In January 1941 Gustave Delage began working for Nieuport and he developed a whole family of aircraft, which should make Nieuport very popular. The Nieuport 10 was the first aircraft; it was a small double seat fighter with V-shaped struts between the wings. The lower wing was placed behind the upper one and was smaller than it. It was designed to be a static stable biplane with good pilot visibility. It was powered by an 80 horsepower (59 kW) Gnome-Rhone rotary radial engine, which was not very powerful for a double seat aircraft. That’s why they were used for reconnaissance roles at first. Later it was decided to modify some of those aircraft into single seaters and to equip them with a 7.7 mm Lewis machine gun being mounted on the upper wing.