Charles Fauvel (31 December 1904 - 10 September 1979) was a French aircraft designer noted for his tailless and

flying wing A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft that has no definite fuselage, with its crew, payload, fuel, and equipment housed inside the main wing structure. A flying wing may have various small protuberances such as pods, nacelles, blis ...

designs and, in particular, his sailplanes. Fauvel became interested in soaring after witnessing a competition at Vauville in 1925, and set out to design a competition glider with minimal drag, settling on the flying wing formula based on the work of

Georges Abrial Georges Abrial (1898 in Paris – 1970 in Vauville, Manche) was an early French aerodynamicist. Life After graduating from the St Cyr Aeronautical Institute he worked for Levasseur ( Levasseur-Abrial A-1) and did some pioneering work into tail ...

and René Arnoux. One of his designs, the AV.10 was the first tailless design to attain a French Certificate of Navigability. His greatest commercial success was the AV.36 sailplane, first flown in 1951. Fauvel's other achievements included a number of aerial world records, including the world altitude and duration records for an aircraft under 400 kg, which he set in September 1929. In 1979, he was killed in the crash of a CAB Supercab that he was piloting.« Un aviateur angevin : Charles Fauvel », Les Cahiers du RSA, no 168, septembre-octobre 1989

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fauvel, Charles Aircraft designers 1904 births 1979 deaths French glider pilots