Charles Fauvel was a French aircraft designer noted for his flying wing

Flying wing

A flying wing is a tailless fixed-wing aircraft which has no definite fuselage, with most of the crew, payload and equipment being housed inside the main wing structure....

 designs, and in particular, his flying wing sailplanes. He became interested in soaring after witnessing a competition at Vauville

Vauville

Vauville may refer to the following communes in France:*Vauville, Calvados*Vauville, Manche...

 in 1925, and set out to design a competition glider with minimal drag, settling on the flying wing formula based on the work of Georges Abrial

Georges Abrial

Georges Abrial was an early French aerodynamicist. After graduating from the St Cyr Aeronautical Institute he worked for Levasseur and did some pioneering work into tailless aircraft...

 and René Arnoux. One of his designs, the AV.10 was the first flying wing to attain a French Certificate of Navigability. His greatest commercial success was the AV.36

Fauvel AV.36

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 sailplane, first flown in 1951.

Fauvel's other achievements included a number of aerial world records, including the world altitude and duration records for an aircraft under 400 kg, which he set in September 1929. In 1979, he was killed in the crash of a CAB Supercab

CAB Supercab

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that he was piloting.