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
Canard (aeronautics) homebuilt canard delta design, accordingly named VariViggen and flown in 1972. Rutan then abandoned the delta wing as unsuited to such light aircraft. His next two canard designs, the VariEze and Long-EZ had longer-span swept wings. These designs were not only successful and built in large numbers but were radically different from anything seen before. Rutan's ideas soon spread to other designers. From the 1980s they found favour in the executive market with the appearance of types such as the OMAC Laser 300, Avtek 400 and Beech Starship. Static canard designs can have complex interactions in airflow between the canard