The Sud-Est or SNCASE SE-2100, sometimes known as the Satre SE-2100 after its designer, was a tailless, pusher configuration touring monoplane with a single engine and cabin for two. Only one was built.
The SE-2100 was designed by Pierre Satre,[1][2] later the chief designer of the Concorde,[citation needed] as a response to a 1943 specification by the Vichy French Air Ministry for a two-seat touring aircraft.[2] An all-metal aircraft, it had a low, cantilever, straight tapered wing with 55° of sweep on the leading edge and 10.43° of dihedral. There were fixed leading edge slots and trailing edgeailerons but no conventional flaps. The wing tips carried large, rounded fins with rudder-like rear portions which only moved outwards; they were used differentially for yaw control and jointly as flaps.[3]
The SE-2010 had a short, blunt-nosed nacelle-type fuselage with a cabin which could be configured to seat one centrally or two in side-by-side, dual control configuration. The seats were just aft of the leading edge, with a baggage compartment behind them. Access was via deep, wide, forward hinged doors on both sides; to make this possible, a piece of the wing root leading edge was an integral part of each door. A 140 hp (104 kW) Renault Bengali 4 four cylinder, inverted, inline engine was mounted in pusher configuration behind the cabin and air-cooled via a ventral scoop; it drove a two-blade propeller positioned just behind the trailing edge. The SE-2100's fixed, tricycle undercarriage had pneumaticshock absorbers and mainwheel brakes; the nosewheel was free-swivelling.[3] At different times the undercarriage legs and wheels were unfaired or faired.[1]
The SE-2010 flew for the first time on 4 October 1945.[4] Despite demonstrating promising performance[5] and showing high manoeuvrability when demonstrated at the 1946 Paris Air Show,[6] no production followed, with the prototype surviving into the early 1950s.[7]
Bridgman, Leonard (1948). Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1948. London: Sampson, Low, Marston and Co. Ltd.
de Narbonne, Roland (October 2005). "Octobre 1945, dans l'aéronautique française: Trois espoirs déçus". Le Fana de l'Aviation (in French). No. 431. pp. 70–75.
Pelletier, Alain J. (September–October 1996). ""Towards the Ideal Aircraft: The Life and Times of the Flying Wing, Part Two". Air Enthusiast. No. 65. pp. 8–19. ISSN0143-5450.
