Ugliest Airplane Ever Built Predicted the Future | Hacker News Reader

Ugliest Airplane Ever Built Predicted the Future

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The airplanes of the late 1920s through the late 1930s are absolutely wild. Engines were starting to become more capable, designers had more of a clue, people were willing to spend money on things... but the designers didn't have the whole clue yet, so you get some really amazing things like open top monoplanes that flew at 10k feet.

This YouTube channel covers some really interesting stuff from that time frame:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0g8HiAbNAE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uFNOtsucKE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwa9unx9mpQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Qz6c38sGk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVnxQCa4ieM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DNGBIqiOaw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD0SYy-stt4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2v5MvgAkaI

Oh, and the Stipa Caproni herself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3K0QPfmznY

I love those "eras" when people only half knew what the hell they were doing. The early space/rocketry research era was crazy like that. Inflatable satellites, blowing up a tank of water in the upper atmosphere (and, hey, nuclear bombs too), dragging wires through orbit, dropping metallic chaff in orbit....

When people don't quite know what's going on a lot of crazy ideas can seem legit. I suspect it is sort of the fun part of the era as well — before sobering reality, data and formulas start to encroach on everyone's good time.

> When people don't quite know what's going on a lot of crazy ideas can seem legit.

Kind of makes you sentimental when you realise you've lived through something like that by being a software developer in the 90s.

I don't know. It wasn't all good. We also had MFC (remember that?), tcl/tk, and everything had to be written in C. It was like pulling teeth to get people to use C++, and if you succeeded, you might regret it. The C++ people were still having flame wars on all the ways to do exception handling. The world revolved around Microsoft more and more, and Linux wasn't an alternative yet.

I think of the naughts as that idyllic time (for a software engineer). Microsoft was being overthrown, Apple hadn't gone full-minimalist yet, and the Linux Desktop was actually a pretty fun place to hack. Gnome and KDE weren't yet trying to copy everything Apple was doing (also, we had WindowMaker and enlightenment if you wanted to actually go minimalistic). The internets made all that sharing and open source possible, and it was like the world was all new and shiny.

> The world revolved around Microsoft more and more, and Linux wasn't an alternative yet.

There were a lot of unix alternatives to microsoft, just not as many on x86 hardware (which was still mostly bsd variants like Jolix.) SunOS/Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, AUX, OpenVMS, etc. In this period the x86 platform was not dominant and if you wanted real power you were using things like an Alpha or PowerPC CPU, with the Pentium Pro being mostly a server chip and the Pentium getting a bit long in the tooth through the mid-90s before the PII was released. The 90s were a pretty interesting time to be doing server development or sysadmin work.

Really? Software design feels way more interesting and experimental now than it did back then.

> I love those "eras" when people only half knew what the hell they were doing.

You say that as if people 50 years from now won't look back on some of things we do today thinking the same thing.

I suppose they will. Even now, the 80's, 90's when we were programming for nerds, for people just like us, seems in hindsight like a very rarified time. BBS's, modems, floppy disks, computer magazines ... it does seem pretty wild.

It’s going to be the variations on the concept of artificial intelligence.

Like the way people are making funny DALL-E memes today is like Jennicam or how people made webcam sites for their coffee maker in the late 90’s.

"I love those "eras" when people only half knew what the hell they were doing."

I think we are at this stage in AI, robotics and a lot of medical research. Unfortunately the weird things we are doing in these areas are not very visible.

100 years from now people will look back at the tech and crypto startups of today and think the same thing.

Inter-war tanks are another great example. Everyone knew these new "tank" things were the future, and everyone wanted them, but nobody really knew what they were supposed to look like. So we get marvels like the Vickers Independent, the FCM F1 and the M2 Medium

Technology tends to move faster in war. Society too- America had a smaller army than Bulgaria in 1939.

The difference is not data and formulas, it's government regulations. We would still be seeing lots of fantastical new ideas in aerospace a d probably be decades further along technologically if not for the government granting patents blocking ideas from being used and creating multi-million dollar, years-long regulatory review processes.

Eliminate regulations and see innovation leap forward.

this feels like the Cambrian Explosion, when multicellular organisms where just coming to stride, and there was an explosion of body plans, many look incredibly creative and weird compared to modern animals. It was as if evolution had no assumptions and was exploring. then after a few hundred million years, a handful of body plans won out, and have stayed stable ever since.

