http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CoolPlane

Ace aircraft for Ace pilots.

Tom Clancy, describing the F-22 Raptor , describing the F-22 Raptor "If Kim Basinger was a plane, this is what she'd be."

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The aerial equivalent of the Cool Car, Cool Boat, and the flying, usually metallic (but increasingly composite) incarnation of the Rule of Cool. Allowing you to rule the skies with pizazz, the Cool Plane will not break down, rust, or ever go out of style (unless the plot demands it). This is a plane that doesn't serve peanuts to its customers, it serves a Vesper martini, a buffalo steak burger, and a side order of whoopass given by a very pleasant stewardess. Please keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times while reading this play and take note of the exits. You may need to parachute out.

Cool Planes are probably piloted by a Danger Deadpan Ace Pilot. They will frequently include stealth technology, which in reality does not make a plane invisible to radar, but reduces the detection to such that enemy reaction times will be reduced so much they cannot really do anything bar getting the hoses out.

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Oh, also: Helicopters are included in this category. Airships, however, get their own page. If you're looking for real life examples of Cool Planes, they're right over here. For the Cool Plane IN SPACE!, see Space Fighter and Space Plane.

Please make sure to include the specific reasons why your example plane is cool.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

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Fan Works

Films  Animation

Films  Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

Pinball

Tabletop Games

Warhammer 40,000 and its spinoff game Aeronautica Imperialis have their fair share of these. Special mention goes to the Eldar Nightwing, which in the words of one reviewer "looks like something Batman would fly". Its page in Imperial Armor contains a background note on an Eldar squadron that shot down more than sixty Chaos fighters in the course of one campaign. Particularly awesome given that that squadron was four Nightwings strong. Deff Skwadron brings us da megabomma ◊ , which is not only friggin' enormous, but also glorious enough to an Ork mindset (read: as many guns as could be welded on and a huge payload of angry squigs) that its eventual pilot has to pick his jaw off the floor when he first sees it.

This is pretty much the point of Warbirds and is why the corebook has sixteen pages on designing your own; common traits include multiple wings, rear-propeller "pusher" designs, and all the rest of the Dieselpunk stuff. "Courier" games, for example, can use the XS-1200 Fast Courier: the fully-equipped one shown in the book has six gun turrets, four pusher engines, and a lot of contraband space, yet can still move like a fighter (although it can't handle doing stunts); the chassis can, with a sufficiently dedicated/insane crew, mount a 75mm cannon instead of a chin turret.

FASA's Crimson Skies wargame was loaded to the gills with Diesel Punk examples of these, all of them armed and loaded for bear and many based on actual 1930s and 1940s experimental aviation technology. As an example, the Hughes Bloodhawk , based on the real-life German Henschel Hs P.75 . Another game by FASA, BattleTech, has the Aerospace Fighters, bonafide space fighter planes alongside more conventional aircraft.

, based on the real-life German Henschel Hs P.75 . Cyberpunk 2020 features besides vehicles similar to those featured on Blade Runner or The Fifth Element, or the Real Life Osprey , on Chromebooks advanced fighter planes that take advantage of the development of cybernetic gear in that setting... and the heavily armed and protected tandem rotor helicopter Sikorsky-Mitsubishi "Dragon", that the handbook invites to use as a real dragon: to kill big things and scare the hell out of everyone.

, on Chromebooks advanced fighter planes that take advantage of the development of cybernetic gear in that setting... and the heavily armed and protected tandem rotor helicopter Sikorsky-Mitsubishi "Dragon", that the handbook invites to use as a real dragon: to kill big things and scare the hell out of everyone. In Biohazard Games/Fantasy Flight Games's Blue Planet, despite being set on an ocean planet - boats aren't the most common form of transport. It's jumpcraft, a.k.a hoppers, which are capable of vertical take-off with its turbo-fans and are amphibious as well. The military version is the Assault Jumpcraft which has on a turret two autocannons and missiles to take role of traditional artillery. Dedicated aircraft are rare, but the king of the skies is the VTOL Strike Fighter which has a rotary cannon and can do various roles with its anti-air and anti-surface missiles.

Video Games

Web Animation

Web Original

In the Diesel Punk Web Serials The Chronicles of Taras, the bad guys and later what remains of the protagonists pilot a wingless, wide and cylindrical Diesel Punk airship with four neon-blue searchlights, a pair of mounted guns and a detailed interior called the "Collins RB-434 Hunter-Scavenger".

Western Animation