50 Fun Facts About WW2 Aircraft

Which vegetable did British propaganda credit for RAF night interceptions, to keep airborne radar secret?

Carrots were said to sharpen night vision, a myth spread to explain kills that really came from radar carried in the aircraft. The press dubbed ace John Cunningham Cat's Eyes as part of the cover.

Which term did American night fighter crews coin for the unidentified flying objects they reported over wartime Europe?

Foo fighters took their name from a nonsense word in the Smokey Stover comic strip, borrowed by a radar operator of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron. The term soon covered any wartime UFO sighting.

After which Hollywood actress did Allied airmen nickname the inflatable life jacket issued with their flight gear?

Mae West was famous for her curves, and an inflated life preserver gave its wearer a similar outline. The jacket was invented in 1928 and issued to American and RAF aircrew.

Which aviation tycoon built the huge wooden Spruce Goose flying boat as a wartime transport that flew only once?

Howard Hughes disliked the Spruce Goose nickname, and the aircraft was in fact made almost entirely of birch. Wood was used because strategic metals were reserved for the war effort.

Which French author and airmail pilot vanished in 1944 while flying an unarmed reconnaissance plane from Corsica?

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had published The Little Prince only the year before he disappeared. Debris from his aircraft was found on the seabed off Marseille in 2000.

Which American big band leader vanished in December 1944 on a flight over the English Channel to France?

Glenn Miller was a passenger in a single-engined UC-64 Norseman that never arrived. An Eighth Air Force inquiry blamed a mix of human error, mechanical failure and weather.

Which Japanese weapons, launched by the thousand from Honshu, killed six people in Oregon in May 1945?

Bomb-carrying balloons made of paper and filled with hydrogen crossed the Pacific on the jet stream. About 9,300 were released, and the Oregon deaths were the only ones from enemy action in the contiguous US.

RAF aircrew jokingly blamed unexplained mechanical failures in their aircraft on which mischievous imaginary creatures?

Gremlins began as RAF slang in the 1920s and spread through wartime squadrons, where blaming them saved crews from blaming each other. Enemy aircraft turned out to suffer the same mystery faults.

Which British fighter with an elliptical wing stayed in production before, during and after the Second World War?

The Spitfire was designed by R. J. Mitchell, who drew on his Schneider Trophy racing seaplanes and died of cancer in 1937. His colleague Joseph Smith led its later development.

Which future US president lost his elder brother Joe when an explosive-packed drone bomber blew up over England?

John F. Kennedy inherited the political career his father had planned for Joe Jr., a Navy pilot who volunteered for Operation Aphrodite in 1944. The explosives detonated before the crew could bail out.

What new type of aircraft, the Sikorsky R-4, carried out its first combat rescue in the China-Burma-India theatre?

Helicopter pilot Carter Harman lifted out a downed airman and three British soldiers over several trips, despite high altitude and humidity. The R-4 was the first helicopter built in large numbers.

Which Japanese carrier fighter, named after the imperial year it entered service, flew in the Pearl Harbor raid?

Zero comes from the last digit of the imperial year 2600, which was 1940 in the Western calendar. Its pilots called it the Zero-sen, sen being short for the Japanese word for fighter plane.

Which American bomber got its famous nickname from a Seattle newspaper reporter's caption for a photo of the prototype?

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was named by Richard Williams of The Seattle Times, who called it a 15-ton flying fortress in a picture caption. Boeing saw the value of the name and trademarked it.

Which American heavy bomber, subject of a 1990 Hollywood film, flew home in 1943 after completing 25 combat missions?

Memphis Belle and its crew toured the United States selling war bonds after their 25th mission. Its nose art carried 25 bomb symbols and eight swastikas for the German aircraft the crew claimed.

Which group of American volunteer pilots flew shark-faced P-40s for China against Japan in 1941 and 1942?

The Flying Tigers copied their shark-face markings from an RAF squadron in North Africa, which had borrowed the idea from German pilots. Officially they were the First American Volunteer Group.

Allied aircraft were painted with black and white stripes in 1944 to prevent friendly fire during which operation?

The Normandy landings stripes, five alternating bands on the wings and fuselage, were removed from upper surfaces a month later to hide aircraft parked at forward bases in France.

Gladiator biplanes later named Faith, Hope and Charity became legends defending which Mediterranean island in 1940?