Didnt realize Studio Ghibli planes were not too divorced from reality.

Another commenter mentioned that there is actually a connection between this company and Studio Ghibli: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33148961

You might have spotted this comment already, but I found it really interesting so I wanted to make sure you didn't miss it :D

Looks like the old Google App Engine logo: https://imgur.com/a/h1S7Nop

The ugliest locomotive. the ALCO RS-1 (1941), changed railroading.[1] This introduced the basic design of a narrow central section with railed walkways and a cab offset from one end. Worked equally well going in either direction. Good maintenance access from the walkways, where doors opened on the equipment. Could be used for both switching and road trips. No attempt to make it look cool, or impressive. Just useful.

General Motors Electro-Motive Division introduced the GP7 in 1949, which was a solid product of which thousands were built. Looked much like the RS-1 After that, most Diesel-electric freight locomotives followed the same pattern, and still do.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALCO_RS-1

Honestly I think it's actually kinda cute. Would totally work in a Ghibli film.

Agreed! It looks like a cartoon plane, quite cute. Just imagine baby Yoda sticking his head out of that thing, people would love it.

And for everyone else that didn't read any of the text...

"We couldn’t help but think that the Stipa-Caproni looks like something you’d see in a cartoon, perhaps flown by an animal character."

Instantly I thought, how can they call it 'the ugliest'? it is such a bubbly and a cute plane, I would totally have it in my garage.

Too bad it wasn't in The Wind Rises, some other model are though [1]. The studio's name is also inspired by Caproni Ca.309 'Ghibli' [2].

[1] https://ghibli.fandom.com/wiki/Caproni [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caproni_Ca.309

I came here expecting to see something about the A380. Completely wrong but not disappointed! The Stipa Caproni is definitely in a class of its own!

p.s., A380s are nice inside but the outside hardly makes the heart sing. They remind me of the Spruce Goose. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules

A380s were a big bet that does not appear to have worked out.

A few exponential increases in aircraft travelers could prove this wrong, and restart production, but that does not seem a near-term future.

It was a noble effort, though.

The major issue is increased open skies agreements and better twin engine planes totally obviating a lot of hub-to-hub travel.

The only real hubs with enough traffic to support a double deck plane are the massive Middle Eastern ones.

Also, unlike the 747, the A380 is too heavy to be a freighter.

Interesting.

I did not know that it wasn't designed with this flexibility. This seems short-sighted.

The 747 was actually designed with this in mind from the get-go (hence the raised jumbo hump to allow front-nose loading), because the expectation was that they would not be in service very long until supersonic transports became the norm.

The A380 is just too heavy when empty to carry much freight. It was already a struggle to find engines that could fly the thing, and for airports to upgrade runways to deal with its weight.

Airports had to build new gates to service the A380. Ofcourse as it turns out very few routes can sustain 400-500 passengers. People want to fly directly to their destination- Amsterdam to Boston do not pass JFK.

> Also, unlike the 747, the A380 is too heavy to be a freighter.

THIS. Peeking at Wikipedia - the Boeing 747-8F can carry 140 metric tons of freight. Vs. the A380's maximum payload is about 60% of that...in spite of having a empty weight almost 100 tons higher.

You'd think the A380 was designed by a committee of 3rd-rate engineers, with pay proportional to the weight of their boondoggle...

Airbus has always been a story of eventually competing in every Boeing segment as a matter of European pride.

All indications were that four engines were going the way of the dodo. Boeing recognized this too and the 747-8 was more to distract Airbus than a serious next generation.

No manufacturer is omnipotent though. Boring entirely ceded the midsize market segment to Airbus, so now reliable Boeing customers are replacing dated 757 and 767 aircraft with Airbus models.

The feeling of a lot of people in Seattle is that the McDonnell-Douglas merger ruined Boeing. What had been a company run by engineers became a company run by bean-counters, and that has led to a certain lack of innovation in design. For instance, the 737 first flew in 1967, designed to be an airliner that could service small, even primitive airfields, and should have been retired decades ago. Instead it's been through four generations and 13 different models.

(I'm a Boeing baby -- my parents met and married while both were employed at Boeing, and I'm really sad at what the company has become.)

> engines were going the way of the dodo. Boeing recognized this too and the 747-8 was more to distract Airbus than a serious next generation.

Crediting Boeing with this intelligent move while they also stumbled though the 737 Max fiasco seems generous.

