Top 10 Greatest Fighter Jets Of All Time ¦ The Greatest Ever ¦ Spark

Fighter planes are the sharp end of the world's air forces. Over time they've evolved into the most sophisticated and eye-catching killing machines ever designed by man. So tighten your harness, check your six, and keep your eyes peeled for the 10 greatest fighter planes ever. Coming up on The Greatest Ever, we're on the hunt for the world's ultimate fighter plane. There's something cruel and mean and nasty about fighter planes but they're also balletic, superb and beautiful. These fighters will be judged by their firepower, maneuverability, historical significance, sheer aesthetics and special design features like swept back wings, multiple wings and even the ability to hover. To help us on our quest we've got experts like best-selling military author Tom Clancy. Fighter plane is an aircraft that controls a block of air and denies use of that block of air to the enemy. Pilot and aircraft collector Kermit Weeks. In the case of any fighter airplane, the pilot literally becomes part of that airplane. You're watching The Greatest Ever. We'll get up close and personal with the 10 greatest fighters. We'll also meet the combat pilots who know these fighters like nobody else. We'll see what kind of punishment these planes can take and we'll put you in the cockpit of a modern fighter. 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror. And show you what air combat feels like. So who could reach that level was a god. And when all is said and done, you'll know which one of these planes is the greatest fighter of them all. We start with the number 10 choice of The Greatest Ever fighters. It's Baghdad, 1991. This bad boy gained star status thanks to its unique ability to remain undetected by enemy radar. It's the unmistakable F-117 stealth fighter, the Nighthawk. It swoops in, rains death upon its prey before they know that they are there, and hopefully is able to get out before the bad guys know what hit them. There's a lot to be said for being invisible on a battlefield. If the other guy doesn't know you're there, you can do lots of bad things to him, and he can't see you, so you're safe. The stealth fighter is a beautifully sinister aircraft. In modern film terms, of course, it would be, I guess, the plane that Darth Vader would like to fly in Star Wars, and if he had an escape aircraft to get out of his imperial airship. Flying the stealth is awesome. The driver is called the Black Jet, and there are also the Saudis called the Shaba, which means ghost. The Greatest Ever got unprecedented access to this jet, which has seen action in Panama, Bosnia, and Iraq. Many facts about the stealth are still secret. It has an unconfirmed top speed that's close to the speed of sound, Mach 1, or 1,200 kilometers per hour, and it can carry some 2,300 kilograms of bombs. First impressions of this intimidating jet can be misleading, even for pilots. Walking up to the jet, it has so many odd-type features that you would not think it would want to fly. The odd thing about the stealth, unlike other fighters, there's nothing smooth or streamlined about it. It's all radar-deflecting angles. It's like, in design terms, it's like a wonderful piece of Japanese origami. It's like the designers have taken a big sheet of paper, or card, and folded it in many angles to create this wonderful shape. Was it origami, or were there darker forces at work? The Greatest Ever got into the thinking behind the diamond-shaped stealth with Alan Brown, the jet's chief engineer at Lockheed's mysterious Skunk Works. To make the diamond fly, we had to do black magic, really. A diamond-shaped fighter is the ultimate radar-evading design. But how do you make a diamond fly? And one of the things you can do is start chopping off bits off the back of the tail. And now I'll finish up with something that looks more like this. And we can put a cockpit in the front of it, and some inlets. And now this starts looking like an airplane, starting with the diamond. We took a lot of the parts from other airplanes. The engines were stolen, literally, off the F-18 production line. The navigation system came from a B-52, and so on. Brown and his team conjured up the stealth and neutralized 50 years of radar technology. The multiple-angled shape of the jet ensures that enemy radar signals are bounced away, and not back to the enemy, making the plane invisible. It's all about fooling enemy radar. A typical fighter has a radar cross-section of about five square meters. The stealth is less than 0.01 square meters, the size of a small bird, virtually undetectable by radar. The Nighthawk is also covered in a top-secret radar-absorbing material that helps confuse enemy radar. So they made the plane invisible. But the next problem was how to make the pilot invisible. So the thing that we have to do is coat the canopy glass in some way with a metallic shield, a little bit like the highway patrolman's sunglasses, so he can look out, but you can't look in. Making a plane that's almost invisible to enemy radar has several drawbacks. It's not terribly fuel-efficient. The nature of the design makes for the fact that it gobbles up gas. The stealth has a range of 1,200 kilometers, and that means topping up the tank on a regular basis when it's on a long mission. And a bigger fuel bill isn't the only drawback of this fighter's unique shape. It's also more susceptible to bad weather. Icing is an issue for this aircraft. It is considered an all-weather fighter. However, the same unique shapes that help us to have a low radar cross-section unfortunately work as ice picker-uppers, if you will. So we have to be very careful in what kind of weather that we fly to, and we typically like to stay under clear skies. The remarkable Nighthawk can run and it can hide, but surprisingly, it can't fight air-to-air, making it a contentious choice for the greatest ever. It's not really a fighter, it's a bomber. It drops bombs, doesn't carry guns or missiles, at least