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Aircraft equivalent of the "Yugo"?


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Mig-21 ?

ducks and heads for cover!

Ooooh, that's gonna cost ya! Possibly the most successful jet fighter ever, in terms of widespread use and length of service, definitely in the top few. Ironically, a sweeping international commercial triumph from a nation who, at the time, was "officially" opposed to capitalism....

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I can imagine there were a few choice words about the Buffalo after Midway, am I right in thinking they did well with the Finnish AF though during the Winter War?

WRT the Demon, I remember a bit in an issue of Take Off saying that they were fairly underestimated at bfm, because Cougar, Fury, Tiger, Crusader and Skyray pilots wanted to know nothing about it!

If there was one aircraft that would make me turn in my wings and fly Guppys for a living, it would have been the X/F-32!

Say no more!

Joel

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Yugos were a victim of indifferent manufacturing. They were a re-issue of a rather successful FIAT design.

Can't think of any aircraft that would fall under the same category as a Yugo. Now, there were many well-built aircraft with excellent flying characteristics that were stupendously unsuited for their intended role, such as the B-P Defiant. And, as Scot noted below, there were many aircraft farther ahead on the technology curve than their engines, latest case being F-14A. That doesn't make them equivalent to a Yugo, though. Well, maybe the refueling probe covers on Tomcats and Eagle turkey feathers. Those did tend to fall off for no good reason...and TF-30s tended to randomly disintegrate...

Why do Yugos come with rear-window defrosters? To keep your hands warm when pushing it.

How do you double the value of a Yugo? Fill the gas tank.

Edited by Slartibartfast
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I think I have to agree with the F7... I think I heard someone call it the 'Gutless er... Cutlass' one time...

I'm only 33 yrs old so... anything in my lifetime being a complete failure regarding military aviation is (I think) non-existant...

I really can't think of anything other than that one....

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Yugos were a victim of indifferent manufacturing. They were a re-issue of a rather successful FIAT design.

Good point....so they're rather like the Zhendefu (Zendogfood) of the car world? Really bad remakes?

Why do Yugos come with rear-window defrosters? To keep your hands warm when pushing it.

How do you double the value of a Yugo? Fill the gas tank.

Oh, those are great...gotta email those to my brother....

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ROTFLMAO!!!!!

Do you remember the movie "Drowning Mona" with Danny DeVito and Better Middler? It's set in this little town in up-state New York where absolutely EVERYBODY in town drives a Yugo! Hilarious movie, especially if you enjoy DeVito's kind of humor (which I do!)

And looky here! I just hit 3,000 posts!

Cheers

Old Blind Dog

Glad to know I wasn't the only one who thought of that movie. Remember the scene that showed a service station in the background with a banner that read "Yugos our specialty"?

Any WW2 Russian aircraft. If I were to live during those times, I wouldn't climb into those so-called-planes, knowing that the Luftwaffe and its Experten would immediately shoot me down. Period.

On a serious note, I'll mention that had a pilot refused, he would probably have been summarily shot for cowardice.

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The thing that cracked me up about the Yugo was the flock sprayed headliner and door "upholstery" ...

I agree with Andrew, the "Gutless Cutlass", although a cool looking design was a bad naval fighter ...

Gregg

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Although I love the Westland Wyvern, you could argue that it was a bit of a turkey - troubled development, short service life, not very well liked by pilots or groundcrew, poor resale value?

It still won't stop me having a soft spot for it though ;)

Can't forget ugly as sin, too.

Ron

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Anyone remember the Yugo, that supposedly neat little cheap alternative car that had such a poor quality record and was the butt of MANY jokes before being pulled completely from the US market? The one that folks ended up not wanting to be seen driving? The one my brother would delight in making fun of whenever pulling alongside one in traffic? B)

What would be the Yugo of the aircraft world? Give us some nominations and perhaps we'll put the top ones to a vote!

