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
French seaplane carrier Foudre the honour of being the first seaplane carrier with which was temporarily converted as an experimental seaplane carrier for two months in April–May 1913, and is more often considered as the first seaplane carrier. French seaplane carrier Foudre The Foudre was a French seaplane carrier, the first in history. Her development followed the invention of the seaplane in 1910 with the French "Le Canard". The "Foudre" was first commissioned in 1896 as a torpedo boat tender ("Croiseur porte-torpilleurs"), with the role of helping bring torpedo boats to the high seas, and launch them for attack. She was then modified as