not that I know of. So why is the stealth classified as a fighter by the U.S. Air Force? No self-respecting fighter pilot is going to fly an airplane which has a B designation like a bomber. So, of course, it was called an F. But it's not just called F for pilot vanity. There is another, more pertinent reason. The aircraft maneuvers very much like a fighter. However, the F-117's primary mission is to drop bombs. So one would have to make their own assessment of what a definition of a fighter is. As far as the greatest ever is concerned, a real fighter needs to be able to mix it up with other fighters, not just drop bombs. That's why the stealth is relegated to number 10 on our list of the greatest ever fighters. We've got nine more awesome fighters coming your way, including the plane that can land like a helicopter. The Nighthawk claims the number 10 slot in our search for the greatest ever fighters, and it would be just plain wrong not to include on our list the number nine pick, the Red Baron's famous DR-1, the Fokker Triplane. It's an unfortunate name when you think about it. It's a Prussian knight, you know, from the north of Germany on his horse and his helmet with plumes flying, you know, the stream of the feathers flying in the wind. That's the Fokker Triplane. With pilots like Baron Manfred von Richthofen at the controls, this classic World War I German fighter brought terror to the hearts of Allied pilots. The Baron chalked up many of his 80 aerial victories in this fighter, and it's no surprise, really. The DR-1 was the fastest climbing and most maneuverable fighter of its day. It's not elegant, it's not beautiful, but they're just cool. It's simple, it's efficient, it does what it needs to do. Everything has a place, it all fits in that space. Single-winged fighters were still in their infancy during World War I, and biplanes were the design of choice as they could take the harsh gravitational forces of aerial combat. But if two wings were good, engineers reasoned three should make the DR-1 even better, and they were right. The extra wing allowed the plane to climb higher and fly faster. The whole purpose behind the three wings on this airplane was that it create lift and be able to climb quickly. Aerial combat back then, basically, the higher, the faster you could get above somebody, then you could use the momentum coming down to attack them and get back up high and do it again. With its phenomenal climb rate, the DR-1 could reach 3,000 meters a full three minutes before its mortal enemy, the two-winged Sopwith Camel. When the DR-1 was rolled out in 1917, it wasn't just its superb wings and a top speed of 185 kilometers an hour that made it an awesome fighter. It also had machine guns that actually fired through the propeller arc, a revolutionary World War I innovation. It was Dutch DR-1 designer, Anthony Fokker, who figured out the secret to firing through the prop. He designed the interrupter, or synchronization gear, that allowed machine gun bullets to pass between the rotating propeller blades and not through them. Basically, all the interrupter is, it's a cam that runs off the engine. It just interrupts so that the gun will not fire when the propeller is in front. The DR-1 was a deadly combination of guns and wings, but it wasn't perfect. An aerodynamically unstable design, it never wants to fly straight and level. A pilot can never, ever let go of the controls. The airplane, when you first fly it, you go, oh my God, there's something that's not quite right. It tends to wallow around a lot. So if you let go of the controls, they don't really go back to a neutral position like you would expect on most airplanes. This highly unpredictable fighter will bite the unwary and keeps experienced pilots on their toes. It is a ground looper. That's why they have the, what we call the ax handles out on the wings because the pilots, I think on a regular basis, would come in and land and get the airplane up on a wing. And they put those out there to keep from breaking the wing off. It's tricky every time I get into it. I don't know what's going to happen. The iconic Fokker DR-1 is arguably the most recognizable World War I fighter. And it will forever be linked to the Red Baron, the most famous ace of all time. But this highly unstable fighter is definitely not pilot friendly. That's why this mother of all Fokkers is number nine on our list of the greatest ever fighters. The number eight fighter on our list made a rather spectacular and infamous appearance on December the 7th, 1941, the Mitsubishi Zero. Wave after wave of enemy planes bombed American aircraft and units of the Pacific fleet in a treacherous attack, which achieved... Without the Zero fighter, Japan would never have dared a Pearl Harbor attack. It was America's first real look at this lethal dog fighter, and it hurt. The Zero could outfly and outfight anything the Allies had. The A6M Zero fighter, which we called the Zeke, may have been the first real air superiority fighter insofar as it could drive a long way, control a piece of airspace and then go home. The carrier base Zero could go further on a tank of gas than any other fighter, 3,000 kilometers. Power-to-weight ratio was very good and very maneuverable, elegant design, excellent aerodynamics, excellent stability. It's no wonder this fighter was nimble and quick. The Zero weighed in at 1,800 kilograms, a full 900 kilograms less than the P-40 Warhawk. The American aircraft, no doubt, technologically more sophisticated, more powerful, more heavily gunned. The pilots are probably equal in talent and intelligence, but that little Japanese aircraft, all its limitations can turn inside, spin around, bam, bam, bam, and knock the tail off the American. The Zero had an astonishing vertical climb rate of 1,400 meters per minute, almost double that of the competition. In a one-versus-one, stay-in dogfight, it was tough, tough to administer. The plane remained an enigma until the US got a lucky break. An intact and airworthy