A SUPERSONIC TRIDENT FROM FRANCE
THE TRIDENT SINGLE-SEAT RESEARCH PLANE is the subject of Jean-Christophe ‘JC’ Carbonel’s second book exploring French aviation projects. Mat Irvine : JC first dealt with the Coleoptere vertical takeoff machine, and now he tackles the shapely Trident, a design from Sud-Aviation for a mixed power, rocket-assisted interceptor. The book contains what has to be virtually every illustration, photo and diagram of the project. The main text is in French, but the images have extended captions in English, which is my connection with the book, as I wrote them for JC. The experimental Trident was powered by two wingtip turbojets, plus a rocket engine in the tail. Twelve Tridents were built and flown during the early 1950s, though the whole project was cancelled in 1957. Besides JC's exhaustive history of the Trident, he also explores the popular culture that surrounded it, as he includes four colour pages showing the aircraft in fiction. Then there are seven pages of model kits that have bee...