TWA Constellation
B-747
Concorde

I loved flying in all of them.

Your choice of military planes is, putting it mildly, unrepresentative.

What do you think are the 11 most produced jets?

The list is:

1) Mig-15
2) Mig-21
3) Mig-17
4) F-86
5) F-84
6) Boeing 737
7) T-33
8) Mig-19
9) A320
10) F-4
11) Mig-23

I grew up in Dayton and spent countless hours there over a couple decades.
There is ALWAYS more to see. WW-1 pilot's diaries. Notes passed between POWs in Hanoi Hilton. Auschwitz prison uniforms. Personal notes of Orville Wright.
Look for details. The little dark corners holding the small glass displays under the wing of a B-29. It's the details that set the USAF museum apart from any other....including the Smithsonian. Oh...and the B-29....it's Bock's Car.

My company head office is in Dayton Ohio. :)

While I can't quarrel with your "numbers of jets produced", the thread title refers to "Best" and "Most Recognizable" "planes (a/c, civil and/or military), and says nothing about production numbers or power plants....

Numbers? I can list a dozen or so a/c familiar and recognizable to me built in far larger numbers than any on your list.... DC-3s/C-47s, for Europeans, the Bf/Me109 series.

Recognition? I doubt that 1% of the world's population and not many more of frequent air travelers could accurately ID an A320 on sight. On the other hand, seen and used around the Western world and in countless movies and TV shows, the F4 series would likely be the most identifiable of military jet a/c (while for me, no military jet can ever be so quickly recognizable - especially on the ground, wing angle of attack "up" - than the F8 Crusader).

I'd have no trouble recognizing individually the Mig-15, Mig-17, Mig-29, Mig-21 or Mig-23 (but then I was trained to do so). How few people really could correctly ID all of them?

Probably, for anyone over 60, it would be hard not to ID a B-29 (unless it was a B-50 w/scoops or a Tu-4)

I'll stick with 2 a/c which share a common ingredient, seen and identified once, neither could be mistaken for anything else, the Ju52 and the Ford Trimotor (except it could be a Fokker!). Let's face it...the use of corrugated metal roofing for skinning does limit the field, Ju34s being thin on the ground and in the air)

Gives me another excuse to go back:)

I am more partial to the Navy, but I have to say the USAF Museum blows the Naval Aviation museum down in Pensacola out the water (pun intended:D). You're right, airmotive it really is the smaller detail exhibits that really sets it apart from all of the other musuems.

"Best" likely gets too technical for me, although I think of the SR-71 and the B-1 Lancer should be high on the list. A spyplane you can't catch and a long-range strategic bomber you can't see had to be unsettling to the Soviets in a way that our typical hardware wasn't.

Recognizable to pretty much anyone including non-aviation buffs? Here's my list with two caveats: (a) you're old enough to have actually seen these once or twice and (b) you've lived somewhere you'd see these military planes which are mostly flown by U.S. or NATO forces. (As a kid, I roughly knew which MiG mapped to which NATO plane capability-wise, but I've long since forgotten it.)

- Super Connie - still a beautiful plane!
- 747
- 727
- A380
- C-5
- B-2
- Concorde
- F-4
- A-6
- F-14 & F-15 (I'll call it good even if people can't tell the difference :))
- Space Shuttle
- Apache...I know nothing about choppers but I know one of these when I see it

The distinctive list??

1. DC3 and military equivalents. Too many stories of the "over use" capabilities of the planes and their long (and continuing flying history)
2. 747 - nothing else looks like it. It changed commercial air travel. The 380 is eliminated by the C5A.
3. Concorde - The quintessential faster than sound plane. But this plane eliminates the large stealth bombers
4. The large 1930s/40s flying boats. The first overseas flights.
5. The B36 - Anyone who saw one fly overhead would not forget it. (I did)
6. A toss up between the Spitfire and the Zero
7. A toss up between the U2 and the SR71

Happy wandering

Fred

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the Lancaster bomber and only a few mentions of the Spitfire.

I would have but did not want to display my British bias. My father-in-laws job during WWII was to "bomb-up" the Lancasters. He told me many stories about loading bombs on Lancasters to "give Jerry a dose of his own medicine". Similar stories with Spitfires but he did not have as much to do with them. My mother's father was in the home guard and manned the anti-aircraft guns at Liverpool docks and Preston Docks. He claims to have shot down two Jerry planes.

I think if you got 100 people in a room, perhaps only two or three of them could name a Lancaster, versus, say a Halifax, or a Spitfire versus a Hurricane. 95 out of 100 could name a Concorde or 747. Sad, but true.

"Recognizable" has much to do with time and place. I spent my childhood and teenage years within a couple of miles of where i now live, and to a kid, fascinated with a/c, the sight of a B-36 at low level was awe-inspiring. At full load or close to it, woefully under-powered, even with the addition of jet engines outboard on the wings, the "big bird" seemed to struggle to climb out after takeoff, and was likely not a comfortable candidate for routine "touch and goes". There was no mistaking it for any other a/c, however, 6 pushing and 4 burning giving it a sound all its own.

Later in my life, General Dynamics brought the small B-58 Hustler fleet here for rework. In the era in which they formed part - small, high risk - of the US's nuclear deterrent, B-58s (worth a search for photos on the 'Net) with their razor-edged delta platform, oversize engine nacelles, and the huge combined belly tank/special weapon pack were unmatched for viewability and instant recognition, and aside from the giant whale clutched beneath the fuselage, among the 'sleekest' a/c ever produced, with a plan and profile which loaded the drawing pencils of both those imagining and designing supersonic airliners to come in the future (just around the corner, and in the eyes of dreamers certainly likely to dominate air travel. Loud? They could out-thunder the most thunderous thunderstorm!

To those who lived during WWII and the immediate post war years in the US, the Spitfire, with regular starring roles in news reels, movies, cocktail table books, etc., only showed up "in person" later at airshows. There was (and remains) no mistaking the unique elliptical wing plan, but for real "buffs", no forgetting the troublesome narrow undercarriage track shared with the Bf/Me109 series.