With the help of some aviation experts and warplane veterans, PM took a look back over the history of single-engine planes, fighters, bombers and attack helicopters. We picked six of the most lethal fliers of the past 100 years, based on their dominance during the years they flew.
1
Fokker Eindecker
World War I began a little more than a decade after the Wright Brothers' first successful test flight at Kitty Hawk. Aircraft technology advanced at a rapid pace during the war, as engineers worked to build a durable and maneuverable plane, Air Force historian and author Walter Boyne tells PM. Improvements came so fast that no single aircraft could maintain dominance for very long. But for about eight months in late 1915, the German Fokker Eindecker ruled the skies over Europe, so much so that historians call this period the Fokker Scourge. "[The plane] was new and terrifying and caused all kinds of indignation in parliament," Boyne says.
