Fighter Plane Trivia Quiz Questions

Trivia quiz questions with answers about fighter planes.

Fighter Plane Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What are fighter aircraft?
A: A fighter aircraft is a military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat against other aircraft, as opposed to bombers and attack aircraft, whose main mission is to attack ground targets.

The hallmarks of a fighter are its speed, maneuverability, and what relative to other combat aircraft?
A: Small size.

Many fighters have secondary what?
A: Ground-attack capabilities.

Some fighters are designed as dual-purpose what?
A: Fighter-bombers.

Aircraft that do not fulfill the standard definition are often called what?
A: Fighters.

A fighter's main purpose is to establish what?
A: Air superiority over a battlefield.

Since World War I, achieving and maintaining air superiority has been considered what?
A: Essential for victory in conventional warfare.

The word "fighter" did not become the official English-language term for such aircraft until when?
A: After World War I.

In the British Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force these aircraft were referred to as what?
A: "Scouts" into the early 1920s.

The U.S. Army called their fighters what?
A: "Pursuit" aircraft from 1916 until the late 1940s.

In most languages a fighter aircraft is known as a what?
A: A hunter, or hunting aircraft.

Exceptions include Russian, where a fighter is a what?
A: An "exterminator".

In Hebrew it is a what?
A: A battle plane.

Although the term "fighter" specifies aircraft designed to shoot down other aircraft, such designs are often also useful as multi-role fighter-bombers, strike fighters, and sometimes what?
A: Lighter, fighter-sized tactical ground-attack aircraft.

The Sopwith Camel and other "fighting scouts" of World War I performed a great deal of what?
A: Ground-attack work.

Several aircraft, such as the F-111 and F-117, have received fighter designations though they had no what?
A: Fighter capability.

The F-111B variant was originally intended for a fighter role with the U.S. Navy, but it was what?
A: Cancelled.

Versatile multirole fighter-bombers such as the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet are a less expensive option than having what?
A: A range of specialized aircraft types.

Some of the most expensive fighters such as the US Grumman F-14 Tomcat, McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and Russian Sukhoi Su-27 were employed as what?
A: All-weather interceptors as well as air superiority fighter aircraft.

An interceptor is generally an aircraft intended to do what?
A: Target (or intercept) bombers.

Fighters were developed in World War I to do what?
A: Deny enemy aircraft and dirigibles the ability to gather information by reconnaissance over the battlefield.

Early fighters were very small and lightly armed by later standards, and most were biplanes built with a what?
A: A wooden frame covered with fabric, and a maximum airspeed of about 100 mph (160 km/h).

As control of the airspace over armies became increasingly important, all of the major powers did what?
A: Developed fighters to support their military operations.

Between the wars, wood was largely replaced in part or whole by what?
A: Metal tubing, and finally aluminum stressed skin structures began to predominate.

On 15 August 1914, Miodrag Tomić encountered an enemy plane while doing what?
A: Conducting a reconnaissance flight over Austria-Hungary.

The Austro-Hungarian aviator initially did what?
A: He waved at Tomić, who waved back.

The enemy pilot then took a revolver and began what?
A: Shooting at Tomić's plane.

What did Tomić then do?
A: He produced a pistol of his own and fired back.

He swerved away from the Austro-Hungarian plane and the two aircraft eventually what?
A: Parted ways.

It was considered the first what?
A: Exchange of fire between aircraft in history.

Within weeks, all Serbian and Austro-Hungarian aircraft were what?
A: Armed.

The Serbians equipped their planes with what?
A: 8-millimetre (0.31 in) Schwarzlose MG M.07/12 machine guns, six 100-round boxes of ammunition and several bombs.

By World War II, most fighters were all-metal monoplanes armed with what?
A: Batteries of machine guns or cannons and some were capable of speeds approaching 400 mph (640 km/h).

Most fighters up to this point had what?
A: One engine.

A number of twin-engine fighters were built; however they were found to be what?
A: Outmatched against single-engine fighters and were relegated to other tasks, such as night fighters equipped with primitive radar sets.

By the end of the war, what were replacing piston engines as the means of propulsion?
A: Turbojet engines, further increasing aircraft speed.

The weight of the turbojet engine was what?
A: Far less than piston engine.

Thus having two engines was no longer a what?
A: A handicap and one or two were used, depending on requirements.

This in turn required the development of what?
A: Ejection seats so the pilot could escape, and G-suits to counter the much greater forces being applied to the pilot during maneuvers.

In the 1950s, radar was fitted to what?
A: Day fighters, since due to ever increasing air-to-air weapon ranges, pilots could no longer see far enough ahead to prepare for the opposition.

Subsequently, radar capabilities grew enormously and are now what?
A: The primary method of target acquisition.

Wings were made thinner and swept back to reduce transonic drag, which required what?
A: New manufacturing methods to obtain sufficient strength.

Skins were no longer sheet metal riveted to a structure, but milled from what?
A: Large slabs of alloy.

The sound barrier was broken, and after a few false starts due to required changes in controls, speeds quickly reached what?
A: Mach 2, past which aircraft cannot maneuver sufficiently to avoid attack.

Air-to-air missiles largely replaced guns and rockets in the early 1960s since both were what?
A: Believed unusable at the speeds being attained.

The Vietnam War showed that guns still had a what?
A: Arole to play and most fighters built since then are fitted with cannon (typically between 20 and 30 mm in caliber) in addition to missiles.

Most modern combat aircraft can carry at least what?
A: A pair of air-to-air missiles.

In the 1970s, what replaced turbojets?
A: Turbofans, improving fuel economy enough that the last piston engined support aircraft could be replaced with jets, making multi-role combat aircraft possible.

What began to replace milled structures?
A: Honeycomb structures.

The first composite components began to appear on components subjected to what?
A: Little stress.

Stealth technologies have been pursued by whom?
A: The United States, Russia, India and China.

The first step was to find ways to reduce the aircraft's what?
A: Reflectivity to radar waves.

How was this done?
A: By burying the engines, eliminating sharp corners and diverting any reflections away from the radar sets of opposing forces.

Various materials were found to absorb what?
A: The energy from radar waves, and were incorporated into special finishes that have since found widespread application.

Composite structures have become widespread, including what?
A: Major structural components.

They have helped to counterbalance what?
A: The steady increases in aircraft weight.

Most modern fighters are larger and heavier than what?
A: World War II medium bombers.

The word "fighter" was first used to describe a what?
A: Two-seater aircraft with sufficient lift to carry a machine gun and its operator as well as the pilot.

Planners quickly realized that an aircraft intended to destroy its kind in the air had to be what?
A: Fast enough to catch its quarry.

The military scout airplane was not expected to carry serious armament, but rather to what?
A: Rely on its speed to reach the scout or reconnoiter location and return quickly to report – essentially an aerial horse.

Soon after the commencement of the war, pilots armed themselves with what?
A: Pistols, carbines, grenades, and an assortment of improvised weapons.

Many of these proved ineffective as the pilot had to do what?
A: Fly his airplane while attempting to aim a handheld weapon and make a difficult deflection shot.

The first step in finding a real solution was to do what?
A: Mount the weapon on the aircraft, but the propeller remained a problem since the best direction to shoot is straight ahead.

A second crew member behind the pilot could do what?
A: Aim and fire a swivel-mounted machine gun at enemy airplanes.

This limited the area of coverage chiefly to the what?
A: The rear hemisphere and effective coordination of the pilot's maneuvering with the gunner's aiming was difficult.

This option was chiefly employed as a defensive measure on what?
A: Two-seater reconnaissance aircraft from 1915 on.