Latecoere. An ambitious family company (1917-1945) Jean-Marc Olivier

To cite this version:

Jean-Marc Olivier. Latecoere. An ambitious family company (1917-1945). Latecoere. A hundred years of aeronautical technology, Privat, pp.1-47, 2017, 2708992767. ￿hal-01653703￿

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HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. LATECOERE. AN AMBITIOUS FAMILY COMPANY (1917-1945)

In LATÉCOÈRE (1917-2017), A HUNDRED YEARS OF AERONAUTICAL TECHNOLOGY

Jean-Marc OLIVIER Professor of contemporary economic history University of -Jean-Jaurès CNRS Framespa Research Centre (UMR 5136)

Preface by Pierre Gadonneix (Chairman of the Latécoère board)

In 2017 Latécoère celebrates its first century in the field of aeronautics and I sincerely hope that it will be able to live through another century as rich in inventions and challenges. Latécoère’s story is above all human, and many of us have become deeply attached to it over the years. Yet, when, at the beginning of 2010, I was asked to chair the group, then in the middle of a crisis, I didn’t have aeronautics in my blood and to say that the accounts were in a bad way would be an understatement. I was there as a specialist in industrial restructuring and an expert in French government policy. The financial situation and the outdated production facilities profoundly worried all the analysts. So, I talked to all the greatest experts in French aeronautics to get an exact idea of the Latécoère group’s identity and potential. Two themes emerged again and again from the almost unanimous answers: “It’s a real engineers’ and technicians’ company” and “We can’t do without Latécoère”. From that point on I really discovered the company and became devoted to it. Today, after a huge amount of work to which everyone has contributed, Latécoère is reborn, debt-free and industrially restructured. The time has now come for new, global ambitions with our main partners: , Boeing, Bombardier, Dassault and Embraer. This book has arrived at just the right moment to tell the story of the first century, rich in human, technical and industrial achievements. Further great successes are ready to take shape, provided that we do not lose our common passion for aeronautics and innovation.

While taking a deliberately sentimental approach, we wanted this book to be written by an independent historian and we unhesitatingly opened all our archives to him. Many of us also agreed to talk about our careers with the company. The result is a genuine history book, written for posterity. It is neither an apologia nor a hagiography of those involved in the adventure, nor have the most difficult episodes been glossed over. Jean-Marc Olivier, professor of economic history at Toulouse university for 20 years and aeronautics specialist, accepted the challenge of writing the story objectively. Helped by Marie-Vincente Latécoère, he scoured our private papers and identified the public archives that give the best account of this complex century. The result should enable everyone to form an opinion about what motivates Latécoère and the source of its dynamism, even during the worst storms that the company has had to weather.

This book is also original in giving a detailed account of the period from 1945 to the present day. While much has been written about the “heroic times” of the Ligne and the flying boats, the more recent period remains poorly known. Yet the Latécoère group’s new identity has been forged during the last few decades. Moreover, the company is nothing like the same size as it was when Pierre-Georges Latécoère founded it. From fewer than 500 employees before 1945, it had grown to more than 4,000 at the end of the “Junca era”, in 2008. Today, Yannick Assouad runs a restructured, internationally-orientated company, equipped with production facilities in the process of renovation. It is ready to meet the great challenges of the forthcoming century, challenges that require ambition and foresight, because in aeronautics if you want to contribute to the production of new generations of aircraft you must imagine the future 50 years before it arrives. Now I understand the full measure of the teams’ abilities to meet the challenges offered by all the different adaptations… I’m confident!

INTRODUCTION

By launching the production of aircraft in its Montaudran factory in 1917, Latécoère gave birth to the Toulouse aeronautical industry. Later, the Lignes Latécoère, the world’s biggest international at the beginning of the 1920s, created the Aéropostale, made famous by Mermoz and Saint-Exupéry. Today, the company is a first-order subcontractor working as much for Boeing and Dassault as for Airbus, employing more than 4,000 people throughout the world (Czech Republic, Tunisia, , Mexico, …), of whom half are in France.

Latécoère has been part of all the great aeronautical challenges of the last 100 years. Pioneer in crossing the south Atlantic and in the construction of giant flying boats, the group later became involved in the development of the first French missiles and then mastered on-board electronics and composite materials. At first very much family-based, the company has also experimented with original forms of governance, from an employee buyout in 1989, to a recent reorganisation of its capital with the American and Luxemburg-based investment funds Monarch and Apollo.