Zero was captured in Alaska in 1942. They had their test pilots and fighter pilots just fly the hell out of the plane. Extensive tests revealed the Zero's secrets. The fighters' lightweight construction couldn't handle speeds over 660 kilometers an hour, or the plane would start to break up. Once we figured out what it could do and what it couldn't do, we tended to gobble them up. It could out-climb anything the Americans had, but it couldn't out-dive anything because it was too light. The American strategy was simple. Their fighters were far faster. They just had to avoid dogfighting and use simple hit-and-run tactics instead. Was they kept high altitude, dive down, hit the Zeros, and zoom right back up. The American tests also found another glitch in the Zero's armor. It didn't have any. The plane's aerial agility came at the expense of pilot protection. It was a flimsy airplane. It wouldn't take any punishment. The Japanese, philosophically, thought that a good warrior is always offensive and never defensive. Well, that's fine, except what if you get killed? Then you're neither offensive nor defensive. You're just dead. To see how weak the Zero was, the greatest ever decided to bring out some serious firepower and put its pilot protection to the test. American World War II pilots had their backsides protected by thick armor plate. As you can see, it does stop the round. You could get fragmentation inside the aircraft, which would cause secondary fragmentation to the pilot, but it does offer protection. It's very heavy. Zero pilots had zero protection. This thin plate of aluminum is all that separated a Zero pilot from eternity. Taking four rounds, it would go through the skin, as you can see, and seriously enter the body of the pilot. But Zero pilots never wavered when it came to pilot protection. Even toward the later parts of the war, the Zero pilots did not want armor plate or anything that added unnecessary weight to their aircraft. And their philosophy was, you know, just kill or be killed. Towards the end of the war, Zeros were turned into flying bombs. Landing safely was no longer required. And then it just became a death trap, and a lot of Zeros ended up as being kamikazes, which is not very good use for an airplane. Ending the war as a suicide bomber and leaving its pilots unprotected is why this flying ninja is checking out in the number eight slot on our list of the world's greatest ever fighters. Number seven on our list of the greatest ever, the fighter with a split personality. It hovers like a helicopter and flies like a fighter, the Harrier Jump Jet. It's a tremendous aircraft, it really is. You know, a traditional jet fighter needs 10,000 feet. We can put it down literally anywhere. That's got to make it one of the greatest fighters in the world. It's the noisiest damn airplane I've ever seen. It's a good airplane, and the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, and the United States Marine Corps have made good use of them. The Harrier was first flown in the 1960s and has continued to see action right through to the latest Gulf War. It was thrust into the public eye during its first taste of combat, the Falklands War in 1982. It's pugnacious. It can really give a good fight. You can see that. And it proved that, of course, in the Falklands War, where it was a hugely successful aircraft. Royal Navy Sea Harriers shot down 24 Argentine jets without a single air-to-air loss. The greatest ever reunited RAF Wing Commander Tony Harper with the actual GR-3 Harrier he flew in combat. It looks exactly the same as it did when I last flew it in the Falklands. It's still got bits of paint missing in the same places. It's nice to see it again. Tony's most memorable mission? Saving trapped British paratroopers. It was during the Battle of Goose Green. The paras were pinned down by the Argentinian defenders. We were tasked at the end of the day to come in and try and deal with some of the artillery positions. We found the targets on our first run, and we hit them. The commander contacted the Argentinians and asked them if they'd like some more of that medicine, or if they'd like to surrender. They decided to surrender. The reason this plane is so successful is its versatility. It has a decent top speed of 1,065 kilometers an hour, but more importantly, this plane can hover. It's difficult to design a plane that's excellent in both regimes, hovering and forward flight. But if your mission is such that taking off from an unfinished field is an advantage for you, as opposed to optimum high-speed performance, then that aircraft makes sense. And the reason it hovers? One very powerful Rolls-Royce jet engine and four rotating nozzles that can blast an amazing 10,000 kilograms of thrust, literally giving the jet a cushion of air to ride up and down on. Whereas some aircraft will have two engines, we've actually got four exhausts, which is what makes the Harrier capable of hovering. And to control the Harrier when it's in the hover, small air nozzles help keep the plane in position. We have reaction control valves at all the extremities, in the wingtips, in the nose, in the tail, and also on the rudder. And from that, we feed air from the engine through the reaction controls to, in essence, provide the stability. The Harrier may be high-tech and revolutionary and cost millions, but the secret of its versatility costs just $100. It's a measly wind vane. It helps the pilots keep the jet pointed into the wind. This flimsy piece of aluminium is the difference between life and death in the Harrier during the critical and dangerous transition from forward flight to the hover. The way we countered that is probably the cheapest instrument that we got on the Harrier, which is your vane up here. As you can see, it kicks into the wind. Until we get into the hover, we need to keep that pointing straight, so we're always into the relative airflow pointing directly into it. Fantastic system, very cheap. This fighter's ability to hover