P-51, F-16, F-15 and F-22 (World Fighter Aircraft Collection)

Three generations of American fighter aircraft in formation at the 2006 "Aviation Nation" airshow at Nellis AFB near Las Vegas.

The F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-15 Eagle in the photo are usually classified as "fourth generation" fighters, while the F-22 Raptor is the only operational "fifth generation" fighter.   However the boundary lines between generations is very imprecise, and some aircraft like the Gripen, MiG-35, Sukhoi Su-30 and F-18 Super Hornet are even said rather ungrammatically to be "fourth and a half generation aircraft", sometimes abbreviated to 4.5th generation.

The reality is that almost for a century fighter aircraft technology has advanced faster than almost any other branch of technology, and has incorporated other new technologies as soon as they became practical, including radio, radar, rocket power, cathode ray tubes, transistors, micro-electronics, lasers and GPS, to name just a few.   Indeed if you say that the first world war one fighters were "generation one", then already by the end of that war several generations of fighters had come and gone, because aircraft in service at the start of the war were completely out-classed by the aircraft in use at the end.   Development slowed between the two world wars, but in the lead-up to the second world war biplane fighters became obsolete as faster monoplane designs came into service.   The war saw the development of the first jet fighters, and though the very first, the Me262 Schwalbe, had swept wings, the early British and American jets like the Meteor, Vampire, Venom and Shooting Star all had straight wings and could therefore be considered "first generation" jet fighters.  Technology advanced during the Korean war with next generation swept-wing fighters like the MiG-15 "Fagot" and F-86 Sabre, then settled into a steady pattern of progress as the cold war developed, with supersonic fighters like the MiG-21 "Fishbed" and F-104 Starfighter.   The Vietnam era saw the development and introduction of aircraft like the F-4 Phantom II and the F-14 Tomcat, and then aircraft like the MiG-29 "Fulcrum", Su-27 "Flanker", F-15 Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon, which defined the final part of the cold war.

Although a new generation of fighters is coming into service now, aircraft like the Eurofighter Typhoon, Dassault Rafale, Gripen, F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II, the future has never looked less interesting for fighter aircraft enthusiasts, with aircraft development taking longer and longer, military budgets getting smaller and the possibility of unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) taking pilots out of the picture entirely.

Fouga Magister (Unusual Aircraft Collection)

The Fouga Magister was the world's first successful jet trainer, first flying in 1952.   A French design, it was also sold to many other countries, including Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Finland, Cambodia, El Salvador, Brazil and Israel.   One of these Israeli Magisters has a role in the movie Jesus Christ Superstar, chasing Judas across the desert!

The Magister ("school house") has an unusual v-shaped tail which came from a glider which Fouga was using as a jet-engine test aircraft.   The tail didn't quite do the job, so they had to put a stabilizing fin underneath, with a small wheel to prevent it from scraping along the runway when the plane takes off.   The instructor sat in the back cockpit, but the view from there is very bad, so a periscope is fitted to improve forward vision.

This Magister looks like it's on fire, but this is just a smoke system to make its display at the 2002 Royal International Air Tattoo look better.

F4U Corsairs (World Fighter Aircraft Collection)

A pair of F4U Corsair naval fighters in formation at the 2008 Chino airshow.

Powered by a 2000 horsepower R-2800 radial engine driving a huge 13 foot 4 inch propeller, the Corsair was the first American fighter capable of flying at more than 400 mph in level flight.   The propeller was so large that the designers had to incorporate an inverted gull-wing, leading to the nickname "bent wing bird".   Nevertheless, the Corsair was considerably faster than the F6F Hellcat, which used the same engine.

The long nose of the Corsair made it difficult to see forward well enough to land on aircraft carriers, so it was initially used by theUnited States Marine Corps and the Royal New Zealand Air Forcefrom land bases.   The Royal Navy eventually solved the carrier landing problems by raising the seat seven inches, fitting a curved canopy called the Malcolm Hood (seen on these two Corsairs), and flying a curved approach to the carrier, which allowed the pilot to keep the deck in sight until the last moment.  This allowed the British to use the Corsair on carriers from the middle of 1943, almost a year before the US Navy started operating them.

English Electric Lightning (Unusual Aircraft Collection)

The English Electric Lightning was designed in the 1950s to fly short-range missions against incoming bombers.   Later aircraft like the American F-104 Starfighter and the Russian MiG-21 "Fishbed" were designed for the same role, and the Fishbed even had the same sort of "shock cone" mounted in the nose air intake to regulate the flow of air into the engine at different speeds.

The British had done a lot of work on supersonic flight during World War Two and almost became the first country to break the sound barrier, however they cancelled their research program because of a lack of funding and a mistaken belief that their straight-winged research aircraft couldn't fly faster than the speed of sound.   However by this time they'd developed the "shock cone" for the nose intake and also the "all-moving" tail, which was put onto the American X-1 and allowed Chuck Yeager to control the plane aboveMach 1.   British development slowed down for several years, and when they finally developed a supersonic fighter they went straight from sub-sonic aircraft to the Lightning, which was capable of flying at twice the speed of sound.

The Lightning had several unique design features, including twin engines which were mounted one above the other, reducing the frontal area of the plane and therefore making it able to fly faster.   The wheels retracted outwards into the wings, so fuel drop tanks were mounted on top of the wings rather than underneath, giving a very unusual appearance to the aircraft.

The Lightning was used by the RAF and also by the Royal Saudi Air Force and the Kuwait Air Force.   Three are in civilian hands in South Africa and still fly regularly at air shows, and if you have enough money then you can even take a ride in the back seat of one of the trainer versions!

Mirage F1 (World Fighter Aircraft Collection)

A Dassault Mirage F1 fighter arrives at the 2002 Royal International Air Tattoo in England, the largest and most diverse military airshow in the world, with hundreds of aircraft from many participating nations.

Designed as a lightweight fighter to replace the Mirage III, the F1 differed significantly from earlier Dassault fighters by having aswept wing and conventional tail surfaces, rather than the tail-less delta layout of its predecessor.   Dassault later returned to the delta layout for the F1's successor, the Mirage 2000.

The Mirage F1 was highly successful, it was exported to about a dozen countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, including Spain, Greece, South Africa, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait andIraq.

Able to fly at Mach 2.2, the Mirage F1 proved itself during combat operations in several wars.  South African F1s shot down several Angolan MiG-21 "Fishbed" fighters in the early 1980s.   The Iraqisused it to shoot down high-performance F-14 Tomcats of the Iranian Air Force and also hit the American destroyer USS Stark with two Exocet missiles fired from an F1.   On the other side of the account, an unarmed EF-111 Aardvark became the only F-111 Aardvark to ever achieve an air-to-air kill, by forcing an Iraqi F1 to maneuver into the ground.