The cruciform tail is an aircraft empennage configuration which, when viewed from the aircraft's front or rear, looks much like a cross. The usual arrangement is to have the horizontal stabilizer intersect the vertical tail somewhere near the middle, and above the top of the fuselage.
Often this arrangement is chosen to keep the tail out of the engines' wake or to avoid complex interference drag.
Cruciform tails are also used on many kind of airships, like classical Zeppelins.
Read more about Cruciform Tail: Benefits, Applications
Famous quotes containing the word tail:
“The only people who treasure systems are those whom the whole truth evades, who want to catch it by the tail. A system is just like truth’s tail, but the truth is like a lizard. It will leave the tail in your hand and escape; it knows that it will soon grow another tail.”
—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)