Top 5 ‘Best’ looking fighters
They aren’t.
Full disclosure before we move forward — This is just my opinion. And I don’t care about yours because you are obviously wrong.
There is a very old (and good imo) adage about aviation coming from WW2, “If it looks good, it flies good”. Well this list is all ugly fighters that have seen varying amount of success, so maybe they prove the adage wrong, maybe not. Let’s begin.
5. MiG 27 (And MiG 23BN) Floggers
The ugly ducks of the duckbill Flogger series by Russians. Both of them were primarily ground attack aircrafts, and hence lacked a search radar, thus the iconic duckbill. Looks awful and they weren’t exceptional planes either, and had their set of issues. Looks bleh.
4. Vought F-8 Crusader
The American contribution to make the world a little more uglier, this hunchback looking plane was primarily used by US Navy. An ugly cousin of the Cursader would come with the US Navy a decade later, a version of which would be named SLUF (Short Little Ugly Fucker) by its pilots. In my opinion, Crusader looked worse, but it flew sort of good. It would go on to serve USN, French Navy and even Philippine Air Force.
3. Dassault Étendard IV
Everyone makes ugly things, even the French, the same ones who would go on to give some of the best looking fighters like Mirage 2000 and Rafale. But they dropped the ball here. This plane looks like it has a tailwing in the front and the back. All in all, looks shit. Also only like 90 were built, only for French Navy. Imagine being a “Étendard IV” fanboy.
2. Su 17/22 Fitter
You just can’t beat the Russians at their own game. Imagine the design choice of mixing the nose-intake cylindrical body of the MiG 21 fame and adding variable swept wing, and then adding wing fences to it. Ugh. But it was built a lot, almost as much last three planes on this list combined. Just ugh on appearance though.
Honorable Mention : F16E/F and Beyond (equipped with CFT)
F16s already looked like Chicken, but since the Block 60 variants equipped with CFT they looks hideous, like a steroid fed Chicken by KFC. They aren’t anywhere in the list because they look better than most on the list but still, all in all, bad. They fly good tho, like really good. One of the most successful aircrafts in modern history. They are also a commercial success with equipping a lot of Air Forces and even in MMRCA competition for IAF (they aren’t gonna win tho).
1. Il 102
Like I said no one beats Russians at this game. The crown obviously belongs to them. This one was also a ground attack aircraft, in competition with the Su 25. It was so ugly, that Russian chose Su 25 (also a contender for this list had it been longer) over it. It was once described as “most gorgeously ugly combat jet ever” (look it up). It was only experimental, so it didn't fly good, proving the adage right.
Please note this is the absolute truth, with no possibility of difference. Either you accept this list, or you are wrong.
