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I'd say that fictional aircraft would be covered by the trope if it the work assumes (or explicitly says) that they work by something close to real-world technology, but they actually wouldn't work in real life. On the other hand, if the work explicitly says that they work by some yet-undiscovered physics, or even by magic, then it doesn't.
To be more concrete: if the show has what seems to be an ordinary propeller aircraft, but which flies at Mach 5, it's Just Plane Wrong. If it has a flying saucer that works by some advanced alien technology, it's not covered by the trope.
Well one of the mentioned 40K aircraft is the Thunderbolt Heavy Fighter
and the background material doesn't really go into technical details beyond saying "Twin F122v afterburning turbofans gives the Thunderbolt a good top speed in atmospheric flight, while a rocket booster engine allows it to operate in the vacuum of space and for fast take-offs when mounted on ground-based hydraulic ramps. The Thunderbolt should not be confused with a true "star-fighter" like the Fury Interceptor though, as its space capabilities are used primarily when deploying from an orbiting spacecraft into the atmosphere or likewise returning"
Also other mentioned craft include the Arvus Lighter and Thunderhawk both of which are Drop Ships rather than aircraft.
I don't see how that relates in any way to real-life aircraft, so it's a bad example.
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Looking at the examples, they're more Artistic License – Physics than Just Plane Wrong.
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Thanks all. I'll remove the Just Plane Wrong examples. I don't know about putting them on AL-Physics however as I can't really understand how that trope works and is organised.
Yeah... wow, that page is... bizarre. I might make a separate ATT for it.
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Oh my. That's...yeah, it's a strange page.
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As the original contributor off the Warhammer entry I would like to give my two cents on the matter. When I first wrote the entry I only mentioned the Thunderbolt fighter as it was basically an propeller aircraft going Mach 3. The Model is similar to a P40 Warhawk with very badly positioned jet. To me as an aircraft engineer this screams Just Plane Wrong. The other entries where pilled on by other users. So if nobody minds I will restore my original entry relating to the Thunderbolt.
I can see a case for putting here planes that are based on real ones but behave very differently (the Imperium has a WWII, brutalist aesthetic to most of its vehicles). However I think "leading edges a foot thick" is taking the models too literally. These are miniatures that need to be handled on a playing board; they are not like display models that can have realistically long and thin wings. It could be that canonically the vehicles are less chunky than the tabletop shows, just as the space battles represent the ships magnified many orders of magnitude. So I would leave out that phrase.
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Is the Just Plane Wrong trope just for real life aircraft used incorrectly in fiction or does is also include fictional aircraft that have nothing to do with real world aviation technology. I ask because the description and the majority of examples seem to indicate the former but then there are the Warhammer 40,000 examples, which are the later.
Edited by SebastianGray