Top 5 Historic Military Aircraft That Changed Aviation (2024)

Many excellent military aircraft have made their mark on the annals of aviation history, and those warbirds made the men and women who designed, built, and flew them justifiably proud of their collective accomplishments.

But as far as narrowing it down to a Top 5 list of warplanes that were true game changers, i.e, that truly changed the course of aviation history...well, that's quite a challenge, and one that's sure to stir up some controversy, due to the unavoidable degree of subjectivity that goes into compiling and justifying such a list. But this Simple Flying journalist and former US Air Force officer will do his damnedest to back up his subjective assertions with as much solid fact as possible. Without further ado...

1 North American P-51D Mustang

Enabled Allied heavy bombers to take the fight to the heart of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany alike

This was the only aircraft our editors specifically asked me to include, and for good reason.

After all, it was this legendary WWII fighter plane that provided the necessary fuel capacity, range, and endurance to provide complete, to-hell-and-back fighter escort (AKA "Little Friends") to (1) US Army Air Forces' (USAAF) B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator heavy bombers on the "heavies'" (AKA "Big Friends") bombing missions into the industrial heart of Nazi Germany, and (2) the USAAF's B-29s Superfortress to do the same thing against Imperial Japan.

P-51 drivers ended up destroying nearly 5,000 Axis aircraft in WWII. Regarding the Mustang's performance in the European Theater in particular, Jeremy Kinney, associate director of research and curatorial affairs at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, sums it up perfectly (as quoted in Smithsonian Magazine):

"In terms of the air war over Europe with the strategic bombing campaign, the P-51 was a war-winning weapon. As a fighter escort, it enabled the successful bombing of targets deep in Nazi Germany from bases in England and Italy. That was a crucial component in the destruction of strategic sites such as factories and munition plants..."

"...The P-51 became the quintessential symbol of American fighter aircraft,” Kinney says. “Other fighters were just as successful, but the Mustang really captures the imagination in terms of when we think about World War II fighters. This plane facilitated a change in tactics and gave the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces superiority in the skies over Europe.”

Or as the one verse from the old fighter pilots' ditty "Give Me Operations" says:

Last but not least, the Mustang was the plane flown during WWII by Chuck Yeager, who coincidentally flew one of the other planes on this list; more on that in a bit, but first...

2 Boeing B-29 Superfortress

The only plane to end a war with a mere two bombs

...Since we mentioned the B-29 in the previous segment, that makes a perfect segue into this segment.

Those "mere two bombs" were, of course, the atomic bombs "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by B-29s "Enola Gay" and "Bockscar" on August 6 and August 9, 1945, respectively, thereby goading Imperial Japan into surrendering and thus finally ending the Second World War.

To give the readers an appreciation of just what a literally and figuratively earth-shattering contribution to aviation history the "Superforts" made, it must be remembered that even though other B-29 raids were already laying waste to Japanese cities -- escorted by those aforementioned P-51Ds -- Imperial Japan's Emperor Hirohito and his senior officers had been steadfastly refusing to surrender, stubbornly clinging to their collective interpretation of the old samurai code of Bushidō (武士道, "the way of the warrior"), which saw death as being a more honorable endgame than surrender.

The "A-bombs" finally enabled the Emperor to see the proverbial writing upon the wall, whereupon he relinquished his mythical demigod status and addressed the Japanese people on the radio, speaking as a fellow mere mortal human being. These snippets of his broadcast are courtesy of the Atomic Heritage Foundation:

"Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization."

Thus it was that the B-29 Superfortress ushered in the Atomic Age, and paved the way for future nuclear bomb-wielding strategic bombers such as: the Convair B-36 Peacemaker, Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, Rockwell B1-B Lancer (AKA "Bone"), and B-2 Spirit on the American side; and the Tupolev Tu-4 "Bull" (a very blatant ripoff of the B-29), Tu-22M "Backfire," Tu-95 "Bear," and Tu-160 "Blackjack" on the Soviet side.

3 Bell X-1

The plane that broke the sound barrier, 'nuff said

Now, back to the other Chuck Yeager-flown plane on this list.

If the B-29 made a literally earth-shattering contribution to military aviation history, then the rocket-powered X-1 was literally sky-shattering (though in this case, not with weapons) as in the sonic boom of the sound barrier being broken by a manmade object for the first time.

Of course, the sound barrier wasn't a literal physical wall, but it was nonetheless a speed limitation that prop-driven aircraft couldn't break (though the XF-84H "Thunderscreech" darn sure tried), and for that matter, nor could early jets and rocket-powered like Germany's Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe ("Swallow") and Me 163 Komet, America's Bell (hey, what a coincidence, there's that name again) P-59 Airacomet, or Britain's Gloster Meteor.

