I think I have a lot of aircraft that could go in this category. When I was younger, I generally had two considerations: appearance and top-end performance. Basically, did it sell posters and calendars and could it win a game of Top Trumps? If the answer to both of those was no, then it probably wasn't worth my affection. Since then, my interest is far broader and more nuanced.
To echo a few of the earlier comments, a whole category would be all the USAAF fighters that weren't the P-51. Yes, I still think the P-51 was the best, but I've since developed a much greater appreciation for the P-38, P-40, P-47, and even the P-39. Similarly, The F4F Wildcat, Hawker Hurricane, and Bf 109 all lived in the shadow of the Hellcat, Spitfire, and Fw 190, respectively, in my juvenile mind.
Here's a couple of more modern ones that I don't think I ever loathed, but I definitely didn't appreciate enough.
Douglas A-4 Skyhawk: Accidentally, one of the best fighters of the Cold War.
Even though it was designed by Ed Heinemann as very much a light attack aircraft (and employed quite successfully by its users as such), its inherent qualities made it a formidable fighter when tasked for such. I have loved the A-4 for years (I have a picture of the venerable Skyhawk on my bedroom wall, in fact), but even a few days ago I gained even more of an appreciation for it. I was recently watching interviews of US Navy F-14, F-16, and F/A-18 pilots who all said you could bully F-5s around once you figured out how to fight your plane and that you didn't really fear them that much. The A-4s, however, remained deadly even to the "teen series" long after the F-5 stopped being much of a threat, because the A-4 would happily kill anything that was dumb enough to get in a fight in a phone booth with it.
https://youtu.be/3TdvGZqIuZU?t=536I'd have guessed that the F-5E was a more dangerous opponent in most cases than the A-4F, but that does not seem to be the case according to the pilots that fought them. My respect for the Skyhawk only seems to increase as time goes on. It seems to get dismissed almost exclusively on account of its designation and role.
Take this, for example:
Top ten fighters of 1969 | Hush-KitScrolling all the way to the bottom, we find...
The A-4 was disqualified on role allocation, likewise the F-105, despite 27.5 kills.
By the way, it's still serving in that aggressor role today. There's a great video of one being chased down by an F-22.
https://youtu.be/SmutFmfB0q4Even more underappreciated, I think, is the
Tupolev Tu-16 "Badger". How many other combat aircraft can you think of that have been in near-continuous production for 67 years?
I'm guilty of forgetting about it on many occasions, but here's some things to keep in perspective. The Tu-88 prototype first flew less than two weeks after the B-52, but the last B-52 was delivered in 1962, while China is still building Tu-16 variants today. Not counting airliner derivatives, nearly 1,700 Tu-16s have been built by the Soviet Union and China, more than double the number of B-52s built. If we include the airliner direct descendants (Tu-104, Tu-124, and Tu-134), then the total number is closer to 3,000. By comparison, that's nearly the combined production of the B-47, B-52, and all three of Britain's V-bombers.
That's another way to think about it. You're talking about an aircraft that was designed by a company that had only introduced a copy of the B-29 the year before. The prototype was rolled out when they were still building those same B-29 copies. As a reminder, the Tu-88 prototype beat the straight wing Avro Vulcan prototype to first flight by four months, too. Its performance was surprisingly similar to the Vulcan, too. It was at least closer to the Vulcan than the Vulcan was to the B-52 or Tu-95 (which were—in fairness—in another weight class).
Now, imagine if the Vulcan was adopted by India in the '60s, then license-built at a low rate by HAL for the next 50 years and was still coming out with new variants today. Just take a look at some photos of the prototype compared with recently-produced aircraft still in service. It's amazing how little it had changed before the H-6K. The design is still very solid, especially for a combat aircraft. While the much-beloved and—on the face of it—superior Vulcan first flew, entered service, had its moment of glory in the Falklands, served the rest of the Cold War, was retired, flown for the last time, resurrected for the airshow circuit, and put out to pasture again, the Tu-16/H-6 has just been showing up to work every morning, punching in, going to work, and heading home. New variants continue to roll off the line even today. It does not get the appreciation such a long-lived classic combat aircraft deserves. Part of me wonders if the Badger may even out-live the immortal B-52...
Cheers,
Logan