Curtiss Ascender

I stopped in at the Air Zoo in Kalamazoo on the weekend, among the displays was another unusual plane I had never heard of. The Curtiss Ascender was an experimental canard, swept wing pusher-prop fighter plane designed in the early 1940s. as part of an Air Corp call for improved fighter designs encouraging unconventional designs. the first prototype first flew in 1943. Three were constructed, two of which crashed due to instabilities. This is the last one, on long term loan from the Smithsonian.