The name Latécoère has always been associated with a taste for adventure and technical challenge and this book describes the group’s successive stages, first revisiting the “glorious ancestors” of the pre-1940 period before focussing on the multiple experiences of the last 70 years1. Highly unusual in the very masculine world of aeronautics, since November 2016 the group has been run by a woman, Yannick Assouad, former managing director of ’s Cabins division.

Founded in 1917, the Latécoère aeronautical company is one of the rare pioneers still bearing its original name a century later. Its survival has sometimes been miraculous, and it has several times verged on extinction, which some saw as inevitable. After the group’s period of glory between 1917 and 1945, the next phase, until 1985, was marked by sometimes risky technical choices against a background of political and labour-relations conflicts. Since then, despite numerous difficulties, Latécoère has asserted itself as a major subcontractor in aircraft structural parts and has managed to conserve its independence thanks to its know-how, its employees’ commitment and its strong historical links with the southwest.

Even without the protective shadow of founder Pierre-Georges Latécoère, the company has managed to forge an image and a reputation that are its strengths today. Pierre-Georges belonged to the second wave of aviation pioneers, but his successors have had a few

1. Unless otherwise indicated, the information contained in this book is taken from the Latécoère group’s private archives. These archives are conserved at the Périole site in Toulouse, particularly in the attic of the building known as “Pierre-Georges Latécoère House”. We would like to thank Thierry Mahé, Latécoère group communication manager, for having made these archives completely available. disappointments2. The heroic era of inventions and experiments in the family firm run by an authoritarian visionary gave way to a period of turbulence in the political situation, exacerbated by some unfortunate technical choices that often came before their time. To the media and political leaders involved with aeronautics, its breakup seemed inevitable on several occasions. But Latécoère is still here and independent, despite various threats of nationalisation, bankruptcy or takeover since 1936. This book begins by describing the group’s genesis and its hey-day between 1917 and 1945, essential prerequisites to understanding the historical basis of its vitality. It goes on to deal with the two major phases that followed, rich in a variety of experiences, risk-taking and a deep desire to innovate. This book fills a gap, because although there are many publications about Latécoère in the 1920s3 and 1930s, the period since the second world war remains little known.

1 – AN AMBITIOUS FAMILY COMPANY (1917-1945)

At the dawn of the 20th century, when Toulouse and its environs were studded with small companies, Pierre-Georges Latécoère appeared as a shining light among businessmen4. He took over and developed his parents’ traditional company, putting him among the great aeronautical pioneers, just after the first generation that included Wright, Farman and Blériot. He left a considerable number of designs, more than 50 different types of aircraft numbered from 3 to 631, the latter being the biggest flying boat in the world in 1942. His career also illustrates the French spirit of enterprise of the first half of the 20th century. Overall, this was a magnificent industrial, technical and human adventure, brutally interrupted by the second world war and whose resuscitation subsequently proved difficult.

1.1. Pierre-Georges: son of a Pyrenean industrialist and student in

Pierre-Georges Latécoère was born in 1883, in Bagnères-de-Bigorre in the heart of the Pyrenees where his forbears had opened a sawmill in 1864. Although this first industrial venture preceded the aircraft factory, the story is worth telling because it explains later developments and the state of mind of the founder of aviation in Toulouse. In the mid-19th century, France, along with the United Kingdom, was the home of nascent industrialisation. In the Second Empire, there were many captains of industry in France, but the French approach proved to be very different to the British model based on coal mining and the use of powerful, steam-driven machines in huge factories. The Latécoère family, like many other French industrialists, preferred to use local resources, such as wood and hydraulic power, that were cheaper and easier to exploit. At the time the Pyrenees boasted real know-how in controlling the mountain torrents with increasingly sophisticated water wheels, then with turbines. Mastery of the energy source was combined with an ability to get the most out of the mountain forests, by using mature, standard trees for carpentry and joinery, and the coppices to produce the charcoal that fuelled the last water-powered “catalane” forges.

