DLR Smartfish

Smartfish is an experimental aircraft, which is a completely new concept for a lifting -body design. The project was developed by the Swiss Conrad Roth sheep.

The Smartfish is not based on the principle of bird flight, but takes the tuna as a model. The advantage of this construction is that any complicated computing is more required to stop the aircraft stable in the air, but that this is solely ensured by the structure itself. In addition, the device can also completely dispense with flaps, slats and spoilers, which makes it less prone to interference.

Despite these simplifications, the maximum range of the planned two-seater is about 8000 km, the travel speed of about Mach 0.9 and the fuel consumption at about 4.1 liters per person and 100 kilometers.

Currently exist on the Smartfish only a few flyable models. Thanks to the cooperation of DLR took place in the spring of 2007 the first flight of a powered by a fuel cell model under the name HyFish instead.

Similar aircraft type

Boris Ivanovich Cheranovskij (1896-1960) designed and built in Russia 1923-1948 a series of tailless aircraft. One of his concepts, the Bich -26, was from the external characteristics fro the Smartfish very similar. However, the BI -26 came out as a flying wing without separate tailplane.