Why do big commercial airplanes have wings on the bottom and big (US) military airplanes have their wings on top?

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Why do big commercial airplanes have wings on the bottom and big (US) military airplanes have their wings on top?

In: Engineering

14 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Where do you want the wing spar to cut across the fuselage? For passenger aircraft, preferable to have passengers in top half of fuselage (wider base for seats than for headroom), so wing cross fuselage at the bottom.

For military transports, easier to have wing cross at top of fuselage because wing spar less obtrusive for load and able to have overall plane with lower clearance to ground.

For military bombers, wing crossing top of fuselage means more space for bomb bays.

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