2. Georges BACCRABÈRE, Toulouse terre d’envol, Signes du monde, Toulouse, 1993 (first edition published by Privat in 1966), two volumes, 801 pp, pp 63-67. 3. Laurent ALBARET, (preface by Marie-Vincente Latécoère), Pierre-Georges Latécoère : correspondances (1918-1928), Privat, Toulouse, 2013, p. 718. 4. Emmanuel CHADEAU, Latécoère, Olivier Orban, Paris, 1990, 330 p. This book only deals with the period before 1943. Pierre-Georges Latécoère grew up in the heart of this technological world. A great walker, he explored the Pyrenees, then travelled in France and Germany from the age of 16. The family home was right next to the sawmill so that he often talked to his father’s employees and became familiar with the use of wood and iron. Better still, he understood very early on that innovation pays and that you shouldn’t stay content with what you’ve known how to do for a long time. He saw how the family firm prospered when it launched new products.

During the last third of the 19th century, Pierre-Georges’ father, Gabriel Latécoère, not content with selling simple beams or planks, increasingly diversified his business. The sawmill started selling from a catalogue: parquet, panelling, roof timbers and all sorts of decorative products for use in schools, railway stations and barracks. This diversity of products increased even further when the company started selling metal elements to be assembled. They then began producing wagon structures for the rapidly expanding railways and tramways. Under the Freycinet Plan of 1879, the French railway network had grown from 20,000 to nearly 40,000 kilometres by the outbreak of the first world war. Gabriel Latécoère’s factory prospered, despite the economic depression that struck between 1873 and 1896. He became fascinated with electricity production and took part in the development of the first Pyrenean hydroelectric power stations. At the end of the 19th century, the Latécoère company at Bagnères-de-Bigorre employed 150 workers and made an overall profit of 50,000 gold francs, the equivalent of more than 500,000 euros today.

Gabriel Latécoère’s success gained the respect of his fellow citizens and he became deputy mayor of Bagnères. He considered making a career in politics, but it didn’t last long because the moderate, free-thinking republican couldn’t understand the excesses of either the conservative Catholics or the secularists. The latter, for example, reproached him for sending his daughter to a school run by nuns, when in fact there was no public secondary education for girls in Bagnères. In 1901, weary of the internecine strife in the town council, he resigned from his post as deputy mayor responsible for the modernisation of the town. Henceforth he concentrated on handing over his company to his two sons. At first the younger son, André- Louis, born a year after Pierre-Georges, seemed to have all the qualities of a worthy successor. He was a brilliant, prize-winning scholar, and proved to be very attached to his small home town with its 10,000 inhabitants whereas his older brother only dreamed of leaving. But André-Louis soon revealed himself to be psychologically unstable. His precocity at school masked a deep-seated fragility; he alternated between phases of anger and periods of profound apathy and the doctors proved powerless to diagnose what was wrong. Sending him as a boarder to a school that would prepare him for engineering studies seemed unlikely to work and expectations were focussed on Pierre-Georges. He, however, dreamed of another life, studying literature or the law and travelling the world. But, family pressure was strong and his intellectual capacity meant that he could easily adapt.

In fact, Pierre-Georges proved to be a brilliant pupil. Sent to the Louis-le-Grand lycée in Paris, he easily obtained his baccalaureate. He went on to study law, then in 1901 he prepared for the competitive entrance exam to Centrale (the Central School of Arts and Manufactures), one of the most prestigious engineering schools in Europe. He was accepted by the school in 1903, particularly thanks to his marks in technical drawing. The taste for drawing never left him and his personal archives are full of a great variety of diagrams from the plan for a workshop through descriptions of machines to proposals for . He also took advantage of his father’s generosity to lead the busy life of a rich Parisian student. Gabriel gave his son a big annual allowance of 5,000 francs, corresponding to about 50,000 euros today, or about twice the starting salary of an engineer at that time. Pierre-Georges lived in a vast furnished flat near his school and not far from place de la République where he could watch the daily bustle of Parisian life. He proved to be very hard-working, moving up the ranking from 109th place on his arrival to 64th place at the end of his first year in 1904. Pierre-Georges was marked highly in drawing, construction of machines and mechanical engineering. He read a great deal and started collecting illustrated classics, in particular Stendhal. He also became very interested in the Napoleonic saga and sought out autographs from the period in second- hand bookshops. His brother André-Louis soon joined him in Paris to study, but proved much less assiduous, confirming his parents’ fears.