However massive companies can multitask, so maybe I need to be more generous.

I mean, Boeing did well with the 787 while Airbus flubbed the A350 for a while, so it's not like there's just one successful thing Boeing has done in the last few decades.

The A380-800 was vastly overbuilt, as it is, in essence, a shrink. Shrinks are always the least efficient airplanes in a family. Usually larger variants are more efficient, while smaller variants tend to be more capable (in terms of range, take off performance, etc.). 787-9/10 is a prime example of this, as the 787-10 is just a longer 787-9: the 787-10 can seat more and is quite a bit more efficient than the 787-9, but the 787-9 can fly a lot farther.

The A380 was optimized around a longer variant, the A380-900, with enough margins for an even longer version (an hypothetical A380-1000). Turns out even the A380-800 was too big, so the A380-900 was never built. But the A380-800 still had to carry most of the structure of the heavier variant, making it grossly over-built.

But that doesn't fully explain why the A380 is so bad for cargo compared to the 747-8F: that's due to the "floor" that is an integral part of the structure of the A380. An 747-8F is just an empty tube.

From Wikipedia, that 747-8F "empty tube" is only 50 tons lighter than the 2-full-length-floors -8I (which seats 467 passengers). And Boeing sold (& delivered) 100+ of the -8F's. Vs. 0 for the A380F.

Between the structural floor, and leading with the least-efficient variant - it sounds like the A380 might suffer from F35 Disease - building parts in the districts of as many politicians as possible was far more important than building a sensible & performant product.

The 8I is not two full length floors. The upper deck is longer, but not the entire length of the plane.

> better twin engine planes totally obviating a lot of hub-to-hub travel.

Yeah, but that was entirely predictable...

There were twin-engine jets from both Boeing and Airbus flying trans-Atlantic, the 737 was a very popular aircraft, and the ETOPS rules went into effect in 1985, years before the very first steps in A380 development. The future direction of air travel was out there for any well-informed individuals in the industry to see.

How far and how fast was always debatable though.

Airbus was of the opinion that the composites and advances in material design that the 787 represented were not well-advised or going to work out, and they put their money where their mouth was.

Also, a lot of it was due to LCCs and ULCCs eating legacy carriers' lunch. (The former exclusively uses tiny twin engines and the latter are the only operators of the large, hub-to-hub aircraft.) That model has proved more durable than some predictions, and even then that model hasn't always done fantastically; no long-haul LCC has worked out, despite the aircraft for such an operation technically existing.

I think the weight constraint must make it incredibly hard to fly outside of select routes; it is not trivial to build a runway which you can land and takeoff those bad boys from

I can't see a world they ever build more of them in

The big problem is filling the plane, not finding a suitable runway. That problem turned out not to be solvable.

I'd say that reflects very well on the Spruce Goose, a design paradoxically well ahead of its time. I think it looks quite handsome.

Given that it's apparently extremely stable in flight and the takeoff/landing are the main issues (largely because pilots literally couldn't see what they were doing), I wonder if this design will make a comeback for unmanned drones? it seems ideal for low power applications where agility isn't the top consideration.

Probably not.

That tube has drag like a normal airfoil but its shape is highly impractical to store stuff like batteries.

An modern flight controls can overcome basically any instability in the design and there is no reason to make any aircraft less agile.

The gains having a slightly more efficient prop at very certain airspeeds do not offset the impracticality and drag.

The "best" design is probably a flying wing with wingtip props.

The Stipa-Caproni was certainly odd, but I wouldn't call it ugly. Imho, the ugliest plane ever made was the M-15 Belphegor, which has the unusual distinction of being a jet powered crop dusting biplane.

Even better… a jet-powered biplane crop duster. And boy is that some ugly shit.

The name Belphegor reflects some of the feelings about how it looked, I guess, as it is one of the devils/demons in Christian apocrypha

Hey now, I think the M-15 Belphegor is not that ugly, just unique :)

The Boeing Phalcon 707 however, is a really ugly airplane. Something with its look just make me wanna look away in shame.

Now that is ugly, I'm dying to see if somebody can one up that one!

The whole thread makes me want to rewatch Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines.

Charlie Brown would like a word..

> Boeing Phalcon 707

I'm not sure what's worse, the nosecone or the name.

