Nord Gerfaut

The Nord Gerfaut, whose name means gyrfalcon, was a French delta-wing research aircraft built to investigate transonic flight. Two aircraft were built from the Nord 1402 design. The Gerfaut I first flew on 15 January 1954 and on 3 August of that year became the first aircraft in Europe to exceed Mach 1 in level flight without an afterburner. The slightly longer Gerfaut II first flew on 17 April 1956 and set several time-to-altitude world records in February 1957, reaching 15,000 metres in 3 minutes 46 seconds. Both aircraft were later used to flight-test air-to-air missiles such as the Nord AA.20 and air-to-air radars, made their last flights in 1959 and were then sent to the Cazaux test range as targets. The design came from studies under chief designer Jean Galtier and led to the larger Nord Griffon.