A Plane Without Wings: The Story of The Coléoptère

Sign up for an annual CuriosityStream subscription and you’ll also get a free Nebula subscription (the new streaming platform built by creators) here: Support Mustard on Patreon: Mustard Store: Website: Twitter: Throughout the 1950s, aircraft designers around the world began developing a unique aircraft configuration, called a tail-sitter. Unlike conventional airplanes, tail sitting planes rested on their tails and used engine power alone to lift off the ground before transitioning to vertical flight, and returning to land vertically once again on their tail. The configuration, although technically challenging to develop, would allow aircraft to operate without runways, fundamentally changing how and where air forces could use their aircraft. In the early 1950s French aerospace firm SNECMA (Société nationale d’études et de c