Rodrig Goliescu

Rodrig Goliescu (1882–1942) was a Romanian inventor, engineer, and lieutenant, He designed and built the "Avioplan," the first airplane with a tubular fuselage.

The most original aspect of the Avioplan was the shape of its fuselage, designed for minimum aerodynamic drag and acting as a tube fan, increasing the efficiency of the propeller. The Avioplan's design was similar to that of modern vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL) aircraft and helicopters.

Goliescu built a model of the Avioplan with a length of 1.2 metres (3.9 ft) in 1909, achieving a takeoff angle of 30 degrees with it. Assisted by the Romanian Minister of Education, Spiru Haret, who also helped Aurel Vlaicu, Goliescu went to France in 1909 to acquire an engine for his aircraft. He patented his invention in France (patent no. 402329). While in Paris, he submitted a survey he had written, "Laws of air dynamics," to the French Academy of Sciences, and the French magazine La France automobile et aérienne (France Automobile and Air) published it in its edition of 15 May 1909.

In 1909, Goliescu learned to fly and built an updated version of the Avioplan, this time in full size. The aircraft had a half-cylinder fuselage, but air from the propeller flowed through it as it had in the first model. He flew the Avioplan for the first time in November 1909, at Juvisy airfield near Paris, and reached an altitude of about 50 metres (160 ft). It was the first flight by an aircraft with a tubed propeller. After his flights, aircraft designers did not pursue his tubed propeller idea again until 1932, when the Italian engineer Luigi Stipa built the Stipa-Caproni aircraft with a "barrel fuselage." The tubed-propeller design finally reached its full potential after World War II, when aircraft designers successfully implemented it in helicopters, like the Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin and the RAH-66 Comanche, and in the X-35 experimental aircraft which gave rise to the F-35 Lightning II fighter.

Between 1932 and 1936, Goliescu flight tested his "Aviocoleopter", the first VTOL aircraft.