The World's 30 Strangest Airplanes. #5 Makes No Sense!

You might be surprised to find out that we have been navigating the airspace for commercial purposes for well over a century now. Yup, that’s correct – the first commercial flight was conducted by Tony Jannus on 1 January 1914 for the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line, and we’ve come a long way in the past 100 years. Today, a plane lands somewhere in the world every 3 seconds, but the airplanes used through history are not always what you imagine them to be. Some of them, in fact, are so strange that you’d probably be scared to fly on. Or not? Check out the list we’ve compiled and decide for yourselves!

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The Scaled Composites Model 281 Proteus designed by Burt Rutan, a currently retired aerospace engineer, and was flown for the first time in 1998. It is an astonishing tandem-wing High-Altitude Long Endurance aircraft which was built to investigate the use of aircraft as high altitude telecommunications relays. This multi-mission vehicle can orbit a point at over 60,000 ft for more than 18 hours.



The Airbus Beluga is a transporter aircraft used primarily to help them transport various components of an aircraft during the design process. It was initially named the Super Transporter but because of it’s whale like appearance, the Beluga name caught on. There’s only 5 of these built and they’ve been in operation ever since 1994 and they’re expected to be replaced by 2020.



Back when NASA was trying to send man to the moon on the Apollo space mission, there was no plane that was no cargo plane that was large enough to accommodate them. As a result, the Boeing 377PG was developed as a variation to the Boeing 377. The PG in the name stands for “Pregnant Guppy.” The name isn’t too surprising when you consider what the plane looks like.



This strange looking aircraft is a retired strategic bomber developed by the British Handley Page Aircraft Company. It was produced last and third in a series of V-bomber aircraft’s including the Avro Vulcan and Vickers Valiant. The Victor had also been equipped with radars, cameras and other sensors to allow it to serve better in the role of gathering intelligence.



The Bartini was a Soviet Union vertical take-off, amphibious aircraft developed during the 1970s. Its main purpose was a design that would enable it to take off from water and fly long distances at very high speed. Apart from flying at high altitude, this aircraft aimed to use the aerodynamic ground effect to have the capability of flying just above the sea surface.  The project was developed by the Italian designer Robert Bartini and was slowly abandoned after his death.

 

This now retired American experimental subscale prototype jet made its first flight back in 1997. The McDonell Douglas (later Boeing) tailless plane was controlled by a pilot in a virtual and ground-based cockpit and its design did not feature the traditional tail assembly like most other airplanes.



This America aircraft known as ‘the flying pancake’ resembles more a UFO than a plane. It was built as part of an experimental project  Vought XF5U “Flying Flapjack” by the United States Navy during World War II.  Unfortunately, the “all-wing” design consisting of flat, somewhat disk-shaped bodies which served as the lifting surface was abandoned by airplane manufactures, but adopted by sci-fi movie directors.