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This question What are the least powerful airplanes that ever flew? made me wonder what the most powerful manned airplanes are that ever flew. There are two sensible categories, I suppose:

  1. Most thrust overall.
  2. Best thrust-to-weight ratio.

EDIT in response to a comment by @ratchet freak:

Answers including rocket-powered aircraft are welcome, although I'm also interested in other propulsion systems. However, I'd like to exclude rockets by requiring the craft in question to be able to at least land on, if not start from a runway.

EDIT 2 in response to a comment by @Robin Bennett:

I'd like to restrict this to reusable craft, in the sense that they should be fine to go again with not much more than a refuel. So I guess that excludes the Space Shuttle.

user35915
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  • do rocket engines count? what about unmanned? – ratchet freak Feb 14 '20 at 10:03
  • @ratchetfreak Good points. In the spirit of the original question, I would exclude unmanned aircraft. Rocket engines are a little tougher. At what point does something stop being an aircraft and become a rocket? – user35915 Feb 14 '20 at 10:07
  • @PerlDuck it has only two engines, it won't be it. – Antzi Feb 14 '20 at 10:20
  • @Antzi Yes, that's why I removed my previous comment. Maybe the An-225 with her 6 x 230kN = 1380 kN? – PerlDuck Feb 14 '20 at 10:25
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    Does the space shuttle count? (12GW, 20,000kN, 3:1 thrust-to-weight) – Robin Bennett Feb 14 '20 at 10:30
  • @RobinBennett ah man, all these things I didn't think about :-). I guess the orbiter itself counts, but I'd like to exclude detachable boosters, i.e. the craft should be reusable. – user35915 Feb 14 '20 at 10:39
  • @RobinBennett the re-usable part of the shuttle needed the external tank to fire its main engines. Even empty, the tank adds 40% mass, giving the Shuttle a smaller TWR than the X-15. — If we're really going to consider re-usable rockets here, then the winner is probably the SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage, with 8.8 MN thrust and a spectacular TWR of 40:1. Non-reusable rockets can of course give much higher ratios yet. – leftaroundabout Feb 14 '20 at 21:32
  • @user35915 would it be reasonable to limit the scope to air-breathing vehicles only? – dalearn Feb 15 '20 at 21:35
  • @dalearn well I've already allowed rocket engines, so I guess it's a little late for that. But like I said, I'm interested in all sorts of propulsion systems. So far there's no answer for piston engines, for example... – user35915 Feb 15 '20 at 22:50
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    Air Force One when it is The Air Force One. With thousands of jets, thousands of nukes, hundred of subs and dunno how many troops it is definitely most powerful aircraft. – vasin1987 Feb 16 '20 at 02:09
  • "the craft in question to be able to at least land on, if not start from a runway." Well, the Me-163B Komet (Luftwaffe) did take off and land from a field, so that ought to count. It had wheels for takeoff (dropped) and a skid for landing. No Mother Ship used. I would exclude anything launching straight up or using a Mother Ship. – Phil Perry Feb 16 '20 at 17:01
  • @user35915 "Rocket" is a characteristic of the kind of design, not size; rockets are defined as carrying all the reaction mass onboard. – chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic- Feb 17 '20 at 04:15
  • @chrylis-onstrike- did I make size a defining characteristic for a rocket anywhere? If so, that was not my intention. My point was more that one could argue that the X15, e.g. is a rocket and not a plane. Which is why I included the "land on a runway" thing. – user35915 Feb 17 '20 at 07:34
  • @PhilPerry sure, the Komet would clearly count. Its characteristics are, by modern standards, not that impressive, though. – user35915 Feb 17 '20 at 07:47
  • @user35915 It was in a deleted comment. – chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic- Feb 18 '20 at 15:45

2 Answers2

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Most thrust overall?

Well the most powerful aviation gas turbine to date is the GE90-115B, producing a whopping 115,000 lbs of thrust per engine at maximum static thrust settings.

