365 Aircraft You Must Fly

Outlines the Bucket List for the Serious Aviator

By Mark RhodesA fun, educational, and definitely inspirational read, 365 Aircraft You Must Fly By Robert Dorr (Zenith Press) is well within the vein of “bucket list” works such as 1,001 Books/Movies/Places you must read/see/visit before you die. As one would expect, there is a lot of aviation exotica in this work, such as the 1909 French Bleriot XI of which two restored examples exist and are distinguished as the oldest flyable aircraft in the world at present. Also here is the De Lackner HZ-1 Aerocycle from the mid-50s, which was intended to be a kind of “personal helicopter” to be piloted by the everyday soldier on the front lines. A few were produced and even tested. Ultimately, they were considered too unreliable and unrealistic for real world military applications. Another Cold War relic from the late 50s was the Piasecki VZ-8 Sky Car, which was an attempt by the U.S. Military to develop a kind of “Flying Jeep” (not unlike the Fantastic Four’s Hovercraft from about the same time period). Again, as with the Aerocycle, the idea was to give regular troops an easy-to-operate flying vehicle for combat situations. The vehicle was built and tested but as with the Aerocycle, the military decided it was not wholly realistic mechanically or as a concept. Another mid-century oddity was the Northrop XP-56 Black Bullet, which was one of very few pusher prop aircraft developed and tested during World War II. The unconventional nature of the design led to difficulties in keeping it stable in flight and made it problematic to take off and land. There were a number of test flights, but the aircraft’s development was scrapped in 1945 when test pilot, John Myers, crashed the plane due in large part to these issues.  Not all of the planes are curiosities. The contemporary Gulfstream G650 makes the list, as does the workhorse Cessna Citationjet. It is an understatement that most of the planes listed are long shot gigs at best for most pilots due to the elite nature of some of the aircraft (Air Force One, The Dreamliner) or due to the historic nature of some of the aircraft (The Wright Flyer, The Flying Fortress); or, sometimes both. Despite this, the book functions as an inspirational tome with great back-stories of the 365 planes.