A
coleopter is a type of
Vertical Take-Off and LandingVTOL is an abbreviation for Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft. See also V/STOL. This classification includes fixed-wing aircraft that can hover, take off and land vertically as well as helicopters and other aircraft with powered rotors, such as tiltrotors...
aircraft design where the fuselage is surrounded by an
annularIn mathematics, an annulus is a ring-shaped geometric figure, or more generally, a term used to name a ring-shaped object. Or, it is the area between two concentric circles...
wing. The aircraft is intended to
take off and land on its tailA tailsitter is a type of VTOL aircraft that launches and lands on its tail, something akin to a Buck Rogers type rocket, such as the McDonnell Douglas DC-X Delta Clipper. One of the most famous examples of this type of aircraft is the Ryan X-13 Vertijet. Among the propeller-driven versions were...
. The term is an anglicisation of the French
coléoptère (beetle) after the first actual implementation of this design, the
SNECMA ColéoptèreThe SNECMA Coléoptère was a VTOL aircraft developed by the French in the 1950s. It was a single-person aircraft with an annular wing designed to land vertically, therefore requiring no runway and very little space to take-off and land. There were several prototypes developed and tested, however...
of the mid 1950s.
While the SNECMA machine may have been the first of this type of aircraft to actually be constructed, the approach itself was first put forward in Germany late in World War II as a possible layout for point defense interceptors at a time when German airfields were under regular attack by Allied bombing.
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A
coleopter is a type of
Vertical Take-Off and LandingVTOL is an abbreviation for Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft. See also V/STOL. This classification includes fixed-wing aircraft that can hover, take off and land vertically as well as helicopters and other aircraft with powered rotors, such as tiltrotors...
aircraft design where the fuselage is surrounded by an
annularIn mathematics, an annulus is a ring-shaped geometric figure, or more generally, a term used to name a ring-shaped object. Or, it is the area between two concentric circles...
wing. The aircraft is intended to
take off and land on its tailA tailsitter is a type of VTOL aircraft that launches and lands on its tail, something akin to a Buck Rogers type rocket, such as the McDonnell Douglas DC-X Delta Clipper. One of the most famous examples of this type of aircraft is the Ryan X-13 Vertijet. Among the propeller-driven versions were...
. The term is an anglicisation of the French
coléoptère (beetle) after the first actual implementation of this design, the
SNECMA ColéoptèreThe SNECMA Coléoptère was a VTOL aircraft developed by the French in the 1950s. It was a single-person aircraft with an annular wing designed to land vertically, therefore requiring no runway and very little space to take-off and land. There were several prototypes developed and tested, however...
of the mid 1950s.
While the SNECMA machine may have been the first of this type of aircraft to actually be constructed, the approach itself was first put forward in Germany late in World War II as a possible layout for point defense interceptors at a time when German airfields were under regular attack by Allied bombing. Two proposed
HeinkelHeinkel Flugzeugwerke was a German aircraft manufacturing company founded by and named after Ernst Heinkel. It is noted for producing bomber aircraft for the Luftwaffe in World War II and for important contributions to high-speed flight.-History:...
designs, the Wespe and the Lerche II were to use this layout, but neither of them was ever actually built.
SNECMA's experiences demonstrated formidable control problems, both with balancing the aircraft during vertical flight, and in transitioning between vertical and horizontal flight and back.
An American design, the
Hiller VXT-8The Hiller VXT-8 Coleopter was a proposed annular wing VTOL aircraft designed in the United States in the late 1950s, inspired by the French SNECMA Coléoptère. The project did not progress beyond the mockup stage.-External links:*...
, was abandoned before a prototype was ever built.
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