Well, I just like to keep the sides or limits back a ways or the next thing you know, a paint color that is a little off becomes 'atrocious' (not telling who does that by I live with her and she is not allowed to use adjectives anymore 'cause of things like that). And the fact is that the C-14 CCT does work, does not allow the valves to commit indecent acts with the piston tops and so kinda' falls out of the running of 'terrible' for me.
Chauchat: the designer, and especially adopters of that thing should have faced felony charges IMO. And I am not kidding- no telling how many French soldiers that thing killed. A bad design is fine and well, I have more than a few behind me, but to get it through testing, a proving session, adoption, procurement and finally disbursement is criminal. But ya' gotta' love the part where the American Doughboys dropped them on the side of the road at the point of deployment departure with the 'oh so Yankee' observation: might as well drop it here as to carry it to the trenches and drop it there. Funny, in a pathetic sort of way.
The 104.... hey, I love 'em too. The Air Force wanted to go fast. Kelly Johnson, ever the talented, brilliant and able designer, thought about that- going fast. He thought about it backwards in that he did not design a place to go fast, he chose something that went fast, a rocket, and put enough plane stuff on it so it could be flown. And fast it was. Performance was outsanding. Further, the place was small and hard to spot; in modern trials, it did well enough against F-15's that are what, 4 generations newer, that the report results had to be buried. And I saw a film of a German version being launched from a truck! Now, all that said, look at the crash statistics of American and German military deployment. The wings are just too small and require too much speed to be effective (i.e., to 'fly') and so in addition to a lot of take off and landing accidents, there were an extreme number of 'engagement' accidents due to airspeed falling off while engaging the OpFor. Both planes slow down but the other one continues to fly while the F-104 falls out of the sky. That plane killed too many pilots, and a high percentage of them were high- time in platform, indicating a problem with the basic airframe rather than an 'ensign killer' such as the B-26, et al.. Not a demanding plane to fly, one that was about impossible to keep w/in its required envelope.
Brian (holding firm to my limits. For example: OK, that smells bad but is it really the worst thing you ever smelled in your entire life? Really?)
Ok, if we are going to use the Chauchat as the benchmark for "terrible design", I stand corrected.
BTW: I've always LOVED the 104. My first model of a jet was a 104 (Revell probably). Looks like it is going Mach 3 parked on the ramp. Once saw a German 2 ship demonstration team in 104's at Moffett field. Awesome to watch loops that went almost out of sight on the top, back down to 20' at the bottom. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say a 104, as a pure interceptor, is still a better design than a C14 CCT. But I am prejudice