It was the ambitious era for post-World War II aviation in France, and probably one of the boldest projects among all was the Nord 1500 Griffon. This experimental ramjet-powered fighter/interceptor aircraft under development by Nord Aviation was supposed to reach the exciting frontier of very high-speed flight and set new standards in aeronautical technology.
Early Development and Prototypes
The Nord 1500 Griffon development began in the late 1940s; however, the initial studies were focused on high-speed delta-wing aircraft. Not until the mid-1950s did the project begin to come alive. In 1953, the French Air Ministry ordered two prototypes of a high-performance manned interceptor that was being developed and capable of flying at more than Mach 2.
The prototype, known as the Griffon I, first took to the skies on 20 September 1955. It had only one Atar 101F G2 afterburning turbojet and reached an unsatisfactory Mach 1.17, well below the requirements of Mach 2 performance. Nevertheless, the Griffon I supplied useful data on the airframe and aerodynamics, and the control and handling were considered quite good. This prototype never installed its intended ramjet engine, although it continued contributing to the program until April 1957.
Griffon II and Ramjet Integration
The second prototype, the Griffon II, made a sweeping improvement by integrating the Nord Strato-Reacteur ramjet engine. It supplied 15,290 lbs thrust, which practically doubled the turbojet’s power. On January 23, 1957, the first flight of the Griffon II took place, and in December of the same year, it broke the speed record with Mach 1.85. In October 1958, the Griffon II finally did what no other British jet had done: Mach 2. Full-scale production was never realized because it proved that the airframe was structurally limited only up to Mach 2.1.
Under Major Andre Turcat’s leadership, the Griffon II finally reached a maximum velocity of Mach 2.19, 1,450 mph, far over the original specification. The downside was that this design was leading to high temperatures, caused by the lack of high-temperature materials, and poor ramjet performance at mid-range speeds.
The End of the Line
Despite these innovative successes, no production order was secured for the Griffon program. By the end of the decade, interest in the Mach 2 Griffon and funding had waned. On 5 June 1961, the program was officially canceled. Since the Griffon prototypes flew a total of 337 times, a great deal of information was learned about high-speed flight, which influenced designs to come.
Nord Aviation had ambitious plans for a Mach 3-capable version, the “Griffon III” or “Super Griffon,” that would have had the “Super Atar” engine with 19,850 lbs of thrust. This project remained only on paper. The rise of simpler, cheaper, yet equally high-performance jet aircraft, like the Dassault Mirage III, ultimately sealed the fate of the Griffon program.
Today, the second prototype of the Nord 1500 Griffon is preserved as an example at the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace at Le Bourget Airport near Paris, standing as testimony to France’s bold leap into the realm of supersonic flight.