__NOTOC__ The Caudron C.690 was a single-seat

training aircraft A trainer is a class of aircraft designed specifically to facilitate flight training of pilots and aircrews. The use of a dedicated trainer aircraft with additional safety features—such as tandem flight controls, forgiving flight characteristi ...

developed in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

in the late 1930s to train fighter pilots to handle high-performance aircraft. It was a conventional low-wing

cantilever A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is supported at only one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a canti ...

monoplane A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing confi ...

that bore a strong resemblance to designer

Marcel Riffard Marcel Riffard (1886–1981) was a French aeronautical engineer. In the 1930s, while working at the design department of Caudron-Renault, he designed a series of racer aircraft, as well as utility aircraft such as the Caudron Simoun The Caudron ...

's racer designs of the same period. Caudron attempted to attract overseas sales for the aircraft, but this resulted in orders for only two machines - one from

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, and the other from the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. In the meantime, the first of two

prototype A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and Software prototyping, software programming. A prototyp ...

s was destroyed in a crash that killed René Paulhan, Caudron's chief test pilot. Despite this, the ''

Armée de l'Air The French Air and Space Force (AAE) (french: Armée de l'air et de l'espace, ) is the air and space force of the French Armed Forces. It was the first military aviation force in history, formed in 1909 as the , a service arm of the French Army; ...

'' eventually showed interest in the type, and ordered a batch of a slightly refined design. The first of these was not delivered until April 1939, and only 15 C.690Ms were supplied before the outbreak of

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

Variants

;C.690: Single-seat fighter trainer aircraft. Four aircraft built. ;C.690M: Slightly refined version for the ''

Armee de l'Air The French Air and Space Force (AAE) (french: Armée de l'air et de l'espace, ) is the air and space force of the French Armed Forces. It was the first military aviation force in history, formed in 1909 as the , a service arm of the French Army; ...

''. Only 15 aircraft were built.

Operators

; *

; * Imperial Japanese Air Force - One aircraft only (KXC1) . ; *

soviet Air Force The Soviet Air Forces ( rus, Военно-воздушные силы, r=Voyenno-vozdushnyye sily, VVS; literally "Military Air Forces") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Soviet Air Defence Forces. The Air Forces ...

- One aircraft only.

Specifications (C.690M)

References

Bibliography

* * * * * *

Variants

Operators

Specifications (C.690M)

See also

References

Bibliography

Further reading