does, however, make it easier to knock down in combat. The four hot, thrust-producing engine nozzles are a magnet for heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles to lock onto. It tends to be an easy kill for a heat-seeking missile because the centroid of the heat source tends to be the engine. It's a single-engine airplane, so if you lose that, you're in big trouble. If something gets close, it's exploding pretty close to the aircraft. And if it knocks off one of the nozzles, it's just going to be completely asymmetric thrust and it won't fly anymore. During the first Gulf War, five Marine Harriers were shot down and two pilots died. The Harrier also has a higher crash rate than other top-end fighters, mainly because it's very complicated to fly. The Harrier is a more demanding aircraft to fly than the average fast jet that you will see. I mean, if you look at a modern fighter, between the stick and the throttle, there's probably 30 buttons, which micromanage all sorts of things. And you've got to be very... you almost have to be a piano player. Pilot overload is pretty common with this jet. At least 45 US Marines have died in 143 Harrier accidents since 1971. You just have to be very conscious of which lever you are moving, which inceptor you're moving, at which time, because if you move the wrong one in the wrong direction, it's easy to get yourself into trouble fairly quickly. The innovative Harrier jump jet has earned its place in the top 10 list of the greatest-ever fighters, but its high accident rate, combined with a high pilot workload, is why the Harrier is bowing out at number seven. Number six on our list, the Korean War superstar and probably the greatest of all the first-generation jet fighters, the swept-wing F-86 Sabre. In my opinion, out of all the fighters that have ever been flown, the F-86 has all the characteristics you want in a great fighter. The unique look of the F-86 is that wonderful shark-like nose. And like a shark, its mouth at the front is always open. Wide open for a reason. It's the critical engine air intake. It's a long way down there to the J-47, which is the engine in this airplane. The Sabre was every kid's fantasy back in the late 50s. It's just got sleek lines. It's, you know, the wings are swept back. I don't think they've ever made a jet as pretty as the 86. The greatest ever got air show and retired combat pilot, Dale Snodgrass, to put his F-86 through its paces. And tower, Sabre 86, Fox Romeo is with you. And show off the fighter's classic swept-wing design in the process. And it's a beautiful day to be in an F-86 flying over the sky. The Sabre forged its formidable reputation in the Korean War, where it outflew and outfought the comparable MiG-15 on an almost daily basis and earned the nickname Ace Maker. To become an ace, it takes five combat kills. That was a pretty good airplane in its day. In the Korean War, it'd shoot up a lot of MiGs. It had an 11 to 1 kill ratio of, you know, winning to losing against the MiG-15. Air power was the decisive factor in preventing a communist victory in Korea. To find out exactly how good this plane was in combat, the greatest ever got some airtime with Korean War F-86 pilot General Boots Blessé, a double ace with 10 MiG kills. I think the proudest moment in my life as a fighter pilot was when I became an ace flying the F-86. I loved it. It was a great airplane. It turned well. It climbed well. It was just an easy and a fun airplane to fly. And the more you flew it, the better, the more performance you could get out of it. The F-86 has got swept-back wings. And when you sweep wings back, you instantly give an aircraft a very, very dynamic, fast look. The F-86 Sabre's distinctive swept-back wings weren't there just to make the jet look pretty. They allowed the jet an incredible top speed in straight and level flight of 1,075 kilometers an hour without coming apart at the seams. Aircraft, as they got faster and faster, had to tolerate thinner and thinner airfoils. That made their wings very flexible and very vulnerable to twisting off. By sweeping the wing back, you suppress that. One of the main features of this revolutionary wing design, the performance-enhancing wing slats. As you come down the wing on both sides, you'll see these devices, which we call slats. They're not mechanically controlled by me or hydraulically controlled. They just fall out. And as the airplane slows down and the angle of attack increases, then they will roll down. And what they do is allow you to land the airplane slowly. It has an extra benefit when you're in a dogfight. It increases the wing area and the airplane turns better. With its sleek look and faster design, there are also suggestions that this aircraft may have broken the sound barrier before the legendary Chuck Yeager. There is a rumor that the F-86A, XF-86A, was actually the first airplane to go supersonic prior to Chuck Yeager in a dive. For top guns like Boots Blessé, breaking the sound barrier in the Sabre was just a whole lot of fun. The F-86 could go supersonic, but it was straight down with a lot of power. And they invited us to air shows, and we'd go out, and we called it our boom demonstration team. And we'd get up at about 35 or 40,000 feet, roll over, and we'd come down. And everybody would go down. Everybody go through the speed of sound. We'd break windows in the hangar and everything. And everybody thought it was wonderful. The swept wings gave it maneuverability, but its firepower gave it the real edge in the air. The Sabre was armed with six machine guns. It could also carry eight five-inch rockets or 900 kilograms of bombs. The guns were actually located here, and the ammo was held down here. And now these are just, that's where I put my bags when I take the airplane to an air show. Dale Snodgrass may use the gun compartment for a luggage locker, but Boots Blessé used the F-86's guns to kill the enemy. When you first go into combat, I think one of the most exhilarating moments that you'll ever