My first cousin, Major Harry Bolster, was killed in an XP-75 Eagle test flight crash on 10 October 1944 in aircraft 44-44549. A failure of the counter-rotating prop system caused the props to stop spinning. Harry tried a gliding landing at Eglin AFB but came up short of the runway and crashed. The XP-75 program was cancelled the following month. Harry was a fighter pilot with the American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) with a documented air-to-air kill before returning to the United States. Harry is buried at Hill of Rest Cemetery in Baytown, Texas. An image of the XP-75 is engraved on his headstone. 43 years after Harry's death I began flying the F-15 Eagle.

I have read that the whole XP-75 was basically a ploy to keep GM out of the B-29 program

Why does every KZfaq person say, "how's it goin?", when they really don't care how it's going and viewers cannot tell them how it's going?

The Heinkel He177 bomber might be a contender for the worst OPERATIONAL type of aircraft in WW2, with all too frequent inflight engine fires. In fact it was similar in this respect to the British Avro Manchester with its Rolls-Royce Vulture engines, leading to the Avro Lancaster with 4 Merlins

I love how even though the P-51 was built by an american company (north American aviation) and its best known for escorting B-17 bombers all the way from the uk to germany and back it was ACTUALLY designed and built to meet a BRITISH royal air force requirment

If they wanted those specs why not just buy some mosquitoes? And almost the bomb load of a B17, bonus!

A couple of things got missed in terms of "advanced features" - the P-39 - like arrangement of putting the engine behind the pilot, for instance. The main problem with tractor prop fighters was the long nose and tail dragger gear - it hinders visibility, especially for taxiing and landing. The P-39 was ahead of its time. By 1943-44 EVERYONE was thinking along these terms - Rolls Royce had a fighter design for its new Crecy engine that was supposed to use P-51 wings, it got as far as a fuselage mock-up (there's a picture in the RRHT book on the Crecy). Messerschmitt had a Me-509 in the design stage. Both of these had the pilot up close to the nose, the Me-509 also had tricycle gear (something the P-75 didn't have). And note that pretty much all jet fighters post-war have the same arrangement - cockpit up near the nose, engine(s) behind the pilot. Another feature was the placement of the radiator. One reason for the P-51's added speed was it put the hot air from engine cooling where it would do the most good, in the low pressure region towards the rear of the fuselage. Note that the Me-509 has this, as well, so did the Martin Baker MB5.

It’s hard to describe a concept that never made it into production as the worst. I would think the Messerschmidt 210 to far worse due to its incredibly poor flight characteristics. I think there are numerous other examples from all sides that would objectively have to be considered worse than the XP-75. One that I would not consider worse is the Me163 Komet. Yes it did probably kill more Germans than allies, but for me was an incredible achievement while attempting the impossible.

"Slapping it together from spares" is a time-honored tradition in many engineering fields, and actually has a lot to recommend it. It at least gives you something to start from. And if you find you end up with something that's less than the sum of its parts, then you haven't invested nearly so much effort.

If I were to go with own pilots killed, I would say that the F-104 is a much better candidate for the worst airplane ever position.

Fun story time. My father and I have been visiting the USAF Museum since the mid 90's when I was a maybe 10. In the mid 90's the XP-75 was quite beat up and in desperate need of restoration. During one of my early visits (Mind you I live in Michigan, it was only about a 4 hour drive where I lived at the time, so we visited often) I ended up taking a picture of the aircraft in it's disrepair and kept a copy of that photo in an album.

"Slapped together with spare parts"??

One candidate I will recommend is a plane that did get considerable use in WWII. I learned about it from my Dad's business partner, who had been a B-25 "flying sergeant" pilot. At the conclusion of their first orientation briefing the students were told to pair up with a B-25 instructor. John looked around the room and was disturbed by the fact that all the instructor pilots appeared to be teenagers. Then he spotted one captain who must have been ancient, probably 35 years old. He hooked up with him and off they went to the flight line. Once seated inside, John stared at the captain and the captain stared back. Finally John asked him, "Sir, how do we start the engines?" The captain sheepishly replied, "I don't know. I've never flown one of these machines before."

The bird at

Thank you for producing this video of the most amazing multi role fighter of the era. This has got to be the best WWII aviation video ever on KZfaq. It brought to light American ingenuity which obviously was lacking in spades in this Fisher XP 75. It did prove however, the American philosophy of bigger is better, isn’t better all the time.

In the technical publication industry you document the prototype (even prototypes need instruction manuals) and you update to the production model as changes are made. The prototype is the engineer’s first physical guess about how the machine should function; testing is the shake-and-break phase to find out what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes too many things break, the fixes compromise the intended function and it never gets beyond the prototype stage.

This body style looks like it would be a perfect choice for the use of a jet engine. Remove the prop, and replace with an intake, jet engine where the Allison went and an exhaust towards the rear.

"Worst WWII Plane Ever....?"

awesome video as always! your take on 'worst plane' absolutely spot on.

You make a good argument, sometimes the contribution of a project is not where people generally expect it.