Hey, of which airplanes you that never flew, would you have like to have flown?
For me it would have been the Focke-Wulf 190D ‘Dora’ and the F105 ‘Thud’.
I never thought of it that way. If it would get airborne with a reasonable probability of landings equaling takeoffs, I was game.
I would like to have been present for a couple of the historic "firsts," mainly because ignorance is truly bliss and I am amazed they got away with it.
Examples would be the Montgolfier brothers balloon flights, thank God the carbon soot coated the inside of the balloon as that was what made it "airtight" enough to work. Or with the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk using an old five pound coffee can with a nail hole in the bottom to drip gas instead of a carburetor. Oh well, I'd rather be lucky than good, any day.
Flights I wish I could have flown involve the aircraft meeting the moment: Flying a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain, flying an A-10 or AC-130 on a close air support mission in Iraq or Afghanistan, or taking us back into space on Discovery after the loss of Challenger.
But the ultimate would be the Doolittle Raid, flying B-25's from the deck of the USS Hornet to take the war to Japan. It is hard enough flying from a carrier in aircraft designed for that purpose with the assistance of a catapult. But deck running a medium bomber elevates it to a whole other level.
When we get to that last great rendezvous in the sky, all of us are going to join up on the wing of Jimmy Doolittle.