As the title of the thread says, What was the best warplane that never saw combat? Some good points were made in the thread about the Hurricane, mentioning lots of great aircraft that were nonetheless overshadowed by the likes of the Spit, Mustang, Jug, etc.. However, what aircraft, of any era, was the best to never see combat?

For the sake of this thread, the combat role can be any combat role, so recce/recon would be allowed, so long as there was an active enemy who might shoot at the aircraft in question; also, the aircraft would not need to see combat in its intended role to be disqualified, so of course while the B-52 did not see nuclear combat, it was known to drop the odd conventional bomb about the place here and there. We can also discount international shooting events that were accidents, or involving civvy aircraft, so the SU-15 shoot down of KAL 007, and similar incidents, are definitely not combat. Also, if an aircraft is still in service, I think that we can also generally exclude it, although if say a single ex-Soviet Fiddler is sitting in mothballs in the Seychelles, we can consider it pretty much retired. I think that the aircraft should have entered into production and fielded with at least one operational unit. Finally, unless active shooting was engaged in, cold war or phony war situations, even during periods of severe tension, should not count.

So, any interesting aircraft that could have been great warplanes but for the lack of opportunity? B-58 Hustler? Any Cold War interceptors? I'm not sure what I'd nominate, but some of you lot know a lot more about aviation than I do, so I would be interested to know your thoughts.

The Saab Draken and Viggen would probably be a good place to start.

B-36 Peacemaker
"six turnin' and four burnin' "

F-16.the most combat kills of them all. Ask Israel.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the SU-33 saw some combat in Georgia and maybe Ukraine? If not then the SU-33 would be my pick.

The Mosquito . Could do everything and could be made in a piano shop and fixed with plywood and glue

Check the thread title again guys

Being a Brit I'm going to say TSR 2.

The Mosquito never saw combat?

SR-71

A high altitude recon/spy plane is not supposed to see combat.

I think a couple of missiles were fired at it, does that count?

Thinking of something that hasn't actually seen combat is tricky. Maybe the UK Lightning or the Viggen.

yep that would be my pick too

TSR 2 never saw production, let alone combat. SR-71 got fired at quite a bit. SU-33 has seen combat and is still in service. Lightning is a good contender.

F-7-F Tigercat

F7F's were in Korea.

I was gonna say F8 Bearcat...

But I looked first and found that it saw much service in the French Indochina War.

Along the lines of the B-36, the B-47 never saw combat, as far as I could find.

The difficulty is, for most combat aircraft, if they were around for very long, somebody somewhere used it in anger.

P38 Lightning, 'cause my Mom worked in a factory building them during WWII. I goofed, read as "ever"

Has there ever been a thread here where the specifics of the question asked was so routinely ignored?