The SNCASE S.E.5000 Baroudeur was a French single-engined lightweight fighter designed by SNCASE for the NATO NBMR-1 "Light Weight Strike Fighter" competition. An unusual design without a conventional landing gear, it used a wheeled trolley for take-off and three retractable skids to land. The Baroudeur did not enter production.
Design and development
The Baroudeur was a lightweight fighter, designed to operate from grass airfields, conceived and designed in the early stages of the Cold War. The Baroudeur was the brainchild of Wsiewołod "John" Jakimiuk, a Polish engineer who had worked on similar concepts at PZL and Avro Canada. The rationale behind the design was to operate tactical jet interceptors from unprepared sites in case the air force bases were destroyed in a preemptive strike. It used a wheeled trolley that could be used for take off from grass, and three retractable skids for take off from snow- or ice-covered surfaces. The skids incorporated a crude suspension/damping system made of rubber rings. The three-wheeled trolley had provision to use rockets if needed to assist. Apart from the landing gear the aircraft was a conventional shoulder-wing monoplane with a 38 degree swept wing and tail surfaces and powered by a SNECMA Atar 101C turbojet with wing-root intakes. The first of two prototypes flew on the 1 August 1953. Three pre-production aircraft designated the S.E.5003 were also built with Atar 101D turbojet engines but the type was not ordered into production.
Operational testing
Extensive testing was conducted by test pilot Jacques "Tito" Maulandi and though the underfunded prototypes proved troublesome, the design also showed some promising characteristics. It was later dubbed a "Jet dirt bike" for its off-road capabilities. It proved capable to fly with its take off trolley in place, to take off with the skids only on some suitable terrain, to land on beaches, frozen lakes, motorways, even marshes. It managed a barely supersonic speeds reaching over Istres air base. Testing also included high speedruns with a mocked-up crude rocket propelled airplane on the real rocket-powered trolley, complete with final separation at over 160 km/h. On one such occasion the test pilot suffered concussion and light injuries when the trolley cartwheeled at high speed and became unmanageable. The SE 5000 was entered, along with the promising Breguet Taon in the NATO test session for a lightweight fighter but lost out to the Fiat G91. The five prototype and preproduction Baroudeurs were disposed of as gunnery targets at Cazauxairforce base in south-west France but a non-profit concern organisation managed to scavenge most of the remains of three or four wrecks to create one SE 5003 in display condition.
