For all you plane buffs . . .

The folks at the Smithsonian put together a list of the top ten planes of all time for the July issue of their magazine. The list ...

1. Wright 1905 – (Note that that's NOT the first plane.)
2. Junkers F13 – Not the first airliner, but the first with a light metal skeleton. Eh...
   
3. Boeing 314 – Pan Am's 314 Clipper - this is why they serve drinks aboard planes...
4. B-29 Enola Gay – One of two specific aircraft on the list. Doesn't really fit, though they try to make a claim for the B-29 as "the first nuclear capable aircraft" and mention its pressurized cockpit.... More evolutionary than revolutionary, unlike the first swept-wing jet bomber (the almost forgotten B-47) and the first stealth bomber(the misnamed Stealth Fighter)...
   
5. Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG 15 – Good jet fighter, but is it really more important than the Me-262? And its superiority over the F-86 is greatly exaggerated, even if it is usually done as a compliment to U.S. pilots.
6. Sikorsky S-55 – Not the first helo used for air rescue, but it did make it routine during the Korean War.
7. Cessna 172 –Got me. There are a hell of a lot of them, though.
8. Learjet 23 – First commercially successful corporate jet. Hard to argue.
   
9. Boeing 747 – The Clipper's grandson.
   
10. General Atomics MQ-1 Predator – Not the first UAV, but certainly a successful one and one that is in the public (media's) mind. UAVs certainly are the way of the future (and the present, actually)
    

Half the fun is disagreeing. Here's a link to the magazine where the list appears. If you scroll down, you can read some of the debate over what belongs and doesn't belong on the list ...

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/Aircraft_That_Changed_the_World.html?c=y&page=1