Well, on October 14, 1947, then-USAF Capt. (eventually retired as Brig, Gen.) Charles Elwood Yeager (1923 -- 2020) blasted that limitation into oblivion. As noted by my Simple Flying colleague in the above-linked article:

Supersonic flight was here to stay.

Today, "Glamorous Glennis" is on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM)'s annex in Chantilly, Virginia (near Dulles International Airport).

4 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (NATO reporting name "fa*got")

Ushered in the age of jet-to-jet combat

Just when you were probably starting to think that this would be a strictly Yankee-centric article, at least one Soviet-designed aircraft makes this list, and rightfully so (gotta "give the devil his due," eh). The MiG-15 "fa*got" was the one-half of the warbird pairing that ushered in the age of jet vs. jet fighter combat.

Of course, "It takes two to tango," as the saying goes, as the other contestant in that first jet-to-jet fight -- which took place on November 8, 1950, during the Korean War -- was an American Lockheed P-80/F-80 Shooting Star, flown by USAF 1st Lt Russell Brown.

Depending on which official story you believe, the engagement was either (A) won by Lt Brown via shootdown, which official USAF history recognizes to this day, or (B) a draw, as Soviet records claim that no MiGs were lost that day and that their pilot, Senior Lieutenant (Старший лейтена́н/Stárshiy leytenánt) Kharitonov, survived by pulling out of a dive at low altitude.

However, the straight-winged F-80's success against the swept-winged MiG-15 proved to be the exception and not the rule. The superior aerodynamics and armament -- two 23 mm (0.90 in) cannons and one 37 mm (1,45 in) cannon-- of the MiG-15 quickly outclassed the Shooting Star and every warbird that that anticommunist forces in Korea had available at the time, and quite frankly, scared the hell out of the senior officers of the US and her United Nations (UN) coalition allies.

"Desperate times call for desperate measures," as the saying goes; as one of my Simple Flying colleagues notes:

"The MiG-15 was one of the first successful jet fighters to incorporate swept wings to achieve high transonic speeds. This performance pushed the US to rush the North American F-86 Sabre to counter it. It is likely the most produced jet in history, with over 13,000 aircraft delivered. It remains in service as a training aircraft in 2024 (but only in North Korea)."

Upon further review, it turns out that the late great Chuck Yeager flew one of these fighters as well. I'm unable to ascertain the specific date or location of Yeager's flight in a captured fa*got, but in any event, Chuck put the captive Russian warbird through a high-altitude, full-power dive to determine if the fighter could break the sound barrier as the X-1 did.

Yeager got the plane up to Mach 0.98, but no faster than that, and he lost roll control and did not begin to regain it until flying into denser air at 12,000 ft (3,700 m) of altitude; Chuck had descended to 3,000 ft (910 m) by the time he finally regained full control and recovered from the dive.

Besides the operational fa*gots still in use by the North Korean People's Air Force, there are surviving MiG-15s at museums throughout the globe, including the aforementioned Udvar-Hazy Center, which is, fittingly enough, side-by-side with an F-86.

5 Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk "Stealth Fighter"

Proved the efficacy of stealth technology for combat airpower applications

One of the many ingenious products of Lockheed's (now Lockheed Martin's) legendary "Skunk Works" program. Calling the F-117 a "Stealth Fighter" is a bit of a misnomer, as the warbird carries no air-to-air weaponry, but I digress.

First (though less publicized) during Operation Just Cause in Panama in December 1989, and then far more dramatically, heavily, and publicly during the 1991 Persian Gulf War (AKA Operation Desert Storm), the F-117 demonstrated just how deadly effective stealth technology could be at getting a warplane over the target area completely undetected, pickling off her deadly payload, and then returning to base (RTB) still completely undetected.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the Gulf War can never forget the mind-blowing footage of a Nighthawk (AKA "Hopeless Diamond, "Roach," and "Stinkbug") dropping her 2,000-lb laser-guided bomb down the ventilation shaft of a telecommunications center in Baghdad nicknamed the "AT&T Building."

As noted by The Aviation Geek Club:

"Col. Al Whitley revealed that the F-117As flew some 1,271 sorties during the war, or about one per cent [sic] of the total sorties flown (110,000) by Allied Air Forces, with a success rate of 80%. The F-117As attacked thirty-one percent of all targets struck during the first twenty-four hours of the war, and were the only aircraft involved in attacks on heavily defended targets in and around Baghdad on the first night of the war."

No manmade technology is truly infallible, as was demonstrated during Operation Allied Force in 1999, when the Serbs shot down a Stinkbug with a surface-to-air missile (SAM).

Nonetheless, the F-117 paved the way for the B-2 Spirit "Stealth Bomber" (and her heir apparent, the 6th Generation B-21 Raider), as well as *true* stealth fighters such as the 5th Generation F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II (yes, two more Skunk Works brainchildren).

As for that "Stinkbug" nickname...well, check out the 1:45 mark of this video: