If it looks right...

[Lost ranger]

It's often said that an aircraft that looks right will fly well. A pretty dubious notion.

But how many aircraft looked really good but were actually rubbish? Not in the sense of made to do the wrong job but actually flew badly.

Vought Cutlass perhaps? FW200 Condor?

[Simpo Two]

The Cutlass looks like a flying disaster to me, but not the Condor. If the Luftwaffe had seen the need for a 'heavy', London might be a bit different now.

[aeropilot]

Simpo Two said:

The Cutlass looks like a flying disaster to me, but not the Condor. If the Luftwaffe had seen the need for a 'heavy', London might be a bit different now.

They did see the need for a heavy bomber though, and before the war started, we were just lucky in that they were utterly stupid in making the decision that such a large aircraft should be powered by just two engines.....
The He177 first flew in Nov 1939......just imagine had it first flew then with 4 x DB601's mounted on the wings, it might have been ready in time for in service by the Battle of Britain......

[Eric Mc]

The He177 didn’t have two engines , it had four.

[DodgyGeezer]

Eric Mc said:

The He177 didn’t have two engines , it had four.

Indeed - iirc they were rather prone to combusting, curious why they chose that configuration rather than a, seemingly, less complex solution

[LP12]

Eric Mc said:

The He177 didn’t have two engines , it had four.

Exactly in 2 nacelles.

[Eric Mc]

LP12 said:

Exactly in 2 nacelles.

Sadly, no He177s survive but if you pop along to the Wings Aviation Museum in West Sussex they have a twin engine block from an He177. You can see how huge and cumbersome the arrangement was. No wonder they burst into flames on a regular basis.

The "twin propeller" layout was chosen because of the requirement that the aircraft had to have a dive bombing capability - which was lunatic for an aircraft that size.

In the end, a "proper" four engined version (the He277) was flown but never went into production.

[aeropilot]

LP12 said:

Eric Mc said:

The He177 didn’t have two engines , it had four.

Exactly in 2 nacelles.

But, that's exactly the point. The Reich spec called for a long range two-engined heavy bomber......

Because there was no chance and no engine capable of doing the job, and the Nazi system didn't allow for people to tell those at the top "Don't be stupid" the engineers were forced to conjoin a pair of 601's onto a coupled gearbox drive into a single nacelle so it looked like it was two engined.
Had they been able to tell the idiots they were idiots and just stuck 4 x 601's in 4 x nacelles things might have been very different......
And that's before Udet, decided it needed to be capable of being a dive bomber.......
Lucky for us the very nature of such a political system worked for us rather than against us over time.

[Eric Mc]

It wasn’t just the Germans who made dumb mistakes. Although the Rolls Royce Vulture was a genuine single engine, it was effectively two Kestrel blocks running a single driveshaft. The Vulture was a failure and doomed a number of aircraft projects which had been built around it - most notably the Avro Manchester. Luckily, a Manchester fitted with four lower powered engines turned out to be an exceptional aeroplane.
Maybe the 277 might have been OK, but it never got the chance.

[Yertis]

There were a few early US jets that looked great but were let down by their engines - F11, F3 Demon, XF88 Voodoo. The latter two morphed into excellent aircraft. The XF88 dates from 1948 - visionary at the time.

[andyA700]

This would have been interesting if it had been produced in numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Ju_390

[Ayahuasca]

Didn’t Hitler insist that his bombers should be able to dive-bomb? That must have imposed enormous constraints - imagine if the Lanc had had to be a dive bomber …

[DodgyGeezer]

Ayahuasca said:

Didn’t Hitler insist that his bombers should be able to dive-bomb? That must have imposed enormous constraints - imagine if the Lanc had had to be a dive bomber …

and Udet - thankfully with lunatics running the assylum it's somewhat easier to stop them as rationality isn't a strong suit (the Maus anyone?)

[FourWheelDrift]

Supermarine Scimitar. 51% of the production run of 76 were lost in accidents. Maintenance heavy, too fast landing for the smaller fleet carriers they were deployed on such as HMS Centaur and HMS Victorious.

[Lost ranger]

FourWheelDrift said:

Supermarine Scimitar. 51% of the production run of 76 were lost in accidents. Maintenance heavy, too fast landing for the smaller fleet carriers they were deployed on such as HMS Centaur and HMS Victorious.

Wasn't that more a case of the carriers being too small? IE wrong aircraft for the job rather than an issue with the aircraft itself.

[aeropilot]

Lost ranger said:

FourWheelDrift said:

Supermarine Scimitar. 51% of the production run of 76 were lost in accidents. Maintenance heavy, too fast landing for the smaller fleet carriers they were deployed on such as HMS Centaur and HMS Victorious.

Wasn't that more a case of the carriers being too small? IE wrong aircraft for the job rather than an issue with the aircraft itself.

Correct.

[mikebradford]

Tupolev Tu-144

Russian concorde copy, so looked stunning. Unfortunately a complete disaster

[Tango13]

The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, it was in some respects years ahead of its' time but the use of hypergolic fuels wasn't the smartest of moves.

[TGCOTF-dewey]

Square windows.... Stress risers.

[46and2]

Does the F-104 fit into this category? Maybe not a bad aircraft in ts own right but the pilots couldn't afford any loss of concentration.