Originally Posted by
NickLappos
The Rotordyne had rotor tip ram jet thrusters fed fuel along the blades. The Hughes H 17 (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_XH-17) used tip jets that were fed air from engines on the fuselage. I think the Rotordyne was the first machine to fly with ram jet tip thrusters, the second was probably the Dutch single rotor blade helicopter (!) the NHI H-3 Kolibrie (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHI_H-3_Kolibrie) which was relatively successful and flew in the late 1950s. Seated in that picture in Wikipedia is Rene Van Der Harten, a founder of KLM Nordzee, a personal friend and one heck of a pilot. It takes lots of courage to strap yourself into a one-bladed tip jet helicopter in the 1950's!
All these machines had no torque and so no anti-torque devices. I would suppose they would fly quite similarly. They were all reportedly able to extremely efficiently turn fuel into noise.
I'm guessing the most successful tip thrust driven aircraft was the Djinn - 178 built:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCASO_SO.1221_Djinn
There used to be one by the main gate at the Eurocopter factory in Marignane