25 Interesting Facts About Fighters Aircrafts

Here are 25 Interesting Facts About Fighters Aircrafts.

1-5 Interesting Facts About Fighters Aircrafts

1. F4 Phantom II was called “World’s Leading Distributor of MiG Parts” because it destroyed so many MiG fighters – Source

2. On 9/11, after both of the twin towers were hit, some jet fighters took to the air without any live ammunition, knowing that to prevent the hijackers from striking their intended targets, the pilots might have to intercept and crash their fighters into the hijacked planes, ejecting at the last moment. – Source

3. During WW2, Russian Fighter pilot T. Kuznetsov flew himself home after being shot down by stealing a Nazi fighter plane. The German pilot landed near his crash site to scrounge around the wreck to look for souvenirs. – Source

4. During WW2, while parachuting from a damaged bomber, an American aviator downed a Japanese fighter plane by shooting the pilot in the head with his sidearm. – Source

5. In 1989, a Soviet pilot ejected a perfectly working MIG 23 thinking the plane’s engine had failed. It flew over 560 miles, crossing Germany before running out of fuel and crashing into a house in Belgium killing one teenager.– Source

6-10 Interesting Facts About Fighters Aircrafts

6. The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird strategic reconnaissance aircraft was so fast, the designers did not even consider evasive maneuvers; the pilot was simply instructed to accelerate and out-fly any threat, including missiles. – Source

7. As impressive as the Lockheed SR-71 was, it had a secret older brother (the A-12) which was even faster, lighter, and had a higher service ceiling. – Source

8. The Lockheed U-2 is so hard to land that on every landing, the plane is paced by a chase car such as the Camaro SS with an assistant “talking” the pilot down and since 2001, more than a dozen pilots have suffered the effects of decompression sickness and nine were reported to have suffered permanent brain damage. – Source

9. There exists a resort on a private African game reserve where, along with safari drives through beautiful landscapes, you can fly in a MiG-21 fighter jet. – Source

10. In 1970 Russian MiG-25 Fighter had a majority of its avionics implemented in vacuum tubes to resists nuclear electromagnetic pulse. – Source

11-15 Interesting Facts About Fighters Aircrafts

11. Every last F14 Tomcat America has in flyable storage is being shredded to prevent spares reaching Iran, who are still flying the ones sold to them by the US in the 70’s – Source

12. The F-15 Eagle in all Air Forces has a combined air-to-air combat record of 104 kills to 0 losses. No air superiority versions of the F-15 (A/B/C/D models) have been shot down by enemy forces.- Source

13. In 1983, an Israeli pilot successfully landed an F-15 with only one wing. In fact, he didn’t realize the extent of the damage until after landing, and stated he would have ejected had he known. – Source

14. A McDonnell Douglas F-15 once shot down a satellite. – Source

15. Chuck Yeager, the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound, revived his feat on October 14 2012 in an F-15 Eagle, to celebrate the 65th anniversary of breaking the sound barrier. He was 89 years old. – Source

16-20 Interesting Facts About Fighters Aircrafts

16. The F-22 and Eurofighter Typhoon have been pitted against each other in mock dogfights in the past. The Typhoons proved to be surprisingly effective against the American Aircraft, and after such an encounter the USAF declared “they didn’t want to play any more” as a result. – Source

17. During WW2, a single American P-51 fighter plane held off 30 German fighters from attacking a squadron of B-17 bombers for over half an hour. – Source

18. The only plane allowed to fly on 9/11 after the attacks was a plane from San Diego to Miami delivering anti-venom to a man bitten by a highly poisonous snake; it was accompanied by two jet fighters – Source

19. In June 1974, while President Nixon was on his way to a scheduled stop in Syria, Syrian fighter jets intercepted Air Force One to act as escorts. However, the Air Force One crew was not informed in advance and, as a result, took evasive action including a dive. – Source

20. The test pilot for America’s first jet fighter dressed in a disguise, so that if trainees at a nearby base saw this new “propeller-less” plane, they’d be more likely to think they were hallucinating if it was being flown by a gorilla wearing a derby and smoking a cigar. – Source

21-25 Interesting Facts About Fighters Aircrafts

21. When the first time an F-22 Raptor flew over the International Date Line it had a massive system failure and had to turn back to Hawaii. – Source

22. In 1956 due to high speed a F11 fighter shot itself because it was faster than its own bullet. – Source

23. The pride of the USAF, the F-22 raptor, has a mysterious fatal flaw. Its pilots often experience oxygen deprivation, and partly due to this the aircraft has the highest accident rate in the air force. The cause is unknown, and the issue is so severe that two pilots seek whistleblower protection. – Source

24. The expected cost of the F-35 Program alone is nearly 7 times the total cost of the International Space Station – Source

25. During WW2, Royal Air Force fighter pilots started a rumor that excessive carrot consumption gave gunners night vision. They did this so as not to alert Germans of RAF’s new radar technology after they shot down German aircraft on night raids and the Germans believed it. Germans fighters then started eating large quantities of carrots – Source