The Stipa-Caproni, also generally called the Caproni Stipa, was an experimental Italian aircraft designed in 1932 by Luigi Stipa (1900–1992) and built by Caproni. It featured a hollow, barrel-shaped fuselage with the engine and propeller completely enclosed by the fuselage—in essence, the whole fuselage was a single ducted fan. Although the Regia Aeronautica (Italian Royal Air Force) was not interested in pursuing development of the Stipa-Caproni, its design was an important step in the development of jet propulsion.

The high bypass fans on jet engines follow virtually all of Stipa’s principles perfectly. Whether today’s jet engine designers developed their own Stipa style venturi tube on their own or took note of his designs is not known. However, certainly, the first jets were created by engineers who knew of Stipa’s work.

An interesting story regarding this airplane was published in the Historic Wings magazine October 2012 edition and is found here ==> http://fly.historicwings.com/2012/10/the-flying-barrel/

The flight physics / structural changes made to the model make it fly as well as possible while still somewhat keeping the flight performance character of the original airplane.

Although this airplane isn't exciting to look at it's actually quite a nice flier.