have in your whole life is when you're up there and you spot an enemy airplane, and you start turning a little bit with him, and all of a sudden you see his wing drop, and he turns around and turns into you, and it becomes obvious to you that he sees you, you see him, and one of the two of you are not going home. Why is the F-86 number six in our top 10 list of the greatest ever fighters? It's maneuverable, it's responsive, it's reliable, and it was a great killing platform in its day. Absolutely in the top 10. The Sabre's moment of glory was the Korean War, but as a first-generation jet fighter, the F-86 was quickly outclassed by more modern designs and withdrawn from frontline service by the late 1950s. It just didn't have the staying power. We're halfway through our countdown, and so far we've had a fighter that can hover and one that fools enemy radar, but still to come, a Cold War icon and the darling of the RAF as we search for the greatest ever fighter. So far, we've seen five excellent planes, but there are five to go before we find out which is the greatest ever fighter. Up next in the number five position, the Allied nemesis and the pride of the German Luftwaffe during World War II, the Messerschmitt Me 109. It's like a racing horse. In the air, as soon as you are cleared to take off, it was an easy aircraft to fly, a good aircraft to fly. It was a good gun platform. It could perform well, could turn well, could climb well. The 109 saw action from the Battle of Britain to the Russian front, from North Africa to Norway. As soon as you see a swastika on the plane, particularly on a 109, you just think these are the bad guys coming, really. That's what it is. Here comes Hitler and the boys and the Luftwaffe. It just looks so German. You know, this was at a time in history where nations had distinctive looks in their products. The Spitfire was a very elegant solution to killing you. The Messerschmitt was a very straightforward solution to killing you. It looked like it wanted to kill you. And killing is what the 109 did a lot of. The greatest ever reunited Luftwaffe triple ace, Oskar Bosch, with the Me 109. He trained on these fighters and went on to shoot down his share of Allied aircraft. Putting the enemy into the gun sight became second nature. When the bomber did fit in from wingtip to wingtip, into the arc, into the circle, then you knew you were exactly 400 metres away. And that was our time to start by opening fire. The 109's top speed of 560 kilometres an hour was close to that of the Spitfire. But for many Allied pilots, having a 109 on their tail was a potential death warrant. The 109 had our great respect. By the same token, anything with black crosses on it had our great respect. And certainly this is a very excellent fighter aircraft. Alongside the 109's formidable machine guns, the plane also had a very lethal cannon. It was actually built into the engine and fired through the centre of the propeller. The shells were filled with high explosives and carried a much heavier punch than the machine gun bullets, making it particularly deadly against enemy bombers. It reaches further, it is doing more damage. And of course, it's a heavier weapon and the ammunition is heavier as well. During World War II, more Me 109s were produced than any other fighter. Designer Willie Messerschmidt's winning formula for this plane's amazing success was to design the smallest fighter he could and hang the strongest engine he could find on the front of it. It was designed to be manufactured quickly and easily and that was certainly very successful. It was built in sections, it was designed to take the engine off very quickly in case they had a problem, they could just bolt another one on and send it out. But there was a weakness, a very lethal weakness. It had a nasty habit of crashing on take-off and landing. I think designers optimise an aircraft for high speed and for manoeuvrability and so forth. And, oh yeah, by the way, it's got to land. It was very difficult to handle on the ground because the main landing gear was sort of towed out like that, made it very unstable and wobbly. As you can see, the landing gear is rather tight. You know, you don't have much control as such in take-off or for the landing. But you have to be a good pilot, you must know what is involved. Chance would not be better than 50-50 that you would crash before you are airborne. Almost a third of the 33,000 109s built were destroyed during take-off and landing. It's no surprise that there's only about one or two of them still flying today. The ME-109 is number five on our list of the world's greatest fighters because more of these aircraft were lost in take-off and landing accidents than in actual air-to-air combat. The ME-109 was a good airplane, it just wasn't good enough to win the Battle of Britain. If Darwin had a favorite fighter, it would be the number four plane on our list, the revolutionary and evolutionary F-18 Super Hornet. The F-18 is one of the most lethal airplanes that there is out there and I love flying it for that. I know if I get into the merge with an adversary airplane that he is going to die. I flew the F-18 or the CF-18, the Canadian F-18, from 96 to 99 and I would say that those were the three best years of my flying career. The F-18 is a multi-role aircraft. It can drop bombs and kill people, shoot airplanes down and kill people. The F-18 is probably our leading conventional modern fighter of the present day. The greatest ever got up close and personal with the U.S. Navy's latest Super Hornet squadron, the Fighting Redcocks, and Commander Nick Mongello, our personal F-18 pilot and tour guide. I'd be lying to you if telling you that it's not fun strapping on a jet that's able to go supersonic and do loops and dogfight and drop bombs and rage around down low. That's a lot of fun. Some planes are fast. This fighter is ballistic. Its two after-burning jet engines give it a top speed of 1.8 Mach or almost 2,000 kilometers per hour. The turn rate