Malta's famous trio is partly a myth: the defending flight had more than three Gladiators, and the names were applied later. The fuselage of Faith is still on display in a Valletta museum.

Which Hollywood star enlisted after his wife Carole Lombard died and flew bomber missions over Europe as a gunner?

Clark Gable flew five combat missions in 1943 while making a film meant to recruit aerial gunners. He earned the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Which pressurised American bomber with remote-controlled gun turrets cost more than the entire Manhattan Project?

The Boeing B-29 Superfortress cost about $3 billion to design and build, against $1.9 billion for the atomic bomb project. One gunner could aim several turrets through an analogue computer.

Chicago's main international airport is named after which US Navy fighter pilot, awarded the Medal of Honor in 1942?

Butch O'Hare was credited with shooting down five enemy bombers despite a limited supply of ammunition. Orchard Field was renamed for him in 1949, six years after he was killed in action.

Exiled airmen from which occupied country formed No. 303 Squadron, which claimed 126 kills in the Battle of Britain?

Poland's exiled airmen formed the squadron at Blackpool in July 1940 and joined the battle two months after it began. Sixteen Polish squadrons eventually served with the RAF.

Kitchen saucepans made of which metal were collected from British households in 1940 to help build warplanes?

Aluminium pans were handed in across Britain after Lord Beaverbrook's appeal, which his son later called nothing more than a propaganda exercise.

RAF crews nicknamed the Wellington bomber the Wimpy after a hamburger-loving character in which cartoon series?

Popeye's portly friend J. Wellington Wimpy shared a name with the bomber, which was really named after the 1st Duke of Wellington, as was the earlier Vickers Wellesley.

Under which American aid programme did the Soviet Union receive over 11,000 aircraft, including 4,719 Airacobras?

Lend-Lease also delivered more than 400,000 jeeps and trucks to the Soviet Union. Flying the P-39, Soviet pilots ran up the highest kill tallies ever achieved in an American fighter type.

Allied transport pilots flew the dangerous supply route nicknamed the Hump over which mountain range to reach China?

The Himalayas forced crews to fly from India without reliable charts, radio navigation aids or weather information. The airlift supplied Chiang Kai-shek's armies and American air units based in China.

Which aviation hero, refused a commission by President Roosevelt, flew 50 Pacific combat missions as a civilian?

Charles Lindbergh had been the spokesman of the isolationist America First Committee, so Roosevelt would not restore his colonel's rank. He was unofficially credited with shooting down an enemy aircraft.

Which German fighter, first used in the Spanish Civil War, was built in greater numbers than any other in history?

The Messerschmitt Bf 109 reached 34,248 airframes between 1936 and April 1945. It was also the mount of the three top-scoring fighter aces of all time, who claimed 928 victories among them.

Which American fighter, weighing up to eight tons fully loaded, did its pilots nickname the Jug?

The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt is usually said to have earned the name because its profile resembled a milk jug of the time. Its weight made it one of the heaviest fighters of the conflict.

Which US Navy carrier fighter was credited with destroying 5,223 enemy aircraft, more than any other Allied naval type?

The F6F Hellcat was built at such a rate that 11,000 left the factory in just two years. The original design was sound enough to need little modification once production was under way.

Which heavy bomber with the slender Davis wing was built in larger numbers than any other US military aircraft?

The Consolidated B-24 Liberator reached about 18,500 units, a record for any bomber. Its range let anti-submarine versions help close the Mid-Atlantic gap where U-boats had hunted beyond air cover.

Which Hawker fighter, designed to replace the Hurricane, instead found fame as a rocket-firing ground-attack aircraft?

Typhoon squadrons received RP-3 rockets from late 1943, and with four 20 mm cannon the type became one of the war's most successful ground-attack aircraft. It never fully met its high-altitude brief.

Which fighter, the only Allied jet aircraft to see combat in the war, first went into action against V-1 flying bombs?

The Gloster Meteor went into action over Kent in July 1944 and had destroyed 14 flying bombs by the war's end. Jamming guns delayed its first two kills until early August.

Which German bomber with a glazed greenhouse nose was first presented to the world as a civil airliner?

The Heinkel He 111 was disguised because the post-1918 peace terms banned German bombers, which earned it the label of a wolf in sheep's clothing. It was the Luftwaffe's most numerous bomber early in the war.