The Phalcon actually looks like a prettier version of the AEW Nimrod:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Aerospace_Nimrod_AEW3

I once saw an unhappy looking AEW Nimrod sitting near the edge of RAF Kinloss (as it was at the time) - pictures don't really do it justice as to how ugly it was.

Same principle later implemented by Willard Custer but using wing channelling rather than the fuselage

https://www.historynet.com/custers-channel-wing/

"...in the days when inventors were experimenting with many different ways to improve aircraft utility and performance."

Lovingly lampooned in 1965's Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO7-_fGqGTg

This isn't convincing. The turbofan is a good idea because the propulsive efficiency is better than a turbojet.

The Stipa is a ducted fan, but the resemblance to a turbofan is superficial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbofan#Principles

You can also stick a propeller on a turbojet to increase efficiency without the need for extra ducting though at a cost of cabin noise. That saves weight, but copying this design is a net gain at high speeds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propfan

It includes an interesting chart where Turbofan is only better above about a Mach 0.75.

There are a few points here:

First, the various claims made by Stipa that jet engines were inspired by this aircraft are not credible. He even thought the V1 missile (pulsejet-powered) was derived from his concept.

"Stipa later claimed the Germans stole his patented ideas when they developed their V-1 flying bomb, although the pulsejet engine actually bears little relationship to his intubed propeller."

"Luigi Stipa died in 1992, embittered at not being recognized as the true inventor of the jet engine."

https://web.archive.org/web/20220306183856/https://www.histo...

So it's a sad story for Stipa, but his indignation doesn't mean anyone stole ideas from him.

Secondly, the turbojet and turboprop were first patented in 1930 (Whittle) and 1929 (Jendrassik). These patents predate the Stipa-Caproni, which doesn't involve the Brayton cycle (obviously) so isn't really in the running for first jet propulsion. Now, you might argue that the ducted fan is a "jet" technology, but the absence of turbomachinery makes Stipa's invention very distant from either turbojet or turboprop.

Thirdly, you seem to be misreading the diagram comparing turbojet, turbofan and turboprop. It is the turboprop (not the turbojet, as you seem to imply) that is more efficient than the turbofan up to Mach 0.75. The propfan is exotic, anachronistic as far as the Stipa discussion goes, and is best thought of a high speed development of the turboprop. Early turboprops were prevented from developing into propfans by technological constraints back then.

Finally, when you "stick a propeller on a turbojet", making a turboprop or propfan, you largely give up jet propulsion. The exhaust of the turbine produces only a small amount of residual thrust. The Stipa-Caproni, being piston-engined, didn't have exhaust thrust.

So why are there no ducted turboprops? That (not the turbofan) would be the logical adaptation of the Stipa design. Well, these sort-of exist (https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/34919/at-what-p...).

Stipa wasn't working with the Brayton cycle or with turbomachinery. His claims that the idea for early jet engines (even the V1!?) were stolen from him seem really unlikely to have merit. On the contrary, the turbofan principle is suggested by the formula for propulsive efficiency of a turbojet. It's not a configuration, like the Stipa-Caproni, but a theoretical insight about jet engines that could be taken advantage of by adding a bypass. I don't see anyone claiming that Stipa saw this. A turbojet with a fan and bypass is not a copy of Stipa's annular duct. It is a lot more complex, and the devil is in the details.

The fact that Stipa went to his grave convinced that he deserved the credit for the jet engine is regrettable, but it would be a big surprise if he was vindicated. We all know people like him.

From the text:

“The popularity of turbojets and turbofans curtailed research in propellers, but by the 1960s, interest increased when studies showed that an exposed propeller driven by a gas turbine could power an airliner flying at a speed of Mach 0.7–0.8 and at an altitude of 35,000 feet (11,000 metres). The term propfan was created during this period.[7]”

The sweet spot for propfans is therefore below about Mach 0.75 which is matches up with my reading of the graph.

The design appears to have an exit nozzle area at least equal to that of the inlet. If so, this is sub-optimal from a propulsive efficiency point of view. The cross-sectional area inside is clearly less (mainly due to the engine nacelle), making this a convergent-divergent nozzle, which is desirable only when the flow goes supersonic. For subsonic conditions, a convergent nozzle, with its exit narrower than its intake, is better.

See de Piolenc, 'Ducted Fan Design vol. 1.', 2001

Given the era it was from, it also almost certainly did not have aerofoil-shaped blades; axial-flow compressors from this era were terribly inefficient.

