The 11 Worst Fighter Jets Of All Time
Now that we have had more than a century to refine our fighting planes, you might think that we have achieved near perfection. In many ways, we have. Aircraft such as the United States F-35 and F-22, the French Mirage, and the Eurofighter Typhoon are all examples of the most advanced technology put on display with engineering that pushes up against the laws of physics with force. Many of us live in countries knowing our skies are secure thanks to squadrons of cutting-edge fighter jets at the ready, but the journey to this point was long and contained more than a few ups and downs.
The early days of aircraft development relied substantially on trial and error to get things right. Fortunately, we have surpassed those methods and are blessed with computer-aided design that can work out the kinks long before a single bolt is fastened. However, there is a long period between the old trial and error method and the computer-driven one in which fighter jets were labored over and experimented with to create the next best thing. Some of our finest flying machines came from this period — but so did an awful lot of duds.
In fact, very expensive duds were built on both sides of the Iron Curtain, including some that flew for years before being retired. It can be enjoyable to marvel at the best fighter jets ever to grace our skies, but equally so is it enjoyable to gawk at the failures that made it out of the hangar. Here are the worst 11 of them.
Sukhoi Su-7
The Soviets showed they could build a formidable fighter jet when the MiG-15 entered combat and began dominating the skies. However, this would end as the new American F-86 Sabre showed up to level the playing field, even going so far as to take the upper hand completely. As that conflict concluded –- or simply paused as no armistice has been signed to this day –- the other major design bureau creating aircraft for the Soviet Union sought to make its new plane the best in the fleet, and that was the Sukhoi Su-7.
Development of its prototype, designated the Su-1, began in 1953. It was to be a swept-wing aircraft featuring a single new Soviet Lyulka AL-7 turbojet engine with an open-nose assembly. Its development and testing phase was unusually long at six years, and the fact that a test pilot died three years on was foreboding. Regardless, the final Su-7 production unit was released in 1959, equipping the Soviet Air Force and several other allied countries.
Although the Su-7 was fast, it failed to fulfill the role it was built for. Its range was lacking due to inefficiencies inherent to the engine, and the engine was unreliable. It was designed for dogfighting but performed poorly in this role. Therefore, plans were drawn to make it a tactical strike aircraft. Designers gave it thin and highly swept wings, which made it difficult to handle on landing due to the increased landing speed required by the wing design. To make this matter worse, cockpit visibility was abysmal. Surprisingly, and despite its inherent flaws, the Su-7 remained in service with various countries until the 1990s.
Sukhoi Su-57
Although the bulk of the world's worst fighter jets were built ages ago, some models are currently in inventory and even deployed. Even though the Soviet Union was long ago disbanded, the powers that be in the Russian military have continued to develop equipment to keep up with NATO's latest hardware. Its latest attempt to keep up with the fifth-generation fighters, such as the F-35 and F-22, is the Sukhoi S-57 — or Felon according to its NATO reporting name.
Plans for this plane go back as far as the '70s, but the fall of the Soviet Union dragged them along for years and production planes didn't arrive until 2019. While the aircraft looks impressive from afar, things deteriorate quickly upon closer inspection. Flaws are numerous. Russia's manufacturing is far behind the West, which means its stealth panels do not align with the tolerances necessary for stealth aircraft, resulting in a radar cross-section that is six to 10 times larger than the F-22 and F-35.
The Sukhoi S-57 also uses older engines as engineers had trouble with the planned new engine's reliability. It does have thrust vectoring for extreme agility, and it is also very fast, but modern fighters require much more. Still, the biggest flaw is in manufacturing. The Russians build the Su-57 by hand one at a time, without the extreme precision and automation of Lockheed, leaving Russia with just about 15 of these inferior fighter jets. Meanwhile, hundreds of F-35s are already in the skies today. As a bolster to Russia's air defenses, the Su-57 has failed miserably.
Sukhoi Su-33
Another fighter jet still in service that fails to impress is the Sukhoi Su-33. Dubbed the Flanker-D by NATO, it was built for service on a carrier. A failure independent of the aircraft is that Russia currently only has one aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, and it has been in and out of dry dock for years and may never sail again.
The Su-33 is a capable aircraft designed in the '80s and built in the '90s. Its maximum speed and climb rate are above average, and its service ceiling of around 55,000 feet gives it ample altitude in which to fly. It might be an alright fighter in some capacity, but as a carrier-based fighter, it leaves a lot to be desired. To be used on a carrier, the Su-33 is upgraded with larger folding wings, wing canards, and advanced landing gear. It can be loaded with a wide range of munitions, including guided missiles, cluster bombs, and two 30mm cannons. However, it can't be armed with some air-to-ground munitions that would make it a multirole fighter, limiting its usefulness.
