Fieseler F 3 Wespe

The Fieseler F 3 Wespe, German for wasp, was an experimental German aircraft built by the Fieseler company in Kassel around 1931 to 1932. Alexander Lippisch designed it as the Delta IV, and it was an unusual canard-delta layout, with a broad, lightly tapered delta wing, small foreplanes just ahead of the wing leading edge and twin endplate fins at the wing tips. Two seven-cylinder Pobjoy R radial engines, each giving about 75 to 85 horsepower, drove propellers in a push-pull arrangement, and the wing was made to fold. Some examples had a fully enclosed canopy and others two open cockpits. The aircraft proved generally uncontrollable, so Fieseler dropped it and turned to the conventional F 4 sports aircraft, while the design passed to the Rhon-Rossitten Gesellschaft and developed into the Lippisch Delta IVc, built as the DFS 39. Few records survive because documents were destroyed in the Second World War.