The F-18 Hornet is simply one of the most beautiful airplanes currently flying:

(Images found here and here).

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This week's serving of cheesecake features a bizarre-looking civilian transport/cargo aircraft the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, which was derived from a military transport, which itself was derived from the B-29 bomber of WWII:

In the 1960s, some of the 377s were modified to carry the third stage of the Saturn V moon rockets (the Saturn IVB) from its assembly plant in California to Florida. These variants were dubbed the Pregnant Guppy and the Super Guppy:

(Much information on these bizarre planes can be found at this great page. And according to this NASA page, Airbus manufactured a Super Guppy recently and traded it to NASA for transport of space station components!)

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This week's serving of cheesecake is the Kalinin K-7. This bomber hails from the early 1930s, and foreshadows the heavy bombers that would play such a large role in WWII less than a decade in the future. Looking at its contemporaries, this plane is really a stunning bit of modernism. Unfortunately there aren't many pictures available since the prototype crashed and no others were ever produced. Enjoy:

Images found here and here.

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Here's a pic I took of the Lady Lex's F2H-2 Banshee last weekend:

Here's an archival photo of the plane in flight (found here):

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Could there be any doubt this week?

Burt Rutan's Global Flyer, piloted by Steve Fossett in his record-breaking flight this past week:

(Both images from Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer multimedia site).

Also, this little-known plane from very early in Rutan's career (courtesy of a family friend), the Rutan B-17X:

(Note for the clue-impaired: it's a photoshop).

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Steve Fossett successfully circumnavigated the globe in a single-engine jet airplane on a single load of fuel. Solo.

Details here. And here.

Frank Martin blogged a good deal of the flight.

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This week's aircraft cheesecake continues with the flying saucer theme introduced last week. The Grumman WF-2 ("Willy Fudd") (later redesignated the E1-B Tracer) was the US Navy's first carrier-borne early warning aircraft:

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This week's airplane comes courtesy of Alan Brain's Yamato Sashimi article, which introduced me to the "Flying Flapjack" for the first time. Without further ado, the Chance Vought V-173/XF5U "Flying Flapjack:"

More info here, too.

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I have long loved the lethal, lovely lines of the F-16 Fighting Falcon:

Fellow Munuvian Random pointed me to this great page about the Israeli F-16I, manufactured here in the DFW Metroplex. It has many more outstanding images of this beautiful fighter.

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I know it's a stretch, but I'm trying to make tonight's cheesecake relevant to the Super Bowl winner.

It would have been relatively easy if Philadelphia had won, since I could have posted an F-15 Eagle. But no aircraft seems to have been nicknamed the "Patriot" so the link between the plane and team nicknames has to be more tenuous.

Here goes: the Patriots' home field is in Foxboro, Massachusetts. "Foxbat" is vaguely reminiscent of "Foxboro." Thus, as a tribute to an American football team named the Patriots, I give you a Soviet-era fighter, the MiG-25 Foxbat:

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This week's serving is the interesting, but ultimately unsuccessful, German WWII transport aircraft, the Arado Ar 232 Tausendfuessler "Tatzelwurm" (i.e., "Millipede").

It came in two variants, the Ar 232A, which was powered by 2 BMW 801 engines, and the Ar 232 B, powered by 4 BMW-Bramo 323 R-2 engines. The plane had a normal "tricycle" landing gear for landings on well-paved airfields. However, the landing gear could be "broken," to lower the plane onto the 22 belly wheels, from which the plane derived its nickname. This allowed the cargo ramp to be extended at a smaller angle from the rear of the cargo bay. The belly wheels also allowed for additional support when landing on rough surfaces. Amazingly, even when fully loaded with a 16-metric-ton cargo, the plane could take off in 200 meters (shorter with rocket-assisted takeoff).

Here's the "A" in flight:

A nice shot of the "Millipede" landing gear on an "A":

And a different view of the landing gear on a "B":

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This week's serving is the V/STOL (vertical/short takeoff and landing) attack aircraft, the Harrier. The aircraft has an interesting developmental history, with inputs from France (original engine design), West Germany, the UK and US (explained in more detail here):

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Check out the Tupolev Tu-20 "Bear" strategic bomber (sometimes designated Tu-95). Note the four massive turboprop engines, each driving two counter-rotating propellers.

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This week's cheesecake is a bit of an ugly duckling. Perhaps one of the most asymmetrical military aircraft ever flown, the Blohm und Voss B.V. 141:

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This week's entry is the F-82 Twin Mustang, essentially two P-51 bodies sharing a single wing:

Images found here and here.

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Another Russian plane this week, the Myasischev M-50 Bounder:

According to the FAS link above, little is known about this plane's performance, though one referenced commenter noted that the M-50 was "an outstanding failure which revealed an embarassing lack of understanding of the problems of high-speed flight."

(Be sure to check out the other exhibits at AXLs Plane Gallery, where I found these images).

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Behold the Sukhoi Su-34 "Fullback:"

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This week's cheesecake helping is the XB-70 Valkyrie:

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1 Ahh, yes, one of the bombers I wished we had built. If Airframe #1 still exists, I wonder if it could be retrofitted for further tests, especially with Spaceship 1 technology. Then again, the B-70 and F12A would have been interesting to see in training Lysander

Posted by: Lysander at December 13, 2004 01:02 PM (ShW/G)

2 Silly me. I had to go and look up "F-12," forgetting about the SR-71 development history. I'll be featuring the Blackbird (with appropriate background on the A-12/F-12 interceptors) in a future cheesecake post.

Posted by: JohnL at December 13, 2004 11:29 PM (gplif)

3 This plane was a "hot and high nuclear bomber" advocate's dream. Unfortunately, it was only worth the cost as long as we really needed to drop a nuclear bomb on a target with an airplane, and as long as it was less vulnerable than conventional bombers. Both ended up not being true, as the Cold war ended about a decade later, we already had more ICBMs than nuclear-capable bombers, and the Soviets developed high-altitude capable SAMs as the development for this was ending. It is one heck of an impressive aircraft however. Unfortunate that airframe #2 was lost in that accident.

Posted by: NF at December 14, 2004 11:31 AM (d9qCZ)

4 Simply the most beautiful airplane ever built.

Posted by: Timothy Sandefur at December 16, 2004 10:24 AM (fLlQ8)

5 John - The F-12 to SR-72 conversion was beautiful - makes most forget it's origins. Given the B-52/B-1/B-2's varied resurgence as a conventional bomber, I wonder if the B-70 could hack being both a spaceplane and a tactical conventional bomber. Lysander

Posted by: Lysander at December 19, 2004 10:50 PM (ht9UE)

6 Lysander, Good question -- I think stealth technology is more important than speed these days. Even without stealthing, we send in the electronic warfare and attack planes first to take out air defenses and achieve air supremacy, so even old B-52 Buffs can bomb with relative impunity. Not sure what we would need a Mach 3 bomber for (other than because we can do it -- America, F--k yeah!) Re spaceplane: the B-70 does look somewhat like the NASP conceptual designs I remember seeing from the eighties.

Posted by: JohnL at December 19, 2004 11:08 PM (gplif)

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This week's serving is yet another X-plane, the Bell X-5. This was the first plane to have a variable-angle wing, making it the forebear of the F-111, F-14, and B-1 aircraft (which will likely make future appearances here):

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This week's featured aircraft is the aptly-named Douglas X-3 Stiletto:

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