Quote:
Originally Posted by EJGr.Ost_Caspar
LOL, me too!  |
This, by multiple orders of magnitude.
The early war aircraft are so fascinating, and the interwar designs more so.
The last of the biplanes were very competitive with the early monoplanes at their time of introduction, and some of the early monoplane designs were simply brilliant in their day (as short as it was). For instance you can make a very valid argument that the PZL P11 was the best fighter in the world when it was introduced, the same for the I 16 as well. If the world economy had been better in the mid 30's, my beloved Curtiss Hawk 75 could have been flying in numbers in 1935.
It was an amazing era of innovation in aviation, all over the globe, and focusing on 1944 blinds you to some great aircraft designs that set the standards for what was to come.