During the Second World War, Lippisch worked for the German designer Willy Messerschmitt on the first tailless aircraft to go into production, the Me 163 Komet.
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However, NASA has recently adopted the 'tailless' description for the novel X-36 research aircraft which has a canard foreplane but no vertical fin.
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This experimental "tailless" glider, designed by David Keith-Lucas and Professor Geoffrey T. R. Hill, was built by Shorts as a private research venture to test the concept of the aero-isoclinic wing.
As a result of the crash, and persistent stall problems on all tailless aircraft of the period, the research trials were terminated, the two other GAL.56s were transferred to the AFEE (Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment) at RAF Beaulieu, and the GAL.61 remained unflown.
These included Émile Dewoitine, Kurt Tank and Reimar Horten, the latter best known with his brother for their interest in tailless aircraft.
John William Dunne (1875–1949), a pre-World War I pioneer of tailless aircraft, mostly in biplane form