Overall the aircraft with the greatest thrust to date has been the StratoLaunch. With 6 PW5406 engines, each rated at 56,000 lbs of thrust, this gives it the highest takeoff thrust at slightly over 340,000 lbs. For production aircraft, it’s the A380. With 4 84,000 lb thrust class Trent 900s, it gave the jet a massive 336,000 lbs of thrust on takeoff. This beats out even the AN-225 Myria, with its 6 Progress 6DT engines rated at 51,600 lbs each.

The most powerful turboprop still goes to the old dog - The Tu95 Bear. With four Kuznetsov NK-12 turboprop engines, each rated at 15,000 shp, no other turbopropeller came close.

The honor for the highest powered piston driven aircraft goes to the Hughes H-4 Hercules. The ‘Spruce Goose’ was driven by 8 Pratt & Whitney R-4350 Wasp Major engines at 3000 bhp, giving it 24,000 bhp at full throttle. This is also a sobering demonstration of the huge power to weight advantage of gas turbines over reciprocating engines. Consider that the Tu-95 mentioned above has half the number of engines yet still packs 2.5x the power of the Spruce Goose at full throttle.

The gas turbine powered airplane with highest thrust to weight ratio that I ever heard of was a stripped down Su-27 used by the Soviets in the 1980s for setting time to climb records, similar to the F-15 Streak Eagle program. The plane had a thrust to weight ratio of nearly 2:1 and had to be held back by steel cables during run up to full power as its own brakes were insufficient to restrain it.

But the X-15 beat them all. With a gross weight of 27,000 lbs and a Reaction Motors XLR99 Rocket Engine to give it a push at 70,000 lbs of thrust, it claimed a thrust to weight ratio of nearly 2.6:1!

Who knows? Maybe there’s an Aurora driver at Area 51 reading this right now who’s getting quite a chuckle out of it as he knows something I don’t!

Romeo_4808N
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  • Nice, thank you! Would you happen to have a source handy on that Su-27? I've never heard of it and my Google-fu doesn't seem to be good enough to turn anything useful up. – user35915 Feb 14 '20 at 15:45
  • Found this here after all: http://www.angelfire.com/ab4/airplanes/Sukhoi/Record_Flanker/P42.html which sounds a lot like it. – user35915 Feb 14 '20 at 15:47
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    No it should be Streak Eagle. Look it up – Romeo_4808N Feb 14 '20 at 23:03
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    Not sure the X-15 meets the "re-usable" criteria. After each flight, they had to go find the lower tail fin and stick it back on. – Mark Feb 14 '20 at 23:38
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    "... has been the A380"? She is still operative, isn't she? Or did you try to make the answer future-proof -- given the A380 will go out of service in a decade or so? ;-) – PerlDuck Feb 15 '20 at 08:05
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    @Roman: Link to the F-15 "Streak Eagle" at the Air Force Museum. It looks pretty plain-Jane compared to modern F-15's. :-) – Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні Feb 15 '20 at 17:45
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    The F-15E Strike Eagle was a production multi-role fighter which was never used in time to climb records as was the Streak Eagle. It’s something entirely separate. – Romeo_4808N Feb 15 '20 at 20:31
  • The GE90-115b is no longer the most powerful engine. Its world record was officially broken by its successor, the GE9X, which has indeed already flown (first flight a couple of weeks ago.) The 9X does have less rated thrust (because current 777X variants don't need as much thrust as the 777-300ER did,) but its demonstrated thrust is higher. – reirab Feb 16 '20 at 06:28
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    Can we have some metric units in the answer as well please? – Bamboo Feb 17 '20 at 06:06
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I've just discovered the Scaled Composites Stratolaunch:

(Image by Robert Sullivan)

According to Wikipedia its six Pratt & Whitney PW4056 deliver 56,750 lbf/252.4 kN of thrust each, which gives it a total thrust of 340,500 lbs/1514.4 kN.

user35915
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