Which German short take-off liaison aircraft plucked Mussolini from a mountain-top near the Gran Sasso in 1943?

The Fieseler Storch landed in about 30 metres and took off again, overloaded, after a run of only 80. Its name, German for stork, came from the long legs of its landing gear.

Which big RAF flying boat are the Germans reputed to have nicknamed the Flying Porcupine for its defensive guns?

The Short Sunderland was developed in parallel with the Empire flying boats of Imperial Airways. It became one of the most powerful and widely used flying boats of the war.

Which American bomber, now displayed at the US Air Force museum in Ohio, dropped the Fat Man atomic bomb on Nagasaki?

Bockscar takes its name from a pun on Captain Frederick Bock, its regular commander, although Major Charles Sweeney flew it on the Nagasaki mission.

Which air chief marshal, nicknamed Stuffy, led RAF Fighter Command through the Battle of Britain in 1940?

Hugh Dowding had prepared the radar-fed air defence network later called the Dowding system. He was replaced against his wishes in November 1940, weeks after the battle was won.

Which Marine Corps ace led the Black Sheep Squadron, later the subject of a 1970s television series?

Pappy Boyington was shot down in January 1944, captured by a Japanese submarine crew and held prisoner for more than a year and a half. He received the Medal of Honor.

Which German dive-bomber pilot, the most decorated of the Second World War, was credited with knocking out 519 tanks?

Hans-Ulrich Rudel was the only person awarded the Knight's Cross with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds. His tally also included a battleship, a cruiser and 70 landing craft.

Which British film star died in 1943 when German aircraft shot down a civilian airliner flying from Lisbon to England?

Leslie Howard, who played Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind, was one of 17 people killed when eight Ju 88s attacked BOAC Flight 777 over the Bay of Biscay.

Which English pilot, the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia, died on a wartime ferry flight in 1941?

Amy Johnson was flying for the Air Transport Auxiliary when her aircraft came down in the Thames Estuary. She bailed out, but her body was never recovered and the cause of her death is still debated.

The costly American raids on Schweinfurt in 1943 aimed to wreck German factories making which machine parts?

Ball bearings went into all manner of war machines, so the plants looked like a perfect bottleneck. The second raid lost 60 of the 291 bombers sent, with 17 more damaged beyond repair.

Which rocket-powered Japanese suicide aircraft, named after the cherry blossom, did the Allies call the Baka bomb?

Ohka pilots rode into action slung beneath a much larger bomber, because their craft had a range of only 37 km. Baka is a Japanese insult meaning fool or idiot.

Which Japanese ace, badly wounded in the head and half-blinded, flew nearly five hours back to Rabaul in 1942?

Saburo Sakai covered 560 nautical miles in 4 hours 47 minutes, steering by familiar volcanic peaks. Surgery never fully restored the sight in his right eye.

Which Japanese officer led the first wave at Pearl Harbor and later toured America as a Christian evangelist?

Mitsuo Fuchida commanded a first wave of 183 aircraft launched from carriers 250 miles north of Oahu. After converting to Christianity he travelled in the United States and Europe telling his story.

Which German aircraft of 1944, used mostly for reconnaissance, was the world's first operational jet bomber?

The Arado Ar 234 flew too fast and too high for Allied piston-engined fighters to intercept. In April 1945 it became the last Luftwaffe aircraft to fly over the United Kingdom during the war.

Which Soviet pilot, called the White Lily of Stalingrad, was the first woman to become a fighter ace?

Lydia Litvyak still holds the record for the most kills by a female fighter pilot. She was shot down during the Battle of Kursk in 1943, shortly before her 22nd birthday.

Airmen who saved their lives by parachuting from a disabled aircraft earned a lapel pin from which informal club?

Caterpillar Club members honour the silkworm, whose threads made the original parachutes. The parachute maker authenticates each claim before sending a certificate and the pin.

British Commonwealth air forces knew the American T-6 Texan trainer by the name of which university?

Harvard trainers began reaching the Commonwealth in December 1938, and that name is how the type is best known outside the US. The US Navy called the same aircraft the SNJ.

Which American company built the Double Wasp radial engine that powered the Corsair, the Marauder and the Black Widow?

Pratt & Whitney produced the R-2800 from 1939 to 1960. In October 1940 it made the prototype Corsair the first single-engined American fighter to exceed 400 mph in level flight.