it's spooky month, what's the scariest plane to you?
Oooh, that's an interesting question! I was initially of three minds on this: should I go with spookiest name? Spookiest looking? Or the one that straight-up scares me the most.
I have some ideas for all three:
Spookiest Name: The McDonnell CF-101 Voodoo (oooh, scary)
The McDonnell CF-101 'Voodoo' was an all-weather interceptor adopted by Canada's branch of NORAD as a replacement for the obsolescent CF-100 'Canuck', after Diefenbaker killed the Avro CF-105 'Arrow' (which a lot of people are still very angry about) their main armament consisted of the AIR-2A 'Genie' unguided nuclear tipped rocket (who's adoption caused a scandal that directly caused the collapse of the Diefenbaker government)
A plane called Voodoo letting a nuclear Genie out of the bottle? Now that's spooky!
Spookiest Looking: The Flying Tiger's P-40 Warhawk
Since time immemorial, humans have been decorating their weaponry with the image of fearsome predators, and the P-40 Warhawks belonging to the American Volunteer Squadron in China (better known as the infamous 'Flying Tigers') are no exception. With their infamous and terrifying "sharktooth" paint schemes, these planes gave good service supporting the Nationalist Chinese Government against the invading Imperial Japanese Army. Many of the United States' top air aces of the Second World War started out in the Flying Tigers.
Scariest overall: the Gee-Bee R-series Air Racers
This was a very difficult choice, there's been plenty of aircraft that were infamously difficult and dangerous to fly, for instance, specifically in West German service, the F-104 'Starfighter' (Seriously, Stuka, why is that? Y'all seem like the only people who had any serious troubles with that machine) but I think I settled on the scariest of them all. The infamous GeeBee Air Racers
What's that? You don't think they look scary? Think they look like a sewer pipe with wings?
...yeah, that's what people thought at the time too.
Designed around the then-brand-new Pratt and Whitney R-1340 Wasp radial engine, delivering well over 800 horsepower, they were built for one purpose and one purpose only: to have the absolute most engine possible for the absolute least plane... At the expense of literally everything else. Weighing only 1840 lbs (843 kg) dry, they were built to dominate the air races of the 1930's. Piloted to victory by Jimmy Doolittle (yes, that Jimmy Doolittle) in the 1932 Thompson Trophy Race, easily lapping all but one other aircraft and setting an official record of 296.3 mph. It was destroyed in a fatal crash one year later, killing pilot Russell Broadman.
Doolittle was quoted as saying "I didn't trust the little monster... flying it was like balancing a pencil on the tip of your finger". The wreckage of the R-1 was rebuilt with parts from her (also-crashed, though non-fatally) sistership, the R-2, and turned into what was dubbed the "Gee-Bee long tail". It was purchased by Cecil Allen after it was crashed yet again (forcing it's builders, the Grandville brothers, to declare bankruptcy) who redesigned the wing and added a new, larger fuel tank. Warned strongly by the Granvilles to not fly with that tank filled as it would disrupt the center of gravity, Allen didn't heed the warnings. On the morning of the 1935 Bendix trophy race, he took off from Burbank with all tanks full, wallowed, and crashed into a field just beyond the runway, killing him instantly and writing a sad end to the sega of the R-series GeeBees.
