The Cornelius Mallard was a single-engined light aircraft of very unusual configuration, tailless and with a swept forward wing of variable incidence. It flew between 1943-4.

Design and development

The Mallard was the third aircraft type produced by Cornelius Aircraft.''Flight'' January 1990 The first two, the FreWing and the LW-1 were conventional in layout but unusual in using independently variable incidence wings for pitch and roll control. The wings of the Mallard could also be adjusted in the air,''Flight'' December 1989 but they were of low aspect ratio with marked forward sweep. The trailing edge carried conventional ailerons near the tips and elevators close to the fuselage. The Mallard was also a tailless aircraft, in the sense of lacking a horizontal tailplane. The rest of the aircraft was conventional, with single fin and rudder and a side-by-side cockpit for two behind a

flat four A flat-four engine, also known as a horizontally opposed-four engine, is a four-cylinder piston engine with two banks of cylinders lying on opposite sides of a common crankshaft. The most common type of flat-four engine is the boxer-four engine, ...

engine. The undercarriage was fixed and of the tailwheel type. Like other Cornelius designs, the sole Mallard was built by the

Spartan Aircraft Company The Spartan Aircraft Company was an American aircraft manufacturing company, headquartered on Sheridan Avenue near the Tulsa Municipal Airport in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Previously known as Mid-Continent Aircraft Company, the company had been reorgani ...

. The Mallard first flew on 18 August 1943, flown by Arthur Reitherman, though some sources suggest that most of the subsequent 18 flights were in the hands of the Romanian aerobatic pilot Alexander Papana. The first public flight was on 7 September 1943. It was reported to have been 700 lb (320 kg) overweight and there were plans to install a more powerful engine. The designer claimed that the Mallard was stall and spin proof, though the later loss of the much larger but similarly configured

Cornelius XFG-1 The Cornelius XFG-1 was an American military fuel transporting towed glider, without a tailplane and with a forward-swept wing. Two were built but development ended in 1945. Design and development The Cornelius XFG-1, developed under the projec ...

in an irrecoverable spin has cast doubt on this.''Flight'' November 1989

Specifications

References

Notes

Bibliography

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Flight Flight or flying is the process by which an object moves through a space without contacting any planetary surface, either within an atmosphere (i.e. air flight or aviation) or through the vacuum of outer space (i.e. spaceflight). This can be a ...

, issue=27 April 1944 , pages=444–7 , url=http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1944/1944%20-%200855.html 1940s United States civil aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1943

Mallard The mallard () or wild duck (''Anas platyrhynchos'') is a dabbling duck that breeds throughout the temperate and subtropical Americas, Eurasia, and North Africa, and has been introduced to New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, Arge ...

Variable-incidence-wing aircraft Forward-swept-wing aircraft Tailless aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft