Nieuport-Delage NiD 42

The Nieuport-Delage NiD 42 was a French fighter built in the early 1920s, the first in a family of designs that formed the backbone of the French fighter force over the following decade. As first built it was a highly streamlined parasol-wing monoplane with a monocoque fuselage and an open cockpit, of which a single prototype was made. Two modified examples for the 1924 Coupe Beaumont became the NiD 42S, with the wings mounted at shoulder height, and Sadi Lecointe flew one at 375 kilometres per hour in February 1925 and won the 1925 Coupe Beaumont with another. Nieuport-Delage also designed a single-seat NiD 42 C.1 and a two-seat NiD 42 C.2 as sesquiplanes. By the time it entered service in 1928 technology had already surpassed the wooden structure, and much of the development work went into curing a tendency to enter a flat spin.