Right now the official speed record is still held by the Lockheed Blackbird. The X-15 used to hold the unofficial record but the X-43 recently earned it. Other notable fast aircraft include the MiG-25/MiG-31 (fastest armed plane), the Concorde (fastest non-military plane), the F-15 Eagle (fastest plane in current operation in the US), the F-104 Starfighter (fastest plane at low altitude), the F-106 Delta Dart (fastest single-engine plane), and any orbiting spacecraft (especially the Space Shuttle) capable of atmospheric re-entry. The Westland Lynx is the fastest helicopter, closely followed by the Mil Hind. The Tupolev Tu-114 has been the fastest turboprop for decades, and a highly modified P-51 has recently taken the record for fastest piston-powered aircraft.
- Largest Airplanes
Depending on how you define “large”, the largest airplane is either the Hughes HK-1 Spruce Goose (wingspan) or the Antonov An-225 (length, weight, internal volume, payload). The largest production aircraft are the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, the Antonov An-124, and the Airbus A380. The largest airliners are the Airbus A380, the A340, the Boeing 777, and the 747 (the biggest versions of each are about the same size). The largest bombers are the Tupolev Tu-160 and the Boeing B-52. The Mil Mi-12 prototype is the world’s largest helicopter, and the Mil Mi-26 is the largest and heaviest production helicopter. The largest unmanned airplanes are the Boeing Condor and the AeroVironment Helios by wingspan and the Global Hawk by weight, although a modified Boeing 707-020 has once been flown as a drone, unmanned, during a crash test to evaluate a fire-suppressing fuel system. The large Zeppelin dirigibles flown in the first half of the 20th century were much larger than any airplane – some were the size of a modern aircraft carrier, not much smaller than the Empire State Building.
- Altitude Records
The official altitude record (unassisted takeoff) used to be held by the Blackbird but was recently taken by the Helios. The unofficial altitude record used to belong to the X-15 but was recently earned by SpaceShip One. A NASA F-104 with a rocket engine added to its tail has a semi-official altitude record (it flew higher than the Helios but not as high as the X-15). The altitude record for a helicopter has for a while been held by the Aerospatiale/Eurocopter SA 315 B Lama, although the highest landing-and-takeoff by a helicopter was recently earned by an Eurocopter AS 350 B3 Ecureil that landed and then took off at the summit of Everest. The Boeing Condor UAV is the highest-flying piston-powered plane, and the Grobb Egrett is the highest-flying turboprop. Weather balloons regularly fly higher than the highest-flying heavier-than-air aircraft, and so do all spacecraft, naturally.
- Longest Flights
The longest-distance flight ever was recently flown in the Scaled Composites Global Flyer. As for endurance (time): The longest unrefueled flight was the global circumnavigation done in the Scaled Composites Voyager. The pilots of the Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon have flown a little further than the Global Flyer and a lot longer than the Voyager, however. Naturally, these records exclude astronauts who regularly “fly” for millions of miles and sometimes for months. The longest airliner flights are done by the A340 and 777. The longest-flying combat plane is the Tu-95, although most military aircraft can refuel in mid-air and thus fly as long as the pilots can endure (B-2 missions have lasted over 40 hours). An OH-6 helicopter has been flown for over 1900 miles (unrefueled), the Boeing A160 Hummingbird helicopter can fly for 12 hours (unrefueled and unmanned), and a Hughes 269 helicopter has been flown for 101 hours (refueled in flight). The Boeing Condor holds the endurance record for UAVs while the Global Hawk holds the unmanned distance record, but the Helios would have surpassed both of those had it not crashed before the end of its test program.
- “First”s
The first hot-air balloons were probably made by the ancient Chinese, Montgolfier built the first manned balloon, and Giffard flew the first dirigible. Heavier-than-air flight had been achieved before the Wrights, but most pre-Wright airplanes did not fly controllably or sustainably (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_flying_machine), or flew with the aid of balloons (i.e. heavier-than-air wing-assisted dirigibles such as Frederick Marriott’s Avitor). It is debatable whether the Santos Dumont 14-bis or the Wright Flyer was the first practical airplane (the Flyer required a catapult to take off, which made it both more convenient as it required less room to take off and land, but also less convenient in that a catapult was needed locally anywhere the plane was to take off from). The first airplane with a modern configuration (stabilizers and control surfaces at the back, engine at the front with a propeller pulling the nose, single set of wings) was the Blériot 9 (although this design had been proposed as far back as Cayley’s studies in the mid-1800s). The first jet plane was the Heinkel He 178, the first jet fighter was the Messerschmitt Me262, the first American jet was the Bell P-59, and the first practical and widely successful jet was arguably the Lockheed F-80. The first rocketplane was the Lippisch Ente. The first turboprop-powered plane was a converted Meteor FI. The first helicopter was the Focke-Angelis FA-61 (although, like the Wright Flyer, it was not truly practical, and was preceded by less-than-controllable but similar designs, and by machines where the rotors were not powered – autogyros, most notably those made by Cierva). The first practical helicopter, and the first with a modern configuration (with a tail rotor), was the Sikorsky VS-300. Wright Flyers were used in the first commercial air shipment and in the first commercial passenger flights using airplanes. The first airliner to reliably make money off of regularly-scheduled long-distance flights was the Douglas DC-3 (the price of tickets more than paid for the cost of fuel and maintenance; Previously, airlines were not profitable and only operated with the help of government subsidies). The first airplane to cross the English Channel was the Blériot 9. The first to cross the Atlantic was the Curtiss NC4, the first to do it non-stop was a Vickers Vimy, the first to do it with one solo crewmember was a modified Ryan M-2 (the NYP “Spirit of St Louis”), and the first to do it with zero crewmembers (UAV) was an Insitu AeroSonde. The first UAV to cross the Pacific was a Global Hawk. The first airplane to fly around the world was the Douglas World Cruiser (a group of 4 planes, actually, which made many stops, and only two of the four completed the circumnavigation), the first to do it with one solo crewmember was a Lockheed Vega (also making many stops), the first to do it non-stop was a Boeing B-50 (refueled four times in mid-air), the first to do it unrefueled was the Scaled Composites Voyager, and the first to do it unrefueled and with one solo crewmember was the Global Flyer. No UAV has yet flown around the world. The sound barrier was first broken in a North American F-86 in a steep dive, and then by the Bell X-1 in level flight. (While the most famous X-1 flights started with a drop from a B-50 mothership, one of the later flights did start with a “conventional” powered takeoff from the ground, thus allowing for an official record). The Douglas D-558 was the first airplane flown to MACH 2, and the Bell X-2 the first to MACH 3. The North American X-15 was the first airplane to be flown to MACH 4, 5, and 6, and NASA’s X-43 (a UAV) was the first – and so far only – aircraft to reach MACH 7, 8, 9, and 10. I suppose I could also list some space records – first satellite, first manned orbiter, first spacewalk, first landing on the moon, probes sent to other worlds – but that would lie a bit outside the scope of this material.
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