It appears to be a conventional propeller, which had an airfoil cross-section and were fairly efficient by then, but current ducted fans for low-speed use typically have 6 or 8 broader and shorter blades.

> used a prop to draw air through a venturi tube

"Venturi" is your clue that it was convergent--divergent by design! Whether that's a good idea is a different question...

Based on the title I was so sure it will be about the Northrop Tacit Blue.

Ugliest airplane (in my opinion): check. Predicted the future (by being a fore-runner of modern low observeability stealth planes): check.

For reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Tacit_Blue

It looks like a rendering bug.

True. Or as if it was cast and then someone forgot to clean the "flash" from the mould parting line.

Some guy on YouTube builds model planes propelled by power tools. This one reminds me of the plane he built with a leaf blower as its propulsion system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBC6AZY_O80

There's a park in silicon valley, baylands park, where people flew R/C aircraft all the time.

I remember one guy would fly this ridiculous plane, which seemed to be a rectangular board with an engine on top.

It was the aerodynamic equivalent of a flounder (which has aesthetics by comparison), or maybe a cafeteria tray without the lip.

lol

I know Earthworm Jim's pocket rocket when I see it!

YaaaahooooOoooooOoooo

Not ugly at all, cute! I'd love to build a replica model, initial searches haven't thrown up anything. If anyone has any links I'd appreciate it.

Tunnan = Barrel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_29_Tunnan

Wow that's a surprisingly modern looking fighter, despite being developed in the '40s

I absolutely love the Caproni C22J in Microsoft flight simulator. He wasn't just building weird planes, this one is amazing.

Reminds me of the sleek F6 which looks like someone simply added a cockpit and wings to a jet engine: https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/collections/british-ai....

I can just about remember those beasties. They were silver all over and looked like missiles. They were equally mad looking as "Star Fighters".

Quite a few of my formative years were spent in West Germany in the 70s/80s (BAOR - Army brat).

The sound of a pair of flights of Phantoms all firing up their ABs at low level and going up rather quickly is quite impressive. Over built up areas (times and regs were different then). I recall seeing five Harriers (why five?) at an air day (RAF Wildenrath) farting around - spinning on the spot at 10 feet, nodding, bobbing and bouncing and all sorts of daft things. Jaguars, Buccaneers, Star Fighters and later on Tornadoes.

On the ground I saw a Chieftain tank (60 tonne MBT) race a car from a traffic light near Hohne. The tank has rather a lot of traction but huge inertia. The car was a Mk 1 Ford Fiesta (driven by a squaddie - obviously). Cars are much lighter and only have a bit of rubber on the road. The roads around there were concrete cast slab with tar to fill in the gaps for obvious reasons, given the sorts of vehicles on the roads. Same around Soltau too.

Both vehicles were revving their engines (the car started it) When the lights changed, both vehicles floored it. The tank belched huge amounts of diesel fumes and with a mighty roar launched off the blocks. The car made a rather sad whine and made a desultory hop into the race and carreened down the road. The tank led for a while until the car eventually overtook it.

The MK1 Chieftain was woefully underpowered - you should see what a modern MBT can do these days!

Back in the air, for rotary wing we originally had Siouxs (bubble n fan), then Gazelles and Lynx, Chinooks and more. I now, 40 odd years later, live in Yeovil and used to work in the local chopper factory, 20 years ago.

Sorry: ... I attached an onion to my belt ...

Thanks for your story, incredible how emotive engineering can be

This isn't convincing. The turbofan is a good idea because the propulsive efficiency is better than a turbojet.

The Stipa is a ducted fan, but the resemblance to a turbofan is superficial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbofan#Principles

Reminds me of this french prototype developped during the 50's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNECMA_Col%C3%A9opt%C3%A8re

> was the direct predecessor of the turbofan engine

Looks like it was a turbofan engine, maybe the first.

> the Stipa-Caproni was the direct predecessor of the turbofan engine

That's a bit of a stretch. The axial flow turbojet design's compressor evolved in stages into the turbofan.

Ugly/pretty is function of general familiarity. If we are looking more familiar with this kind of planes, we probably would have called Airbus or concord ugly.

Ugly?! I quite like it. The mig15's stouter big brother.

I agree, it's not ugly at all. Looks super cool.

Looks like the villains airplan in Disneys Tailspin?

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