List of birds by flight speed
This is a list of the fastest flying birds in the world. A bird's velocity is necessarily variable; a hunting bird will reach much greater speeds while diving to catch prey than when gliding. The bird with the greatest airspeed velocity is the Peregrine falcon, able to exceed 321.8 km/h (200 mph) in its hunting dives. The greatest self-powered horizontal speed is achieved by Homing Racing Pigeons. They can fly 1100 km (700 miles) in a single day, and they have been recorded flying at 177 km/h (110 miles per hour), making them the birds with the fastest speed ever recorded on a self-powered flight, and the fastest endurance flight.
Fastest propeller-driven aircraft
The Tupolev Tu-114, a large aircraft with four turboprop engines, has a maximum speed of 878 km/h (540 mph, Mach 0.73). The Kuznetsov NK-12 turboprop engines designed for the Tupolev Tu-95 (and used to power the derivative Tu-114) are the most powerful turboprops ever built and drive large contra-rotating propellers. This engine-propeller combination gives the Tu-114 the official distinction of being the fastest propeller-driven aircraft in the world, a record it has held since 1960.
Probably the fastest aircraft ever fitted with an operating propeller was the experimental McDonnell XF-88B, which was made by installing an Allison T38 turboshaft engine in the nose of a pure jet-powered XF-88 Voodoo. This unusual aircraft was intended to explore the use of high-speed propellers and achieved supersonic speeds. This aircraft is not considered to be propeller-driven since most of the thrust was provided by two jet engines.
An oft-cited contender for the fastest propeller-driven aircraft is the XF-84H Thunderscreech. This aircraft is named in Guinness World Records, 1997, as the fastest in this category with a speed of 1,002 km/h (623 mph, Mach 0.83). While it may have been "designed" as the fastest propeller-driven aircraft, this goal was not realized due to its inherent instability. This record speed is also inconsistent with data from the National Museum of the United States Air Force, which gives a top speed of 837 km/h (520 mph, Mach 0.70), slower than the Tu-114.