Sharkit 011 Leduc 010

The Leduc 010 (another designation: Leduc 0.10) was a French experimental (experimental) aircraft that took off for the first time in 1947. In total, only 1 copy of this machine was made. The plane was 10.25 meters long with a wingspan of 10.52 meters. The drive was provided by a single Leduc jet engine with a thrust of 15.7 kN. The top speed was around 800 km / h. The weight of the empty plane was 1700 kilograms.

Leduc 010 was the result of theoretical and development work carried out by the French aviation constructor Rene Leduc from the 1920s! The first attempts to build an aircraft with a jet engine in France were initiated as early as 1936, but the imminent outbreak of World War II and the subsequent German occupation (1940-1944) made it impossible to continue the works. However, Rene Leduc returned to this issue after 1945. The machine was essentially an engine to which the pilot capsule, trapezoidal wings and tail rudders were added. Leduc 010 did not even have its own landing gear - it took off either together with the carrier plane (first glider flight tests) or took off from a special "trolley" (further tests with the use of a jet engine). It does not change the fact that it was one of the first airplanes powered exclusively by a jet engine in the world.