I get it now. Noel Pemberton Billing (that's one fellow, not three) was the
founder of Supermarine. Never knew that. Bio is at
http://www.plimsoll.org/Galleries/Bi...ng/default.asp
but it doesn't tell you that he won a L500 bet by earning his pilot's
license in a single morning; that as a naval officer he helped to organize
one of the first bombing raids in 1914; that he sold his interest in
Supermarine in 1916 upon being elected to Parliament so as not to have a
conflict of interest; and that after the war he was simply a nut case.


"Seth Masia" wrote in message
...
This is a great list, and I could kill an evening just looking these
things up. I've never heard of Pemberton-Billing, but wasn't there a
dead-slow four-winged Supermarine Nighthawk?

I sort of like the brutal look of the Dornier X -- it looks like an
airplane made of reinforced concrete, and you have to admire the fact that
it got off the water at all.

Seth

wrote in message
oups.com...
Seth,

There are so very many truly ugly airplanes in the running that the
Airtruck, which is honest ugly, might well get edged out: The Tarrant
Tabor - six-engined triplane with four engines between the lower wings
and two between the upper wings; Nieuport triplane of WWI - top wing
set back over the pilot; Caproni Ca 42, hideous triplane bomber of WWI
with max speed of 78 mph; Pemberton-Billing Nighthawk - WWI
Zepplin-terrifer (had a Zepp been over England in the daytime the thing
would have frightened the crew to death or paralyzed them with
laughter) with 2-100 hp engines driving the props, one 5 hp engine
driving a generator for a searchlight, 4 wings and 3 gunners - pilot
sat well aft where he probably couldn't see a thing; Caproni then
outdid himself with the bizarre looking Ca 60, 8-engines, three sets of
triplane wings on top of a long boat hulled fuselage that looked like a
stretched railroad passenger car, supposed to carry 100 pax, never did;
Horatio Phillips' multiplanes - all of them, as ugly as you can imagine
with from 20 to 110 wings, yes wings - each with only about a 4-6 inch
chord, conventional gear, with all wheels the same size, rail fuselage
and tail that looked like a kite turned on its edge and a stabilator
added; John Multiplane just after WWI, 7 wings, one 400 hp Liberty
engine and a boxkite tail, at least 20 feet tall and about 40 long,
looked as if you got too close to it while parked, it would collapse on
you; Barling Bomber of the '20s, biplane with ailerons between the
wings and four engines (same guy who built the Tarrant Tabor); Dornier
Do-X, slab wing, 12 engines above it, looked as if assembled by a bunch
of drunks with spare airplane parts - never was able to climb above
2,000 feet MSL, flew from central Europe to New York City via South
America on a trip in which it averaged, get this, 1.6 mph, yep, that's
right, because it was parked so long and so often trying to fix it;
Flying Flea, original version, makes the ugliest ultralight look
wonderful; Me-323 Gigant, high wing, 6 engines, centipede landing gear,
and a fat nose that looked like a confused face; Shorts 330 twin engine
box that flies far, far better than it looks; F-107-upgrade of the
F-100 that outperformed everything but looked strange with the air
intake above the fuselage and probably lost the procurement competition
to the F-105 because of its appearance; about half of the airplanes
that flew or attempted to fly before 1912, some would frighten the most
jaded pilot; any ornithopter; Grumman Mohawk - speed, power,
maneuverability in a truly ugly package; any multi-engine British
bomber built prior to 1940 except the Wellington. What was the old
saying?...when uglier airplanes are built, Grumman will build them,
which held true until Shorts ran away with the competition.

All the best,
Rick