De Havilland DH.108 Swallow

The de Havilland DH 108 Swallow was a British experimental aircraft designed by John Carver Meadows Frost in October 1945, with a tailless swept wing and a single vertical stabilizer. It was meant to evaluate swept-wing handling at low and high subsonic speeds for the proposed tailless design of the Comet airliner, and three were built to Air Ministry specification E.18/45 using the main fuselage section and engine of the Vampire with a longer fuselage and swept wings. When the Comet adopted a conventional tail, the aircraft were used instead to investigate swept-wing handling up to supersonic speeds. The first prototype, TG283, flew on 15 May 1946 at RAF Woodbridge, and the second, high-speed prototype TG306 followed in June 1946. The third, VW120, first flew on 24 July 1947 with John Cunningham. All three prototypes were lost in fatal crashes.