This is another neat little photo from 1000 Natural Shocks (Warning: over 18 site) of the Coeloptere. This was a French experimental aircraft tested in the 1950s which sadly, didn’t take off. (Yes, bad pun intended!)
The plane was the idea of the Bureau Technique Zborowski, a design bureau composed of mainly ex-German engineers. The Coleoptere was to be a vertically launched aircraft, consisting of a small fuselage surrounded by a large wing, wrapped around the aircraft in the form of a giant ring. This wing would form a duct for a large propeller or turbine for a jet engine. It was believed that this design would give the plane additional thrust in forward flight, or allow it to become a ramjet and thus allow it to attain hypersonic speeds.
The French aviation development bureau, SNECMA (whose name does intend sound very close to a piece of profanity in Red Dwarf) took over the idea in 1952, and began tests on a variety of adapted planes. These planes were originally remote controlled. The first manned flight in a Coleoptere aircraft was made on 30 March 1957 by Auguste Morel in a tethered CP.400-P2. Untethered test lights began on the 14th May. This led to the development of the P3, which began testing the following year, 1958. This had the air intakes for the jet engine either side of the plane’s nose, which was shaped like that of a jet fighter. Morel was again the test pilot, occupying an ejector seat. From this configuration emerged the CP.450 Coleoptere, which commenced tether flight on the 17th April 1959, and then began flying freely from the 6th May. The French hoped that this would lead to the development of VTOL fighters powered by a modified Pratt & Whitney jet engine, with a ramjet engine housed in the annular wing. On one of the first free test flights, however, Morel was forced to eject, and the programme was subsequently abandoned.
The Coleoptere, from Bill Gunston: The Development of Jet and Turbine Aero Engines (Patrick Stephen Ltd 1995) 165.
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 