The biggest flaw of a carrier-based fighter is its size. The Su-33 is an enormous aircraft. When the Indian Navy acquired a retired Soviet aircraft carrier, they opted for smaller MiG aircraft even though the more advanced Su-33 was offered to them. Adding to the Su-33's poor capabilities are the outdated avionics on board. To bring them up to modern standards, a costly refit must be performed. As recently as 2021, Russia was upgrading its fleet of Su-33 fighters, but with the state of its aircraft carrier, they may also never see service over the sea again.
Yakovlev Yak-38
With the maiden flight in 1967 of the British Harrier GR.1, the era of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) jets arrived. The first production models entered service in 1969, continuing to serve several nations into the 2000s. Shortly after this development, in 1971, the first VTOL aircraft of the Soviet Union performed a test flight. However, the Yakovlev Yak-38 would not have the illustrious career that the Harrier did.
Performance of the Yak-38 was relatively good. Its design and engineering worked, but the integration of the rear thrust engine and two lift turbofans made it notoriously difficult to handle, even for experienced pilots. If a mechanical failure happened in either of the lift fans, the Yak would spin out of control toward disaster. Further problems arose in its operation discovered during the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, as the lift fans threw huge clouds of dirt and dust into the air, damaging the sensitive jet engines by clogging crucial ports and vents.
Tactically, the Yak-38 was also a failure. Its armament was constrained by just four hardpoints which would be used with air-to-surface and air-to-air missiles, but a well-equipped fighter would carry far more weapons. The useful operational range of the first series Yak-38 was just 320 kilometers, further eroding its usefulness in a battle. Despite performance upgrades over the years, this aircraft was abandoned shortly before communism was also abandoned in 1991.
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23
The Soviet MiG-21 was a robust and reliable airframe that served the communist bloc well in its time. However, as it aged, a replacement was needed. The Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau wanted to incorporate advanced aircraft design into its new jet and introduced variable-sweep wing geometry to overcome a range of flying issues. With wings that could be swept forward for low-speed takeoff, parked in the middle for aerial fighting maneuvers, and swept back for high-speed flying, the new MiG-23 was designed to be a more advanced fighter to replace the MiG-21.
The MiG-23 was envisioned as an agile single-engine fighter with improved avionics, handling, and expanded firepower over the outgoing MiG-21. What the Soviet generals received in the MiG-23 was a laundry list of problems worthy of complaint. Pilots had trouble with handling and instability, and the engine service life was much too short and often overheated. With these troubles, this aircraft also came with much higher operating costs.
Once deployed, the MiG-23 proved to be inferior in nearly every way. Syrian and Iraqi jets were made easy targets in aerial encounters against Israelis and Iranians flying American-made F-14s, F-15s, and F-4s. Even Egyptian Mig-21s outperformed Libyan MiG-23s during the Libyan-Egyptian War. These humiliating losses and obvious defects prompted the Soviets to quickly retire the aircraft and move on to the much better MiG-27. Any MiG-23 aircraft still in service can only be found in Syria and North Korea.
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-9
With its first flight in 1946, the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-9 was the first production fighter jet built by the Soviet Union. The aircraft design and manufacturing of the USSR were far behind the other WWII powers and needed to catch up in the postwar period. The country set out to build its own fighter jets but received some help as victors in the war. To build its first jet, the Soviets reverse-engineered a BMW 003 turbojet for the aircraft.
Mikoyan-Gurevich put the MiG-9 into service in 1948, eventually producing more than 600 copies. It was powered by a pair of turbojet engines and was armed with one 37mm cannon and a pair of 23mm cannons in the nose. Its wings were not swept, making the plane look much like a WWII fighter plane missing its propeller.
While the Soviets had their fighter jet, there was not much to celebrate. A major flaw in its design came from the placement of the guns. When it flew in higher altitudes and fired rounds out of its cannons, the engines would flame out as the gasses coming off of the cannons were being sucked into the engine's intake and depriving it of oxygen. The Mig-9 was clearly not a design mature enough to be the backbone of a modern air force at the time, so the Soviets quickly moved on to the MiG-15, which came to be a much more successful aircraft.
[Featured image by Mike 1979 Russia via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 3.0]
Convair F-102 Delta Dagger
While bad Soviet jets approach legendary status, other countries are not immune from producing mistakes, including the United States. During the early part of the Cold War, the Department of Defense commissioned the development of a group of planes that became the Century Series. These were advanced and highly capable fighter jets, including supersonic models, and among them was the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger.
The F-102 Delta Dagger, called DD by pilots, was the first American all-weather supersonic jet fighter, as well as the first to use a delta wing design. It entered service in 1956, and 1,000 units were made. The jet initially failed to reach Mach 1, and the fuselage required a redesign to cope with transonic wave drag, a newly discovered phenomenon at the time. The revised fuselage now allowed the aircraft to reach Mach 1.22, but other issues developed, resulting in ongoing upgrades being performed to the airframe. Not all aircraft received the same upgrades, which left a fleet of planes with different levels of usefulness for different missions.
