Love centurii-chan
The F-15 is the only plane to have safely landed, not a controlled crash but actually returned to a runway and landed, after losing a wing.
Edit to add link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Negev_mid-air_collision
“the F-15 landed at twice the normal speed to maintain the necessary lift, and its tailhook was torn off completely during the landing.”
I like this part even better:
He added, “Only when McDonnell Douglas later went to analyze it, they said, OK, the F-15 has a very wide [lifting] body; you fly fast enough and you’re like a rocket. You don’t need wings.”
But the pilots quote was best of all
“it’s highly likely that if I had seen it clearly I would have ejected, because it was obvious you couldn’t really fly an airplane like that.”
Explanation: When the Americans learned of the Soviet Mig-25 ‘Foxbat’, the US was certain that the high-speed jet shown by the Soviets was, due to its design and the classified nature of its technical details, an ultra-maneuverable ultra-fast fighter jet, and in response, poured money into the F-15 ‘Eagle’ to make it a weapon that could compare to its Soviet counterpart!
Some ten years later a defector landed with a Mig-25 and handed it over to Western intelligence. Turns out, it wasn’t maneuverable at all, or a fighter, for that matter. It was an interceptor made for catching nuclear bombers, and had all the maneuverability of stiff cardboard. Very fast, though! C’est la vie!
Once dismantled and analyzed, it was discovered the airframe of the MiG was mostly made of steel and the avionics entirely based on vacuum tubes.