you could get, the nose authority, it was just fantastic and I loved it. The F-18 is an overachiever when it comes to fighters. It can fight air-to-air and hit the enemy with bombs on the same mission. Converts a flip of the switch from a fighter plane to a precision attack bomber, which is not a bad piece of switch hitting. The F-18 has been in combat for over 25 years. Armed with a 20 millimeter cannon, bombs and missiles, the Hornet has proven itself during both Gulf Wars, Afghanistan and Bosnia. During Operation Desert Storm, Hornets flew some 5,000 strikes against the Iraqis, losing only two jets to enemy fire. It's very much heroic imperial America getting out there and kicking ass. I can get into the target, I can carry a nice array of air-to-ground weapons, drop the bombs on that target and I can go ahead and fight my way out. During the first Gulf War, Mongo put his money where his mouth is, proving himself in combat when his flight mixed it up with Iraqi MiGs. We were basically jumped by two Iraqi MiG-21s. We quickly, with the push of a button, went from that air-to-ground master mode to the air-to-air mode, detected the MiGs on our nose at about eight nautical miles. The missile hit the MiG at about half mile from in front of me. I rolled over the top of him as he was exploding in flames about a tenth of a mile beneath me. From the time they alerted us to the time we downed the MiGs was about 45 seconds. The two F-18s continued on their mission, smashing their targets and returning safely home. And believe it or not, pilots like Mongo are now even more deadly in their new F-18E Super Hornet. Case in point, his latest bit of high-tech kit, a helmet that's a little bit like Star Wars meets Buck Rogers. This is the joint helmet. This is somewhere around the $100,000 point. In this case, looks really can kill. Where the pilot looks is literally where the weapons are aimed. All I have to do while I'm in my plane, I can be flying that direction, is look left. I can lock my sensors on and my heat-seeking missile onto you and kill you. But all the high-tech computer-driven toys can become too much to handle. Pilots call it helmet fire when there's just too much for the human brain to process. The problem comes in is when you're multitasking, when you are operating the radar, looking at your forward-looking infrared, or defending against a SAM system where you have to use expendables or your jammer. So at times, you become task-saturated. You can go ahead and have helmet fires, et cetera, and just start to lose it a little bit. The Hornet is a multitasker. It operates from land, but its natural habitat is the carrier, where deck space is tight. The plane even has folding wingtips, which means more room in the nest for other Hornets. Getting off the carrier means strapping the jet to a steam catapult, essentially the world's most powerful slingshot, and blasting a single 10,000-kilogram jet into the sky. It isn't exactly a hands-on experience for F-18 drivers. The flight computer is in control during the launch. Well, during the catapult launch in the F-18, the pilot does not hold on to the stick. Pilots must place their right hands in full view on the canopy rail before they're shot off the carrier. Basically, the airplane will fly itself away at about a 10-degree positive climb rate. Once the airplane achieves weight off wheels, then at that point, the pilot can take his hand off the tower rack, place it on the stick, and continue flying. So the pilot is only allowed to touch the controls after the jet is actually flying. And if you think that's hard, try landing a multimillion-dollar jet on a postage-stamp-sized carrier in the middle of the ocean. Day landings are something that naval aviators will go ahead and volunteer for any time to go out and get a day landing. But at night, nothing is routine. My palms get sweaty when I think about it. Bad weather night carrier landings are the hardest thing to do in aviation. Within the last 40 seconds of the approach, you'll probably make, on the average, 50 to 100 small engine changes to control my airspeed exactly and my glide slope. The name of the game is catching a steel cable on the deck of the carrier with the F-18's tail hook to keep the fighter from going over the edge of the ship. When your hook goes across the back end of the ship, you're plus or minus six inches in altitude and you're going 135 knots or 150, 60 miles an hour. And you are literally with your knees shaking as you go ahead and land. It's pretty intense, very intense. But the very impressive, steroid-enhanced, computer-controlled Hornet blows past at number four on our list of greatest ever fighters. Why? Because the pilot spends as much time dealing with flight computers and weapon systems as actually flying the jet. Blasting in at number three on our list of the world's greatest fighters is the Kalashnikov rifle of Soviet fighters, the MiG-21. MiG-21 is a rocket ship. It has a lot of get up and go. It was the threat that I trained to for many, many years. For Romanian pilots to fly MiG-21 was the top of the, you know, what was the elite, you know? So who could reach that level was a god. I still dreaming that I'm flying MiG-21, so yeah, I love that plane, I love that. This Cold War fighter first appeared in the late 1950s. Named after its designer, the Mikoyan-21 is today the most produced jet fighter in the world, with a staggering 10,000-plus MiG-21s serving in some 40 countries. During the Cold War and over Vietnam, the MiG-21, NATO codenamed Fishbed, was the jet to watch out for. Yeah, I think the MiG-21 was a very, very lethal looking airplane. It had nice lines on it, had good performance, and handled by the right kind of pilot. It was a real dangerous adversary. The greatest ever caught up with a dangerous Cold War adversary, Romanian MiG-21 pilot Eugen Maxim for the inside scoop on this fighter. Well, it's like a bullet. Everything it did, it did very fast. You know, it was very, very smooth. The nicest thing