French Airmen Test A Flying Stovepipe

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28162, 28 December 1956, Page 7

French Airmen Test A Flying Stovepipe

(Rec. 10 p.m.) MARSEILLES, Dec. 26. France’s latest experimental aircraft, the Leduc 0-22—“ the flying stovepipe’’—which its designers believe will fly at 2500 miles an hour, had its first test High* at the Istres military aerodrome, near Marseilles, today. The flight lasted 25 minutes. The plane is propelled by the ejection of hot gases from its tail. It has been nicknamed the “Flying Stovepipe” because it looks like a squat pipe, with a thin pointed nose. Nine hundred burners fitted inside the pipe—which is the plane’s body—burn petrol at the rate of over 5000 gallons an hour; The designer of the 0-22, .Mr Rene Leduc, watched the test flight today. Engineers believe that the “flying stovepipes” will have a top speed of at least 2500 miles an hour. In theory its speed is unlimited, they say. In practice, however, its performance will be limited by the ability of the human body to stand up to the strains of such great speeds,, and by the “heat barrier.” The “heat barrier” will be the most difficult problem. After reaching a certain speed, the friction of the air on the plane’s fuselage causes intense heat which could melt the metal of which it is built. The pilot of the “flying stovepipe” flies lying down in the plane’s nose, a spur-like projection made of plexiglass. Mr Leduc created a similar plane, the 0-21, which was exhx-

bited to 20,000 spectators at the 1954 Paris Air Show. The 0-21 did not take off but was launched in the air from another aircraft.