Canard (aeronautics) flown, including the Ambrosini SS.4, Curtiss-Wright XP-55 Ascender and Kyūshū J7W1 "Shinden". These were attempts at using the canard configuration to give advantages in areas such as performance, armament disposition or pilot view, but no production aircraft were completed. The Shinden was ordered into production "off the drawing board" but hostilities ceased before any other than prototypes had flown. Just after the end of World War II in Europe in 1945, what may have been the first canard designed and flown in the Soviet Union appeared as a test aircraft, the lightweight Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-8 "Utka" (Russian for "duck"). It was
Marius Canard with the 16th Chasseurs à cheval Regiment stationed at Beaune, and was decorated with the "Croix de Guerre" with a silver star. After the war, he went to Morocco, where he perfected his knowledge of Arabic. In 1920 he returned to Lyon, where he taught in the "Lycée du Parc". In order to further his language skills, he re-entered the local university's Faculty of Letters to learn Sanskrit. Canard then visited the "École des Langues Orientales" (now known as INALCO) in Paris, where he came to know both William Marçais (1872–1956), and Georges Marçais (1876–1962). The latter convinced Canard to