Exactly what it says, what’s your most favorite landing gear on any aircraft (I’m specifically referring to aircraft that are in WT, but real-world examples are also fine I guess).
For me it’s got to be the Mirage F-1C. I love how futuristic it looks, how it has three sets of double wheels, the super wide stance.
I’m not the only one who thinks so either; apparently, Soviet designer Oleg Samoilovich mentions in his memoirs that he particularly admired the French landing gear and copied it when designing the Su-24.
Seems like it was a retired Jaguar belonging to the Centre d’essais en vol stored at the Toulouse–Blagnac Airport. It was flipped by winds owing to Cyclone Klaus in January 2009. Doubt that anyone would happen to be sitting in the cockpit at the time. The damaged aircraft was later given to the Ailes anciennes Toulouse to be repaired and put on display.
So someone is definitely filling out a lot of paperwork that day, but that someone would be the ground crew for not properly securing an aircraft in anticipation of a storm!
The Ki-43’s always look pretty cool to me. They covered up the struts but deemed that also covering up the wheels would have added too much weight.
Because it retracts inwards, when deployed it makes it very stable and easy to handle on the ground. It’s interesting to me that they were apparently not interested in a lighter configuration like the Spitfire or Bf 109, and prioritized ease of use above whatever weight gains they could get with a narrower landing gear base.
The result was that the Ki-43 turned out to be one of the easiest fighters in the world to fly.
