During the pioneer years before the First World War, Cedric Lee and G. Tilghman Richards in the UK built and flew a series of aircraft having a novel flat ring-shaped or annular wing.

Following a series of patents on circular-wing aircraft taken out by Williband Franz Zelger and Isaac Henry Storey, the boiler engineer John George Aulsebrook Kitchen built an annular-wing biplane but was unable to fly it.

Tilghman Richards joined Lee in 1910 and together they finished the aeroplane, fitting a 50 hp (37 kW) Gnome Omega engine in the front.

[1][2] A non-flying replica later appeared in the 1965 film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and is now on display at the Newark Air Museum.

[1] Model tests of a new design at the National Physics Laboratory gave promising results, suggesting that an annular monoplane would be aerodynamically stable and have benign stalling characteristics.

[1] During World War I Lee ended up with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) and was subsequently killed in action.

The leading edge of the front portion was initially curved downwards to promote vortex lift over the side and rear surfaces.

[1] In the initial design, elevon (combined elevator and aileron) control surfaces were set into the trailing edge of the aft wing section, on either side of a vertical rudder.