However, Pierre-Georges did not content himself with attending the Central School and trawling the Parisian bookshops, he also took up fencing, frequented the capital’s theatres and ventured from time to time into the lively Montmartre nightlife. He was very keen on the latest books and plays, keeping up to date with everything by dining in town with other amateurs of the stage and the arts, becoming very cultivated and developing a certain ability to shine in society. Being far from the rigorous morals of conservative Bagnères, he had many affairs. Pierre-Georges made the most of his time in Paris and his natural social skills to build up a solid network of friends with links to the industrial world. He became friends with Roger-Émile Koechlin, classmate from Centrale School and scion of the powerful Mulhouse textile family. He dined regularly with another classmate, Arbel, son of a big wagon-builder from Douai. He also enjoyed the company of several pupils from the École des Mines. Invited to meet the influential families of his comrades, he became familiar with current political debates and met many politicians. He drew up index cards on each person he considered worthy of interest, thus creating a kind of relational database destined to help his career. Pierre-Georges thought a lot about his destiny and liked to anticipate the future. Unfortunately, this highly agreeable period as a high-living student was brutally interrupted by the rapid spread of his father’s cancer.

Gabriel Latécoère died on 4 June 1905 at the age of 69. At 22, Pierre-Georges found himself at the head of a complex group of businesses that now included tramways and hotels as well as wood production and hydroelectricity. He had to leave his school regularly to go back to Bagnères. Nevertheless, he finally obtained his degree in 1906 with a solid training in metallurgy. He had chosen to specialise in ferrous and non-ferrous metals because he felt that this was a sector with a future. For example, developments in electrolysis meant that aluminium, light and very resistant to oxidation, could now be produced in bigger quantities. It was used in the manufacture of many new objects such as cars and the first aeroplanes. During this period, in Bagnères, Gabriel’s widow managed the factory very efficiently, a veritable paternalist in skirts. But Pierre-Georges quickly realised the limits of the Bigorre region, where it was very difficult to attract qualified staff and develop new projects.

The inheritance was resolved fairly easily because his brother André-Louis was still a minor. Moreover, the only diploma the younger brother managed to obtain during his two years in Paris was university fencing champion. Once Pierre-Georges was able to take charge with complete freedom of action, he really showed his potential. He modernised the Bagnères factory and added a forge in order to make complete wagons with their chassis. The forge started production in June 1907. In the same year, he got his first order from Compagnie du Midi railways which served Bagnères. He made the most of his contacts, consulted specialist publications and telephoned everyone he could think of. His hyperactivity finally paid off: prestigious new companies like Westinghouse called upon his services. Next, his knowledge of German enabled him to win a contract to equip the Kaiser’s railways. He further improved his own equipment so that he could finish the wagons completely and deal directly with the railway companies. In 1911, he triumphed by getting an order for 1,500 complete vehicles for the Compagnie du Midi; the following year he signed a contract with the Paris-- Méditerranée railway. The Bagnères factory was proving to be too small and the railway equipment had to be delivered to Toulouse station, so Pierre-Georges started looking for a site in Toulouse itself.

1.2. A new factory in Toulouse and the first aircraft produced in 19175

In 1912, Pierre-Georges Latécoère built a forge and mechanical engineering workshops near the Pont des Demoiselles, in an industrial district with a railway branch line in the southeast of the city. The war opened up new possibilities because massive quantities of arms and munitions were required. He started making large-calibre mortars. His factory near Pont des Demoiselles, now too dangerous for the neighbours, moved a little further out on the Revel road. He learned to meet deadlines and maintain quality in a difficult context. The reputation of the Latécoères, mother and son, grew and grew. Pierre-Georges finally won a fabulous contract in : 11,000 wagons to be supplied to the Compagnie du Midi after the war.

For every graduate of the Centrale school, building a fine factory was seen as the supreme achievement and Pierre-Georges’ dreams were now taking shape. By the end of 1917, he had finished buying 45 hectares in the middle of the Montaudran market gardens, between the Canal du Midi and the Revel road. This huge site had the great advantage of being crossed by a railway line. But he didn’t have enough capital to build his dream factory and absolutely needed to win a new war contract. Pierre-Georges started laying siege to the Armaments Minister, Louis Loucheur, an industrialist and engineer like him. The two men had a lot in common: a liking for risk, a desire to serve the nation and a certain esteem for pre-war German culture. But Loucheur knew that the order books for artillery were already full until 1918 and that Fourchambault had the contract to build wagons for the army. Only aviation, now essential for the proposed new offensives, had insufficient production capacity. On 29 October 1917, Pierre-Georges Latécoère accepted a daunting order: one thousand Salmson 2 two-seater .

