Charles Fauvel (31 December 190410 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 tai ...
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