If you thought the Japanese kamikaze airplane was insane, then you haven’t heard of the German ELBE propeller fighter. It’s not actually called a propeller fighter, we just made that up because its actual name is the Sonderkommando, and we have no idea what that means.

You are probably wondering why we called it the propeller fighter. Well, its quite simple really. The ELBE fighter plane has no weapons or armour, but it does have a propeller, and the German army encouraged it’s pilots to use the propeller as a weapon.

Yes, this is the only melee fighter plane in history. – it has no ranged weapons at all. The only method of attack is to cut the enemy plane with its propeller.

Which, as you may have guessed, is a terrible idea.

The pilots were instructed to fly above the enemy bombers, then dive bomb them and try to cut off the tail of the enemy bomber. After obliterating the only thing keeping their planes in the air, the pilots were advised to push the eject button. Which sounds simple enough, but flying your plane into another plane does not always work out in your favour. In the end, out of the 120 pilots that took to the skies with a propeller as a weapon, only 15 made it back alive. Oh, and they only managed to destroy 17 American bombers. Which means, on average, 6 propellers had to be destroyed to take down one American bomber.