to fly over the clouds, the sky, you know, the clouds, like, and put on a wing, you know, inside, and it was very cool, yeah. But what made this plane so cool for the pilots and so special for its foes? It's got a big engine, a big afterburner, and that thing is business. I mean, you're strapping on a rocket and going for a ride. A very fast ride indeed. The MiG-21 is capable of a searing 2.3 Mach or 2,200 kilometers an hour. This plane really is all engine, and its engine air intake is what gives it that distinctive look. I like that tubular fuselage with a diffuser cone in the front. That's just no nonsense inlet design. The strange looking diffuser cone in the engine air inlet actually moves in and out, controlling the flow of air to the engine. It's that big spike in the nose of the MiG-21 that gives away what it's there for. It's there as a sort of supersonic battering ram. Aside from being fast, the MiG-21 was also resilient and typically Russian. No fancy shelters for this fighter. We didn't have hangers for each plane, you know, like in America or like in States or West. No, we kept all the planes outside, you know, with two inches of ice on it, and we took off. The MiG-21 was built tough, meaning no refined finishes for this brutish fighter. By American standards, it was crudely built, and the pieces don't all fit together. The Russians had serious problems with quality control on every Soviet weapon I've ever seen. The MiG-21 was designed to hit the enemy and keep going. Its small wings just weren't made for dogfighting. Great high-speed performance, but in a turning fight, it bleeds its energy very quickly. In other words, it's not able to sustain its airspeed. And if the plane was rolled too quickly in air-to-air combat, there was often trouble. It was too easy to roll it. If you roll it, you know, more than 90 degrees per second, it was dangerous. You could go on outer rotation and it happened. Hard to handle with its short wings and short range maybe, but was it done on purpose? I've often wondered if the Russians didn't put short legs in their planes liberally to keep the pilots from defecting. That's entirely a joke. But every Russian airplane I know have had short legs. The MiG-21's limited range, small wings, and poor workmanship put it in the number three position of the greatest ever fighters. Number two on our list of the greatest fighters ever, the unmistakable Battle of Britain starlet, the Supermarine Spitfire. Flying a Spitfire was like dancing with the most beautiful girl at the ball. It's inspirational. It's just drop-dead gorgeous from any angle. It's the only airplane which reduced my wife to tears. A perfect combination of form and function. It is so responsive. You just feel part of the airplane when you get in. Sheer beauty, sheer balletic movement in the sky, the association of heart and land and soil and sky, and it punched out the Luftwaffe at the time that Britain was all alone. That's quite something. A champion of the air-to-air duel, the Spitfire helped turn the tide during the Battle of Britain in 1940. Armed with eight machine guns, it knocked Luftwaffe fighters and bombers from the skies. The Spitfire's performance and aerial supremacy is all down to its wings. These elliptical or oval-shaped wings made this fighter instantly recognizable from below and deadly from above. The reason behind the beautiful wing design, room for the guns. A requirement came up for having more guns in the wings and that required a bit more room, so the easy way to do that and also get a highly efficient wing was to broaden the wing out in the mid-area and make it elliptical. Another benefit was a very efficient wing with increased lift that allowed this fighter to turn on a dime. The Spit's distinctive wing shape also meant the enemy could see it coming. The Spitfire was a beautiful, beautiful aircraft. But of course, the beauty alone doesn't count in the air in a situation of war. It's a matter of he is your enemy and he tries, he tries to get you down. Canadian Spitfire pilot Lloyd Berryman was awarded the DFC, the Distinguished Flying Cross, for taking on German fighters. The greatest ever put him back in the pilot's seat. Getting in the cockpit of this Spitfire here today, it just brings home the 62 years since I've been in this position, what a wonderful feeling it is to get inside this aircraft. For many of us, it was like walking in the front door of our home and we treated this aircraft with great respect and we expected a lot out of this aircraft and it performed for us. It was easy to fly and once you trimmed it up after airborne, it was indeed just like flying on a cloud. Flying on a cloud maybe, but not for long. The Spitfire Mark II was a home defense fighter with a limited combat range of 600 kilometers. It was supposed to take off, hit the enemy and land. The obvious disadvantage about the Spitfire, if you could call it that, would be its very short range. They didn't anticipate at that time that this aircraft would be flying the channel and indeed flying over enemy territory. You had to be able to go all the way to Germany and come all the way back and Spitfires simply didn't have the range. Problems aside, the Spitfire is a plane that has an emotional appeal all its own. Spitfire is one elegant, sexy looking airplane and it was one of the all-time great fighters. It has to be, just look at it. Small, lightweight, beautiful, balletic, crafted and a machine that really expresses the country it was built for and fought for and a little tiny machine that stood up really with those great pilots to the might of Adolf Hitler in the Second World War. Now come on, you can't beat that, can you? As far as I'm concerned, the Spitfire is the finest fighter aircraft ever, regardless of what anyone else said. It was a close call, but the Spitfire comes in at number two on our list of the world's greatest fighters. Why? Because its limited range meant it couldn't take the fight to Berlin and back, something the