Top 10+ of the worst-looking planes to ever hit the sky

AD Scout

The AD Scout, built by the U.K.'s Air Department during the First World War, provides an excellent example of a plane's mission dictating its form. Its role was to defend Britain from the unprecedented threat of Germany's Zeppelins, the strategic bombers of their day. Most aircraft in this era of aerial warfare couldn't travel long distances or carry enough munitions to represent a threat to distant cities, but the lighter-than-air Zeppelins possessed both the range and the payload to strike fear into distant populations. This threat wasn't just theoretical either: in January of 1915, Zeppelin raids on the island of Britain commenced with the bombing of two British towns. For the first time in centuries, the British people were on the front lines of a war.

To counter the threat, the British Admiralty's Air Department engaged an aircraft designer and engineer named Harris Booth to design a plane whose sole mission was to hunt Zeppelins. To give pilots a better view of their prey, the Scout's fuselage was mounted to the upper wing. This gave the AD Scout an ungainly appearance that looked like it might tip forward on landing, and indeed, a skid had to be attached ahead of the landing gear to prevent that very thing from happening.

If its appearance on the ground wasn't graceful, things didn't improve much in flight. The Scout was overweight and handled poorly. It also couldn't handle the heavy Davis two-pounder gun it was originally intended to carry, necessitating a lighter and more standard gun to be fitted. While the plane was initially accepted for combat, it was soon discontinued and became a mere footnote in the Great War.

Blackburn Blackburd

The Blackburn Blackburd was as ungainly as the spelling of its name. Designed to be as simple as possible to build, it wound up looking like something a child might make from a box. Like several of the planes on this list, it arose out of the necessities of war. The Blackburd was a torpedo bomber, intended to replace the Sopwith Cuckoo (also built by Blackburn), which had gone into large-scale production near the end of the First World War. The British Admiralty intended for the Blackburd to be capable of operating from carriers.

The Blackburn Blackburd was a single-engine torpedo bomber designed as a three-bay biplane powered by a 350 horsepower Rolls-Royce engine. Its top speed was 95 mph, although this dropped to 90.5 mph when carrying a 1,400 pound torpedo. The Blackburd's most visually striking feature was its rectangular side profile, which looked like a single box from just behind the engine bay all the way to the tail. One observer at the time described the aircraft as looking like it was "undoubtedly built for use and not for ornament." This ungainly design resulted, at least in part, from a specification that required the Blackburd to be fast and cheap to produce.

The aircraft also featured a unique wing design where all four wings employed ailerons which doubled as flaps to reduce take-off and landing speeds, though testing revealed this reduced take-off capabilities. This was just one of several issues with the Blackburd. For instance, the plane needed to jettison its landing wheels to drop its torpedo, relying on steel skids for landing afterward. Flight testing also determined the Blackburd to be front-heavy and its rudder too small. Ultimately, only three prototypes were produced.

Westland-Hill Pterodactyl

The Pterodactyls were a series of flying wing designs built in the 1920s to demonstrate that tailless aircraft could be viable. Though none served in combat, they were precursors to modern flying wing designs. British Royal Air Force Captain Geoffrey T.R. Hill was behind the unusual design. His goal was to build a safer plane in light of crashes that killed dozens of Royal Air Force pilots. Hill's theory held that a tailless flying wing would never go out of control due to pilot error.

Captain Hill began designing what would become the Pterodactyl in 1923. By December 1924, it was ready for testing as a glider. HIll took it to a remote rural area of the South Downs in the colorfully named Devilsrest Bottom. This glider had wings that swept noticeably backward, a very unusual feature for the early 1920s, with moveable extensions to the wingtips that functioned as elevators or ailerons, depending on how they were operated. With a catapult assist and a slight headwind, the glider needed only ten yards to get airborne. Once Hill had proven the airworthiness of his design, the Air Ministry stepped in to provide an engine, engaging the assistance of Westland Aircraft.

This led to a series of prototypes initially known as the "Hill Tailless Monoplane," but eventually, the aircraft became called Pterodactyls. The bodies were built of lightweight balsa wood, and a pusher propeller was mounted on the rear of the short, two-seater fuselage. (The final prototype had a front engine and propeller.) The plane's stall speed was very low, and if the pilot let go of the stick, it would return to center, and the Pterodactyl would level off. This made the aircraft very stable and safe to fly.

Transavia AirTruk

Perhaps comparing the Transavia AirTruk to a flying phone booth is unnecessarily harsh, even though its short, vertical fuselage looks oddly out of place with wings on it. The AirTruk is another example of form following function, and it functioned as a cropduster. These kinds of aircraft often suffer corrosion of the tail end of the fuselage due to the chemicals they spray, so the AirTruk's designer, Luigi Pellarini, dispensed with the tail section altogether. What was left of the fuselage was essentially a tank for agricultural chemicals with a propeller on the front. The cockpit rested on top of the tank, giving the plane its oddly stubby, vertical appearance, like something from a Pixar cartoon.

The AirTruk is a biplane with a small lower wing above the fixed rear landing gear. Twin tail booms extend from the upper wing, spaced widely enough for a truck to back up to the fuselage for reloading the AirTruk so it can get back to work quickly. With the pilot's high viewpoint, he or she could easily keep an eye on the chemical dispersion over the fields behind the plane. Dual outlet doors on the bottom of the fuselage offered excellent dispersal patterns. Racks below the lower wing could be used to drop supplies in remote locations — very useful in Australia, where the plane was developed and used.

While the AirTruk is not a fast aircraft, especially while hauling a load, it gives good feedback to the pilot and is easy to land due to its heavy-duty landing gear and the pilot's unobstructed view from way up high. Production numbers weren't huge, but fittingly for an Australian plane, it made a memorable appearance in "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome."