Le canard qui a inventé l'hydravion

Le canard qui a inventé l'hydravion

It is the morning of 28 March 1910, and a thin mist still clings to the Étang de Berre, the great salt lagoon west of Marseille. A 27-year-old engineer named Henri Fabre sits astride a slender wooden beam, perched above three flat floats that bob gently on the water....
Le jet avec ses ailes à l'envers

Le jet avec ses ailes à l'envers

Roll the X-29 onto its back and the wings look wrong. Not damaged, not folded for storage — just backwards. Where every other jet on the ramp sweeps its wings rearward like an arrowhead, the X-29 sweeps them forward, the tips reaching out ahead of the roots as...
The Aircraft That Had No Wings

The Aircraft That Had No Wings

It is the morning of 18 September 1972, on a Dornier test field beside Lake Constance. There is no cockpit to climb into, no pilot to brief. The machine on the apron looks less like an aircraft than a fat steel cigar laid on its side: a smooth cylindrical body roughly...