fighter in the coveted number one slot did on a regular basis. Here's a hint. Like the Spitfire, it was powered by the incomparable Rolls-Royce Merlin. We've gone through nine incredible fighters. All that remains on the greatest ever is the number one fighter of all time. In the number one slot, it's the superlative North American P-51 Mustang. I've had an opportunity to fly a lot of different fighters in my collection, and the Mustang has got to be right up at the top. Probably number one because the fact that it got me through the war, saved my life. It is a beautiful airplane. And the Mustang is the greatest fighter ever. I was very lucky enough to fly a P-51 Mustang in the States, in Texas, and it is as good as you think it is. The Mustang had a blistering top speed of 716 kilometers an hour, over 80 kilometers an hour faster than the Me 109, and no other fighter could touch its ability to go the distance, 2,400 kilometers. The Spitfire Mark IV was lucky to make it 800 kilometers. Our number one plane accounted for almost 5,000 air kills, more than any other Allied fighter, and created over 280 fighter aces. Who better to give the greatest ever an insight into our number one plane than American war hero and triple ace, retired Colonel Clarence E. Bud Anderson. The Mustang gave me an advantage because I felt like no matter what situation I was in, if I was at a disadvantage, I knew what to do to break the attack. And perhaps press on and turn the tables. The Mustang made its name escorting American bombers deep into Germany. A Mustang could stay with the B-17s. They could go anywhere the B-17s went and bring them all. No other Allied fighter could fly as high or go as far as the mighty Mustang. It was historically successful. Hermann Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe, said when he saw Mustangs escorting bombers over Berlin, he knew then the war was lost. From Luftwaffe boss Hermann Goering down to the German pilots, they all knew the Mustang was the beginning of the end. The Mustang, it was always a frightening sight because you knew you have now not more than a 50-50 chance to be successful or to be killed. And racking up enemy kills was something Colonel Bud Anderson became very good at. One particular Me 109 didn't have a chance. And I had the old Mustang just climbed right up. Just beautiful. Just inside, I fired a burst. I saw a little tracer go by his right wing, gave it a little bit of rudder and then caught him right in the middle of the airplane. And I could see the wheel well. I could see the grease. I could count the rivets. I was so close. And he just rolled over there from 29,000, 30,000 feet and just went straight down. So what gave the Mustang its edge in combat? It was this fighter's wing design that resulted in its unequaled speed, maneuverability and range. The design of the P-51 wing incorporated all the good lift-drag ratio features of the elliptical wing of the Spitfire without the complication of manufacturing. The secret? This new wing design was easy to build and provided unmatched lift for its size. It was a very high performance airfoil. And fortunately, it also gave it a pretty maneuverable airplane. It was a great innovation. The Mustang, conceptually, was a greatly improved Spitfire. It had much more legs than the Spitfire did, but all the other positive characteristics. But it was a combination of luck and Anglo-American ingenuity that turned the Mustang into the greatest ever fighter. Initially, the airplane came out with the Allison. Somebody got the idea, hey, let's try the engine out of the Spitfire and the Hurricanes. That engine is what made this a great airplane. Physically, it represented the great alliance between the United States and Great Britain. And that's a wonderful idea that this aircraft really was about joining hands or joining wings, if you like, across the Atlantic and then taking those wings out to take out Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Terrific. The greatest ever couldn't pass up the opportunity to fire up the Mustang's Merlin and go flying with Ed Shipley, one of the most experienced P-51 pilots flying today. And we give rides every day in this Mustang. And what we tell people is, when you get in this thing, it's gonna be like taking one of the national monuments out for a ride. I mean, there's just so much history involved with it. It's just, it's unbelievable. It just sends a chill through your spine when you get inside it. The P-51D model is the quintessential Mustang, fully loaded with six .50 caliber machine guns and the classic bubble canopy. The big heavy airplane, it was maneuverable enough to do the job. And it packed a very heavy punch. And just how reliable was the Mustang? I flew 116 missions. That's about 480 hours and 20 minutes of combat flying and never had an abort, never turned around for any reason, mechanical or weather or whatever. The Mustang's incredible success as a World War II fighter is why it remains a coveted plane in the 21st century. The thing about the Mustang is, it's the one airplane that fighter pilots, even today, want to try. Well, at the moment, I'm sitting here thinking I'm probably one of the luckiest pilots kicking around in that you've picked 10 aircraft and I've flown three of them. But I won't really consider myself truly lucky until I've been in a P-51. I've gotten a chance to fly all kinds of airplanes from Corsairs, Spitfires, F-86s. And as far as I'm concerned, the Mustang's the greatest fighter of all time. I still fly the Mustang today and not just a Mustang, but a Mustang painted just like my old crow that I flew in World War II. And people ask me, he says, you know, bud, are you having any fun? I say, you know, you gotta be kidding to ask me a question like that. First flown over 60 years ago, the P-51 Mustang with its classic lines and boxer's stance is guaranteed its place in aviation history as the greatest ever fighter. It's just, it's a great airplane. Mustang is a great, great airplane.