Nieuport Madon

The Nieuport Madon was a French prototype fighter of 1917, a single-seat strut-braced gull-wing monoplane with an extra lifting surface between the undercarriage legs. Its first flight was made in December 1917 or early January 1918, powered by a 110 kilowatt Gnome Monosoupape 9N rotary engine, the same engine used in the Nieuport 28. A second prototype flew in late January 1918 with the slightly more powerful 130 kilowatt Le Rhone 9R, and on 1 May 1918 it was rejected in favour of the Monosoupape powered model. The Madon was never officially accepted, but its design was refined through the Nieuport 31 and the Nieuport-Delage Sesquiplan and eventually into the Nieuport-Delage NiD 62, which was still in second line service in 1940.