fighter aircraft: Quick Facts

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Oct. 5, 2026

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fighter aircraft

A 1917 Albatros D.Va, a German fighter plane of World War I.

Fokker Eindecker

Capt. William A. (“Billy”) Bishop, a Canadian ace who served in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, posing in front of his Nieuport type 17 fighter plane, France, August 1917.

A restored U.S. FJ-4B Fury naval jet fighter of the 1950s (top) flying in echelon with two restored Soviet fighters of the same era—a MiG-17 (middle) and a MiG-15 (bottom).

A Sopwith Camel biplane with a roundel on its wing is parked on flat ground, with a pilot visible in the open cockpit.

Watch President Roosevelt outline his Four Freedoms and learn how Britain defeated Germany's Luftwaffe

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F/A-18 Sukhoi Su-57 P-51 Bf 109 Spitfire Hurricane P-38 Spad F-22 Raptor S-37 Bomber attack aircraft uncrewed aerial vehicle torpedo plane trainer 11 of the World’s Most Famous Warplanes CG-4 Horsa

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Key People

Fieseler, Gerhard

Gerhard Fieseler

German aviator

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Leroy Randle Grumman

American engineer

Dornier, Claudius

Claudius Dornier

German engineer

NASA's Reduced Gravity Program provides the unique weightless or zero-G environment of space flight for testing and training of human and hardware reactions. NASA used the turbojet KC-135A to run these parabolic flights from 1963 to 2004.

Man-Made Birds in the Sky