The factor that designates the DD the worst more than any other is the number of pilots lost while flying one. Out of the thousand aircraft that were built, 259 were lost in accidents and 70 pilots perished. The use of the DD fell throughout the '60s as more reliable and capable aircraft moved to the front of the line in Vietnam. Just five or six years into the conflict in Vietnam, they were only in service with Air National Guard units.
Heinkel He 162
Research and development of jet engines occurred in earnest during WWII, but the Germans had taken the technology further than any other military power and deployed many jet-powered airplanes before the end of the war. The best-known of the German jets was the Messerschmitt Me 262. However, very late in the war, as Germany's fortunes dwindled, a last-ditch effort to produce more jets resulted in the Heinkel He 162, also known as the Volksjäger or Peoples Fighter.
By 1944, the Nazis were fighting on their back foot and suffering from a lack of resources as the Allies cut off supply routes on all sides. To bolster air power, a jet was devised to be built as cheaply as possible that could be constructed using semi-skilled labor. Much of the airframe consisted of wood construction since alloys were in short supply.
Nonetheless, a design was completed in just 69 days, and production commenced. However, the resulting aircraft was unpleasant to fly, and its construction was predictably shoddy, although the airframe was found to be robust and able to withstand a lot of punishment. Whether it was tough or hard to fly ended up being inconsequential in the end, the planes were first fielded in April 1945 while Allied forces closed in from both sides. Over 300 units were produced in total, with less than half being operational. Fortunately, this ramshackle rush job had no impact on the war as it was too little, too late for the Luftwaffe.
Vought F7U Cutlass
At the dawn of the jet age, aircraft designs were far from being standardized, and that left plenty of room for experimentation. One of the most unusual designs to come from this era was the Vought F7U Cutlass. This aircraft was built with a unique-for-its-time design that omitted a tail and had swept wings, while other jets were much more like WWII fighters such as Spitfires and Mustangs but with jets instead of propellers. The Cutlass was definitely innovative if nothing else.
The design came from research acquired from the defeated German forces at the end of the war. Research on tailless, swept wing, and flying wing designs had significantly advanced before the end of the war and made significant contributions to American aircraft design, many of which are still in use today. The Cutlass was the first American aircraft with swept wings and the first with an afterburner. The unorthodox design gave it extraordinary ability and agility, but it was marred with troubles. Pilots gave it the moniker Gutless Cutlass because the engine was underpowered, and it also featured many systems that were new and unproven.
Poor reliability Cutlass plagued the jet, and it scared many pilots away from it, which meant the Vought Cutlass did not last for many years in the Navy. It suffered from maintenance issues and crashed far too many times, including one very public incident at an air show. While many fighter jets can see decades of service, the Cutlass' career ended in 1959.
Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Another member of the Century series is Lockheed's F-104 Starfighter. While that series included a few bad jets, the Starfighter is a candidate for the worst. This was another early jet-age aircraft that showed what engineers of the time could do when given a big enough defense budget. It was meant to be a supersonic bomber, and it could reach Mach 2, so mission accomplished. However, if a pilot received orders to do anything but go fast, trouble was lurking ahead.
Part of how the Starfighter gets to double the speed of sound is by having extremely short and narrow wings. This makes them small and slippery, cutting through the air at high altitudes but performing poorly at lower speeds closer to the ground. This makes the plane difficult to handle and prone to crashes, which happened in spades. The Starfighter was dubbed the Widowmaker due to the many pilots whose lives it has taken.
The problem with this aircraft was acute in the West German Luftwaffe, which had Starfighters crash continuously, resulting in 116 German pilots losing their lives in this cockpit, and Lockheed paid compensation to at least 60 widows and other dependents of pilots who went down in their plane. The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was genuinely a brilliant aircraft, but it failed the most important mission of all — to bring its pilots home safely.
De Havilland Sea Vixen
The De Havilland Sea Vixen got off to an ominous start in 1952 when a prototype disintegrated at the Farnborough Air Show, killing the pilot, flight engineer, and 31 spectators. However, this was a cutting-edge aircraft that was Britain's first swept-wing design and the first to be armed only with rockets, missiles, and bombs. It features a twin-boom tail, which was meant for added fuel capacity, and was powered by a pair of turbofan engines. Most unusually, the cockpit was offset to the left while the flight engineer sat down fully into the fuselage with only a small window protruding slightly next to the pilot.
The British kept this aircraft in service for two decades, and it served the Royal Navy as one of its carrier-based aircraft. Although the British could have acquired the excellent F-4 Phantom for its fleet, the Sea Vixen soldiered on, despite having a low top speed and only four hard points for weapons.
Britain put 145 aircraft into service, with 55 of them lost in accidents and none lost in combat. More than half of the accidents were fatal. And since this jet had a crew of two, each accident also had two fatalities. The Sea Vixen has no stories of valiant service protecting the realm of the crown and was responsible for the death of far too many of the Queen's loyal pilots, making it among the worst fighter jets ever produced by the United Kingdom.