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) forward of the wing. The vortices generated by a delta-shaped foreplane flow back past the main wing and interact with its own vortices. Because these are critical for lift, a badly-placed foreplane can cause severe problems. By bringing the foreplane close to the wing and just above it in a close-coupled arrangement, the interactions can be made beneficial, actually helping to solve other problems too. For example, at high angles of attack (and therefore typically at low speeds) the canard surface directs airflow downward over the wing, reducing turbulence which results in reduced drag and increased lift. Typically the foreplane