them fails! Hell, it didn't even take an engine failure to cause a V-22 osprey to crash back in 2000, when it simply spun out of control and exploded, killing all 19 marines on board. So, if you have any sort of possible crash landing situation in a V-22 Osprey, you're not going to come out alive. Of course, that's only if the V-22 breaks down, which, it was known to do quite a bit! In fact, it was said that the V-22 Osprey required disproportionate amounts of maintenance to the amount of time it spends in the air. It was so bad, in fact, that Lieutenant Colonel Odin Lieberman, a V-22 squadron commander, was relieved of duty in 2001 for falsifying maintenance data to make the aircraft look more reliable!


these marines are actually safer jumping off of the Osprey than they were inside of it...

What's more embarassing is that the V-22 has a considerable production cost, at least $60 million per unit, while a helicopter of similar capability costs a mere $35 million to produce. That's a little more HALF the cost for practically the same thing, except a little safer and with less maintenance demands. So why the fuck would you spend nearly twice as much for something that doesn't even work as well, and does practically the same thing as every other model on the market?



...oh wait.... ohhh..... ohh.......

All that aside, I think what pisses me off the most is how much goddamn media attention this godamn piece of shit gets. Now, we're going to play a game, it's called spot the V-22 shitspray. In each of the movie/vidja game trailers below, I want you to see if you can point out the V-22.



(as if having a milla jovovich mary sue fronted action movie with zombies wasn't bad enough...)



(COCK OF DUTY 360 NO SCOPES, OUR V-22'S ONLINE)





Just a couple examples right there. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. Why is this pile of junk still being built, and why does it remain so popular? Such is one of the many strange mysteries of our world. Hell, I bet if our military didn't waste so much money on this junk, we probably wouldn't have such a large deficit. Then again, this is just one of many examples of America's completely ridiculous money-wasting on absolutely pointless products.



$500,000 on a pair of shoes, anyone?


Anyways, that's it for today, we'll be back next time with something a bit more positive.