Coanda-1910

The Coanda-1910 was an experimental aircraft designed by Romanian inventor Henri Coanda and exhibited at the Second International Aeronautical Exhibition in Paris in October 1910. Rather than a propeller, it was powered by a turbo-propulseur, a 50 horsepower Clerget piston engine driving a centrifugal compressor that expelled pressurized air rearward through a duct, making it the only aircraft at the 1910 Paris show with no propeller. Its place in aviation history is disputed: Coanda later claimed the aircraft made a brief flight in December 1910 that ended in a crash, but aviation historians including Frank H. Winter found no contemporary documentation of any such flight at the closely monitored Issy-les-Moulineaux airfield, so while the machine is recognized as an early and unusual exploration of ducted-fan propulsion, whether it ever actually flew remains unresolved.