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An original drawing by René Couzinet for a conventional airliner with circular wing. US Patent Office \ 37) vi strange concept, comprising a conventional =— aircraft fuselage with a disc mounted above. Itis hard to see the thinking behind this some- what clumsy proposal. After the initial interest in the RC.360 pro- ject died down, Couzinet was unable to raise enough money to complete the full-sized pro- totype. Disillusioned by the complete lack of interest in his project, René Couzinet and his wife Gilberte committed suicide in their apartment on Sunday 16th December 1956. It was a tragic end for one of the world’s great pioneers and a truly innovative aircraft The full-sized RC.360 aerodyne was under The aircraft’s main forward propulsion was__ designer. The scale mock-up of Couzinet’s development at Couzinet’s factory at Roche- _ provided byalicence-built Armstrong Siddeley Aerodyne vanished without a trace and there sur-Yon and this promised good subsonic per- Viper turbojet delivering 1,639lb (7.2kN) of seems to be some genuine mystery about formance in level flight. Wind tunnel testing of _ thrust and, fully fuelled, the aircraft hadatake- _ what happened toit, although it was probably models was carried out, butexactly how much __ off weight of 27,700 Ib (12,565kg). broken up for scrap. progress was made with the full-sized airframe Beyond pure research, it remains unclear remains unknown. Nevertheless, there were — what role Couzinet envisaged for the Aero- Wibault’s VTOL Concepts American reports published in early 1956 that dyne, which was unlikely to provide the flex- During the early Cold War years there was indicated an initial test flight was scheduled for _ ibility of a conventional helicopter and would considerable French military interest in VTOL April of that year. The RC.360 had a span of 44ft not have had the high-speed performance of _ aircraft. This led to some very unusual projects 7in (13.6m) and a lifting surface area of 645.6ft a military jet. However, within the documents _ suchas the SNECMA tail-sitters, which can be (60.0m?). It worked on essentially the same ___ relating to this design, Couzinet discusses the _ traced back to German wartime research. principle as the smaller model, but used six vulnerability of airfields to attack, which Lycoming engines instead of three. In addi- _ strongly suggests that a military purpose was Drawings of two different Wibault VIOL aircraft tion, there would be fifty adjustable vanes _ envisaged from the outset. Further details in designs from the early 1950s. Both use the same instead of forty-eight and four stabilising fins. the same documents show another rather _ internal rotor propulsion system. via Bill Rose econ0gcoogd90CNgNd G00 00 eccon0goceoognca0NgNd C0000 Drawings of two different Wibault VTOL aircraft designs from the early 1950s. Both use the same internal rotor propulsion system. via Bill Rose la MN pe no = —— 98 eccon0goceoognca0NgNd C0000 Secret Projects: Flying Saucer Aircraft