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50 free Military Aircraft trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Warplanes carry more stories per airframe than almost any other machine. A fighter's nickname can come from a cartoon, a press misprint or a comic strip; a bomber can outlive the grandchildren of its first crews; a designer's surname can hide a Resistance code name. The records are just as strange: the fastest air-breathing aircraft ever built set its mark in 1976 and has never been beaten. These 50 questions move from the first synchronised guns of 1915 through the big piston fighters and bombers of the Second World War, the first jets and the Cold War's reconnaissance planes, to today's stealth bombers and remotely piloted aircraft. Expect designers and manufacturers, first flights and service lives, official names versus the ones crews actually use, the engines and design ideas that changed everything, the museums where survivors live, and famous flights as the record books state them. It suits a pub quiz, a museum visit, a classroom or anyone who has ever stopped to watch a display team: play on your phone with instant explanations, or print it for a quiz night. Every answer is cited to a reference page.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which First World War fighter does Snoopy imagine flying in Peanuts as he duels the Red Baron?
Sopwith Camel
The Sopwith Camel took its name from a humped metal fairing on its nose that pilots joked about; the name was never official. Snoopy's doghouse stands in for the biplane as he imagines himself a flying ace.
Q 02The Mitsubishi A6M, which entered Japanese Navy service in 1940, took its 'Zero' nickname from the last digit of what?
The imperial year 2600
The imperial year 2600 fell in 1940, so the Navy's 'Type 0 carrier fighter' label used its final digit; pilots called it the Reisen, or zero fighter. Designer Jiro Horikoshi met the Navy's demands by stripping out every ounce of weight.
Q 03Which American bomber, first flown in April 1952, was slated in 2025 to keep flying into the 2050s?
B-52 Stratofortress
The B-52 Stratofortress entered service in 1955 and will be almost a century old when it finally retires, a span no other aircraft has matched. Crews rarely use the official name, calling it the BUFF, for Big Ugly Fat Fella.
Q 04Why were black-and-white 'invasion stripes' painted on Allied aircraft for the Normandy landings in June 1944?
To prevent friendly fire
To prevent friendly fire, every aircraft over the beaches wore alternating black and white bands on wings and fuselage, so jumpy gunners on ships and shore could recognise them at a glance. The order went out only days before D-Day.
Q 05Which Grumman fighter, retired by the US Navy in 2006, had a single foreign customer, Iran?
F-14 Tomcat
The F-14 Tomcat was sold to the Shah's Iran in 1976, and Iranian examples were still airworthy decades after the last American one landed aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt. Top Gun made it the most famous jet of the 1980s.
Q 06US Army helicopters such as the AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Black Hawk are, by tradition, named after what?
Native American tribes
Native American tribes have given the Army's helicopters their names for decades; the AH-64 became the Apache in late 1981, after the Apache tribe. The Huey is officially the Iroquois for the same reason.
Q 07What nickname do crews give the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II, in US Air Force service since 1977?
Warthog
Warthog stuck because the A-10 is plain, slow and sturdy; its cockpit sits inside 1,200 lb of titanium armour nicknamed the 'bathtub'. The official name honours the P-47 Thunderbolt of the Second World War.
Q 08Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the Mitsubishi A6M fighter, is the hero of which 2013 animated film by Hayao Miyazaki?
The Wind Rises
The Wind Rises was Miyazaki's fictionalised biography of the engineer, voiced in Japanese by Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno. None of Horikoshi's children followed him into aircraft design.
Q 09In 1983 an Israeli pilot landed which fighter after a mid-air collision sheared off almost all of its right wing?
F-15 Eagle
The F-15 Eagle stayed controllable because its broad fuselage generated lift on its own; pilot Zivi Nedivi only saw the wing was gone after landing, as leaking fuel had hidden the damage.
Q 10Which Sydney Camm fighter, derived from the Fury biplane, inflicted 60% of Luftwaffe losses over Britain in 1940?
Hurricane
The Hurricane was overshadowed in the public mind by its sleeker stablemate, yet 14,487 were built and it fought in every major theatre of the war. Its retractable undercarriage and Merlin engine were pushed past a sceptical Air Ministry.
Q 11Which British twin-engined bomber and fighter of the Second World War was built mostly of wood?
Mosquito
The Mosquito was nicknamed the 'Wooden Wonder', or 'Mossie', and the same airframe served as bomber, fighter, night fighter and photo-reconnaissance aircraft. Eric 'Winkle' Brown made the first twin-engined carrier landing in one.
Q 12Why does the Messerschmitt Bf 109, the most-produced fighter in history, carry the prefix 'Bf' rather than 'Me'?
Its maker was Bayerische Flugzeugwerke
Bayerische Flugzeugwerke, 'Bavarian Aircraft Works', was the company's name when the design was submitted, so the air ministry stuck with Bf; 34,248 were built between 1936 and April 1945.
Q 13Which B-17, star of a 1944 documentary, was among the first US heavy bombers to complete 25 missions and fly home?
Q 21Which German dive bomber carried wind-driven sirens on its landing-gear legs, a wailing symbol of the Blitzkrieg?
Junkers Ju 87
The Junkers Ju 87 Stuka's sirens, officially the Lärmgerät or 'noise device', are often miscalled 'Jericho trumpets'; they cost 20–25 km/h in drag and were later left off many aircraft. The sound closes Pink Floyd's 'In the Flesh?'.