With all the Tomcat-aholics around here let me be the first to suggest the Super Hornet!
Worst thing the Yugo company ever did in America was install their "1-800-USA-YUGO" number for anything Yugo-related including complaints...which my brother took good advantage of. We could be anywhere, say, on a family vacation, stopped at a rest stop for gasoline, and he'd see a payphone...and he'd say "Excuse me. I must make a telephone call." He'd report the damndest problems, and what's funny is they always took him seriously...which made me think they must be getting tons of similar situations!

;) This is all hilarious! And yes, I too remembered the dreaded Yugo cars when they were around.

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Remember that box tailed transport in John Wayne's Flying Tigers? I think I read earlier that that thing was held together with screws and things and was too dangerous to fly.

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Not a military aircraft, but I'd have to go with the Piper PA-38 "Trauma-hawk"

Yeah, that would be an apt description, be it deserved or undeserved as both products seemed to have reputations that became more legendary then the product themselves. I'm not necessarily bashing the Yugo or the Tomahawk as I have not driven or flown either. In the case of the Tomahawk, those that own them swear by them and they seem to have the bugs ironed out (my local airport has two of them). But the bit with even two aircraft from the same assembly line having potentially different stall characteristics I do find...interesting. And today they are dirt cheap to acquire it seems in comparison with an equivalent plane like a Cessna 150 or 152.

As for the Yugo, it has been said by Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame that the Yugoslavians took all the best elements of the popular equivalent FIAT design and LEFT them out of the Yugo. What do you expect though? The thing was basic econo subcompact transportation 1970s technology built for the 1980s consumer. As such, of course it was going to be laughed at (regardless of the build quality).

The F-14A I don't think is a good fit, even with the troublesome TF-30 engines. Flown right, the P&W powered Tomcat was still a potent weapons system. Get behind the curve, look out. The Brewster Buffalo might fit, but the problems the USN encountered were mainly with the later marks that had additional armor plating. As such, the design became overweight and underpowered. The FINNISH still flew the earlier mark aircraft without all that additional weight and had great success with them. In a sense, the Buffalo was a lot like the Japanese Zero in terms of what happens when a design can't be expanded further past its limitations. Admittedly in Brewster's case, during WW2 the Corsairs they built were mostly either used for Lend Lease or kept in stateside training units as they were apparently of inferior build quality then the equivalent planes built by Vought and Goodyear.

Now in terms of my nominees, a good one might be the Fisher P-75 Eagle. The thing was built with off the shelf parts (like a Yugo) such as the wings (making up outer wings here) and canopy of a P-40, two Allison engines mounted in a side by side layout mid body driving a counter rotating prop, the landing gear from a Corsair and the tail section from an SBD. The design was intended to be an easy to mass produce long range escort fighter for B-29s. And it was built by a CAR COMPANY (Fisher was GM's body division). The result was slow and sluggish (like a Yugo). Unlike a Yugo though, thankfully this THING never made it into production. Supposedly this design was a ploy to keep GM out of producing B-29s, and as a distraction it apparently worked brilliantly for that as B-29 production was in full swing when the Eagle project got axed.

The Curtiss XP-87 Blackhawk might be another good candidate, but even though it was also mediocre, it also never made it into production and Curtiss folded not long after that. Unfortunate as Curtiss gave us some GREAT designs over the years. The Wrights may have invented flying, but Glen Curtiss mass produced the plane like Henry Ford did the Model T.

Edited by Jay Chladek
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Any WW2 Russian aircraft. If I were to live during those times, I wouldn't climb into those so-called-planes, knowing that the Luftwaffe and its Experten would immediately shoot me down. Period.

Sorry, gotta disagree. The Yak 3 was a formiddable airframe. . .it was more maneuverable than a Spitfire and so effective as a dogfighter that the Luftwaffe warned its pilots to RUN AWAY from them if they encountered them below 10,000 feet! That's a pretty darned good reccomendation in my book!

Sure, the MiG 3 at low altitude or the hopelessly outdated (by the time WWII broke out) I-16 were seriously outclassed by the BF-109 and especially the FW 190. . .but the Soviet planes by and large were sturdy, easy to fly, and some of them, as I mentioned above, actually stacked up quite well against the competition.

Cheers

Old Blind Dog

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