The given question is just to impossible to answer. You simply can't compare so many different aircraft out of all of aviation history. Plenty of the aircraft that would be regarded as the most important are so because they so combat, and in most cases a lot of it. OTOH there are many, many superb aircraft which had the "misfortune" of doing their service during peace time.
IMO the only way to even begin to approach such a question is to break it up into time periods. If I'm bored tomorrow I may do so, but not even touching that tonight
And first time i heard that engine story btw, what engine are you referring to? Mig-21 are so widely used and there are so many Mig-21 variants with different engines it is a nonsense to say simplt his engine was this or that way.
It's very typical. Take the MiG-25 for example. Its claim to fame is being a Mach 3 interceptor, but yet if it does so its engine life is severely reduced, if the engines aren't outright destroyed. PVO pilots were in fact limited to Mach 2.5 to extend engine life. The most famous example is the Mach 3.2 flight a Foxbat made over Israel in '73, that made the western air forces start crapping their collective pants. What they didn't know, of course, was that the engines on that bird were toast - literally.
The F-16 is another good example. The Dash One for it gives a VNE of 800 KCAS. This is because of the earlier aircraft using the F100-PW-200 engines, which had an open loop engine control system. Get going to fast, and the compressor discharge pressure can build up beyond the physical limits of the engine. If you're lucky, nothing *very* bad happens, and you just end up with an engine which will never fly again (not to mention you flying a desk for the rest of your career). If you aren't lucky, the turbine can go right through the tip seals and start in on the engine casing. If it's *really* not your day, things can get hot enough to actually ignite the titanium engine casing, which pretty quickly eats through both hydraulic systems, leaving you just a passenger in a roman candle going down at 1,000 mph. Not good.
Of course, the -220 and -229 F100s, and the newer versions of the GD F110 used in Vipers now have closed loop control, and will control fan rpms to limit the N2 discharge pressure. So you're much less likely to damage the engine or kill yourself if you go crazy. The 800 KCAS limit still exists though, because the Viper's canopy hasn't been certified for those kinds of speeds. Not to mention the aircraft's flutter limit, though it's (in theory) on the high side of 900 KCAS.
It is wrong in some points: AFAIK about 2000 Hercules have been built against about 10000 Mig-21 not counting later Indian built and Chinesse versions. About the Mig-17 maybe the Vietnamese pilots prefered it, but for USA planes the dangerous one was the Mig-21 (and without an internal gun just as the F-4
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Its kinda irks me that the Spitfire is reguarded as the plane that won it against the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain, because even if its what people would like to believe the numbers says otherwise, the Hurricane ugly as it may be was the only fighter available in great number to the Royal Air Force.
that's the one you wanted in TCW!