Q 22The US Air Force 'Boneyard' at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base stores thousands of aircraft outside which Arizona city?
Tucson
Tucson was chosen for its low humidity, scant rainfall, alkaline soil and 2,550-foot altitude, all of which slow rust and corrosion; the facility is formally the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group.
Q 23How many aerial victories traditionally make a pilot an 'ace', a term French newspapers coined in World War I?
Memphis Belle
Memphis Belle was named for pilot Robert Morgan's sweetheart Margaret Polk, and its crew toured America selling war bonds; the restored bomber has been on show at the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton since 2018.
Q 14The Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopter of the Vietnam era is universally called the 'Huey' because of what?
Its earlier HU-1 designation
Its earlier HU-1 designation was read aloud as 'Huey', and the name outlived the 1962 switch to UH-1; Bell's first production contract in 1959 was for 182 of them.
Q 15Pilots of which fighter, first flown in 1974, nicknamed it 'Viper' after a Battlestar Galactica starfighter?
F-16
The F-16 is officially the Fighting Falcon, but crews preferred Viper, partly for its snake-like look and partly for the Colonial Viper from the TV show airing as it entered service. Its first flight happened by accident during a taxi test.
Q 16Which country quit the Eurofighter programme in 1985 to build its own carrier-capable fighter instead?
France
France wanted a lighter, carrier-capable jet and a leading role, so it withdrew to pursue its own ACX project, which became the Rafale; Spain also hesitated that summer but rejoined within weeks.
Q 17Which Nevada test site was acquired by the CIA in 1955 to flight-test the Lockheed U-2 in secrecy?
Area 51
Area 51 is officially Homey Airport, or Groom Lake after the salt flat beside its runway, and the CIA picked it under the same secrecy as the rest of the U-2 project. The airfield opened in 1942 as Indian Springs Auxiliary Field.
Q 18The US Navy Fighter Weapons School, 'Top Gun', was founded in 1969 at which California naval air station?
Miramar
Miramar, in San Diego, hosted the school until it was merged into the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center at NAS Fallon, Nevada, in 1996; the base itself then passed to the Marine Corps.
Q 19Which bomber, the most-produced American military aircraft ever, rolled off Ford's Willow Run line at one an hour?
B-24 Liberator
The B-24 Liberator reached roughly 18,500 airframes, 8,685 of them built by Ford, whose Willow Run plant near Detroit turned one out every 59 minutes at its peak, faster than the military could absorb them.
Q 20Which four-engined RAF bomber did 617 Squadron fly on the Dambusters raid against the Ruhr dams in May 1943?
Lancaster
The Lancaster was chosen for Operation Chastise because it could carry Barnes Wallis's spinning 'Upkeep' bouncing bomb; the Möhne and Eder dams were breached on 16/17 May. Only two airworthy examples survive, in Britain and Canada.
Five
Five kills became the benchmark after French papers hailed Adolphe Pégoud as l'As once he had downed five German aircraft; roughly 5% of combat pilots have accounted for most air-to-air victories ever since.
Q 24Which transport, derived from the DC-3 airliner, dropped paratroops on D-Day and was the RAF's 'Dakota'?
C-47 Skytrain
The C-47 Skytrain dropped more than 50,000 paratroops in the first days of the Normandy invasion, and American crews called it the 'Gooney Bird', a nickname some trace to the albatrosses of Midway Island.
Q 25Which US Navy carrier fighter, flown by 'Pappy' Boyington's Black Sheep squadron, had a distinctive inverted gull wing?
F4U Corsair
The F4U Corsair's inverted gull wing let its huge propeller clear the deck on shorter landing-gear struts; wartime Allied claims that the Japanese called it 'Whistling Death' are not backed by Japanese sources.
Q 26The RAF was created on 1 April 1918 by merging the RNAS, the Navy's air arm, with which Army air service?
Royal Flying Corps
The Royal Flying Corps was the Army's flying arm, and the merger at the end of the First World War produced what was then the largest air force in the world; its first solo operation came in 1925 against Mahsud tribesmen in Pink's War.
Q 27Which elliptical-winged fighter was the only British fighter in production before, during and after World War II?
Spitfire
The Spitfire's semi-elliptical wing, detailed by Beverley Shenstone with sunken rivets, was made as thin as possible to cut drag; R. J. Mitchell's team settled on the shape in 1934 to reconcile thinness with internal space.
Q 28What did UN pilots in Korea call the airspace near the Yalu River, site of the first large-scale jet-versus-jet battles?
MiG Alley
MiG Alley, the north-western corner of North Korea where the Yalu meets the Yellow Sea, pitted Soviet-built MiG-15s against American F-86 Sabres; the first jet-on-jet combat came when three MiG-15s attacked about ten USAF F-80s.
Q 29Which company built the MQ-1 Predator and its successor, the MQ-9 Reaper, for the US Air Force and the CIA?
General Atomics
General Atomics won the Predator development contract in January 1994, and the Air Force retired the type in 2018 in favour of the Reaper; the 'Q' in both designations marks an unmanned aircraft.
Q 30In 1976 Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko defected to the West by landing his MiG-25 interceptor in which country?
Japan
Japan moved the jet to Hyakuri Air Base aboard a USAF C-5 Galaxy, where experts found it was an interceptor rather than the fighter-bomber they had feared; Belenko lived on in the United States as an aerospace engineer.