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  • In the 1950s, the French set aside conventional aircraft building wisdom to design a plane

  • unlike anything recognizable today.

  • With a cylindrical wing, plans for ramjet propulsion, and the ability to take off and

  • land vertically on its tail, this plane would lay the foundation for a new way to protect

  • French air space.

  • With planes that could take off from anywhere, rising up to meet the enemy like a swarm of

  • angry bees.

  • Conventional airplanes need runways to get airborne.

  • Accelerating until their wings generate enough lift to take off.

  • One way to reduce the length of runway needed is to give the plane more power so it can

  • get up to speed faster and lift off earlier.

  • But in the 1950s, aircraft designers realized that with enough power, planes might not need

  • runways at all.

  • Instead of powering down a runway, they could be oriented towards the sky.

  • And use engine power alone to lift off and accelerate until their wings generate lift.

  • The advent of more powerful engines gave rise to a new category of experimental aircraft

  • called tail sitters.

  • A configuration that could potentially revolutionize air forces.

  • In any conflict, runways were going to be the first targets.

  • And their destruction could render entire air forces inoperable.

  • But tail sitting planes wouldn't need runwaysthey could instead be hidden or deployed to

  • defend vulnerable targets.

  • If engineers could get the configuration to work, tail sitting planes promised to fundamentally

  • change how and where aircraft could be used.

  • In 1954, a French aerospace firm renowned for aircraft engines, began developing wingless

  • test rigs to prove the feasibility of the tail sitting concept.

  • Getting a tail sitting plane to work would require more than just powerful engines.

  • Entirely new control systems were needed to make vertical takeoff and landings possible.

  • It was a daunting engineering challenge for the time.

  • But the French weren't the only ones perusing the idea.

  • The Americans had also developed tail sitting prototypes.

  • And with each plane, they experimented with a different combination of propulsion, wing

  • configuration and flight control.

  • But the French had something more radical in mind.

  • The C.450 Coléoptère would barely even resemble an airplane, because its powerful turbojet

  • engine would be surrounded by a ten-and-a-half foot diameter cylindrical wing.

  • The highly unconventional wing promised greater efficiency by reducing wasteful wing tip vortices

  • which occur on conventional wings And its compact shape would reduce the amount of space

  • needed for takeoff and landings.

  • But the French also theorized that the radical wing could eventually be engineered to function

  • as a Ramjet, compressing incoming air, mixing it with fuel, and igniting it to power the

  • plane to supersonic speeds beyond Mach 2.0.

  • The wing would be a radical combination of lifting device, airframe, and pulplusion,

  • all in one

  • To control the aircraft during take off and landings, thrust would be vectored using deflecting

  • vanes in the engine's exhaust.

  • During conventional forward flight, triangular winglets would provide directional control.

  • And to help transition back to horizontal flight, small retractable fins would deploy

  • on the fuselage nose.

  • But landing the Coléoptère would be challenging.

  • With the pilot's back to the ground, they'd have to look over their shoulder.

  • So designers innovated a cockpit with a seat that could swivel 90 degrees to remain upright

  • regardless of the aircraft's orientation.

  • The Coléoptère would look straight out of science fiction.

  • But as an aircraft being designed in the 1950s, long before computer simulations, daring test

  • pilots would have to play just as much of a role as engineers in getting it to work.

  • The Coléoptère began flight testing in April of 1959.

  • First undergoing tethered evaluation before progressing to free flight.

  • By May, the plane had proven its ability to hover for minutes on end and had even flown

  • up to an altitude of 800 metres.

  • The radical machine made waves throughout France and around the world.

  • The Americans who had keenly followed the progress of the French from the very beginning,

  • reached out to Aerospace firms to study cylindrical wings for themselves.

  • But as with most novel designs, flaws soon emerged.

  • Without the benefit of a conventional wing to counter rolling tendencies, the Coléoptère

  • slowly spun on its axis during hover.

  • Making control extremely difficult.

  • And perched high on top of a vertically oriented plane, pilots struggled to judge just how

  • far the aircraft was from the ground

  • And in an emergency, conventional planes could still land without engine power.

  • Unlike the Coléoptère, which would always need its engine to land safely.

  • But the French pressed on, confident that they could sort out the prototype's flaws.

  • By July of 1959, engineers were ready to tackle the more challenging procedure of transiting

  • from vertical to conventional forward flight.

  • It would be a pivotal moment for the program.

  • On July 25th the Coléoptère lifted off vertically.

  • but during its transition, it suddenly became too inclined and slow-moving to maintain altitude.

  • The plane started tumbling back to earth, and the pilot struggled to regain control,

  • only barely managing to eject in time.

  • In an instant, the prototype was destroyed, and development suddenly ground to a halt.

  • To continue, the program would need to secure additional funding to build a second prototype.

  • But the funding would never materialize.

  • Because the Coléoptère would be the last major effort at building a pilotted tail sitting

  • plane.

  • By 1960, the Amercians had abandoned development of their own tail-sitters.

  • The configuration was a dead end.

  • Simply too much of a compromise when it came to payload and range.

  • And far too dangerous to pilot.

  • And as it turns out, directing engine exhaust to lift the aircraft, instead of tilting an

  • entire aircraft.. was a more practical and safer solution.

  • The Coléoptère's cylindrical wing also proved to be an elusive concept.

  • With less induced drag, it was in theory more efficient than a conventional wing.

  • But in practice, parasitic drag from the wing's structure largely cancelled out benefits and

  • introduced a host of other aerodynamic challenges.

  • Setting aside conventional aircraft building wisdom often results in dead ends.

  • But every so often, it leads to a breakthrough.

  • In a few weeks, I'll be releasing my second Nebula Original.

  • This time about a plane that for years was America's best kept secret.

  • A plane so revolutionary, it fundamentally changed military aircraft design.

  • I'll be releasing it on Nebula, because covering military topics on YouTube is just

  • too risky.

  • Too often educational content is needlessly demonetized.

  • But with Nebula, I'm free to make the content I want to create because Nebula is owned and

  • operated by creators like me.

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