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
Le Canard enchaîné directorial office of "Le Canard". The resulting scandal forced Interior Minister Raymond Marcellin to leave the government, though it is said that Marcellin was a scapegoat for other members of the government, especially the Defense Minister, who was intent on knowing the identities of informers for the newspaper. A series of articles accusing long-serving Gaullist minister and possible Prime Ministerial candidate Robert Boulin of involvement in dubious real estate deals was followed by Boulin's mysterious death (October 1979), presumed to be suicide. Following his death, major officials publicly accused "Le Canard enchaîné" of the moral responsibility for Boulin's death, and