I would have loved to fly that in real life…as long as it was nowhere near a carrier! 
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One of the things I love about the 50’s era jets is that they were still figuring out what worked and what didn’t…. The Cutlass would have probably been great with later generation engines. It looked awesome though! It’s amazing (to me at least) when you consider that just 10 years before the Cutlass entered service, the premier front line US Navy fighter was the Wildcat.
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Right? If you’ve ever read Feet Wet, he talks about going through advanced training in the mid ‘40s…in the Wildcat.
So, what was grabbing a tiger by the tail in 1940, was a trainer in 1946! 
And back when I was going through Beeville, some of my old, crotchety sim instructors would point to the pictures of orange and white Training Command Cougars hung on the wall and tell me we used to plant one into the corn field about once a month. 
All while I was flying TA-4Js with bullet holes in the tail patched with budweiser cans from VN. 
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It always feels tragic, reading how the aerodynamically fantastic fighters from the 50s were limited by the early jet engines.
Especially when improved re-engined versions were cancelled due to the shift towards Mach 2, missile-based and multirole aircraft (actually just the F-4)
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Very true.
Maybe not quite in the same category, but my personal favorite, the Harrier, was originally intended to be redesigned as a supersonic, pseudo-afterburning, multi-role fighter.
But, as the bold experimental phase of the ‘50s gave way to the fiscal hangover phase of the ’60s so many programs were either cancelled or substantially curtailed.
Like so many things cough…space program…cough it would have been amazing to see what might have been. 
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Yesterday I was flying in, and thinking about, the lowly Chinook. By the early 50’s engineers in the US, USSR, France and elsewhere had come up with very complex turbine helicopters that in some cases would serve for decades. They weren’t jets. The wow factor was low. But they represented how quickly innovation was put into action. The 50s were peak engineer.
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The Chinook is definitely in that timeless category as the B-52 and the Herc. Perhaps the Mi-8 deserves a spot too.
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Well said @smokinhole .
Mi-6, the huge one, came years before the CH-54 (first flight 1962), CH-47 (1962), CH-53 (1964) or Super Frelon (1962) and had a bigger payload. First flight 1957, production started in 1959.
Alouette II, the first gas turbine powered production helicopter, started production in 1956, but that same year, UH-1 production started. Both iconic helicopters, that led to derivatives that still fly today (Gazelle, H130, H135 and UH-1N,/Y AB-412 resp.)
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It’s like everybody continued to accelerate after the war, before realizing everybody’s got nukes now so pouring mountains of cash into conventional gear won’t help.
But it is fascinating to see the results of giving smart people the funds to break boundaries…
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I would love to see a BAC TSR2 for MSFS. Way ahead of its time.. effectively a Tornado but designed in the late 50’s/early 60’s.
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this guy is definitely british ! 
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