Parisian manufacturer Salmson was a late-comer to aviation after the unusual career of its founders, who were of Swedish origin. Born in Stockholm in 1797, the young Jean-Baptiste Salmson arrived in Paris in 1822, attracted by the many possibilities offered by the City of Light6. At that time, there were unusual links between the two countries because the new Swedish King was a Frenchman, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte 7 , former marshal of the Napoleonic empire, who became Charles XIV Jean of Sweden in 1818. Numerous artists, intellectuals and businessmen moved backwards and forwards between the two countries, perpetuating a tradition that went back to the 18th century with famous examples such as the French-loving Swedish King Gustave III and Count Alex von Fersen, very close to Marie- Antoinette. Jean-Baptiste Salmson first worked for Prince Oscar, heir to the thrones of Sweden and , who ordered a series of medals to be engraved. He became a French

o 5. Jean-Marc OLIVIER, “Latécoère, a visionary industrialist”, Midi-Pyrénées Patrimoine, special edition n 2 “Toulouse, man and aircraft. A century of aeronautical success”, November 2010, p. 14-25. 6. Claude CHEVALIER and Laurent CHEVALIER, Salmson : la belle mécanique française, Éditions techniques pour l’automobile et l’industrie, Paris, 2010, 287 p. 7. Revue d’histoire nordique/Nordic Historical Review, special editions 5, 6 and 7 from 2007-2008 devoted to: “Bernadotte and his time: a French king of Sweden-Norway”. Bernadotte also become king of Norway after having conquered the country in 1814, abandoning Finland, former Swedish possession, to . citizen in 1848, played an active part in the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1855, and appears as an engraver of medals and cameos in the 1856 General Trade Annual. His son Jules, born in Paris in 1823, studied fine art in the city and produced several sculptures for Parisian monuments. Jules Salmson ended his career as director of the School of Industrial Arts in Geneva from 1876. In 1858, he married Ursule Émilie Lazare, daughter of a good Parisian family. They lived on boulevard du Temple in Paris and their son, Émile, was born in 1859. Émile received a very broad education, covering both the arts and industry.

In 1889, Émile Salmson, grandson of Jean-Baptiste, started producing pumps and steam engines for the army and the railways. At that time he only had a small workshop in Paris. But in 1908 he met two engineers, Georges Canton and Georges Unné, who had just patented an aircraft engine of their own design. The seven-cylinder radial engine achieved a certain degree of success. It was followed by other, more powerful, models which enabled the Salmson company to move to a new, bigger factory in Billancourt in 1912. With the advent of the first world war, orders flowed in and Émile Salmson went into partnership with aviation pioneer Louis Moineau. Moineau left Breguet to meet an order from the army for a long- range reconnaissance aircraft. Émile Salmson offered his production facilities and the S.M.1 (Salmson-Moineau 1) was born. The aircraft had a certain number of weaknesses, particularly in its . On the other hand, the Salmson 2 two-seater reconnaissance met with success, proving to be efficient and reliable right from its first tests in 1917, reaching a speed of 185 km/h and a ceiling of 6,250 metres. Several thousand machines were ordered and it became the French army’s main reconnaissance aircraft. The Salmson factory in Billancourt could not keep up with planned output since it also produced engines, including those destined for the Salmson 2, a nine-cylinder liquid-cooled radial engine developing 260 HP. This was the aircraft that Pierre-Georges Latécoère was asked to manufacture in Toulouse. It was the beginning of the city’s aeronautical industry.

The first aircraft was to be delivered before the 15 March 1918, to Salmson’s standards, i.e. following the plans used at the Billancourt factory. Half of the machines were to be supplied ready to fly and the other half packed in kit form. The contract was worth 20 million francs and allowed for a profit margin of 22%, including 7% outright profit and 15% accelerated depreciation of the equipment. What is more, it was a “guaranteed contract”: when the war ended, the state would reimburse the industrialists’ expenditure if it had exceeded the advances initially granted. Using these advances, Pierre-Georges threw himself into the construction of his new factory in Montaudran, drawing the plans himself. In the centre, a big concrete assembly shop, lit by huge semi-circular glass roofs, was equipped with overhead travelling cranes; the workshop was 10 metres high, 20 metres wide and 70 metres long. A grassed runway was laid out in front of this building, while various peripheral buildings contained workshops and offices. The whole site was served by railway lines.

The main works were finished at the beginning of 1918 and the first aircraft rolled off the production lines in April, a truly remarkable achievement. In the end, delays were modest and this newcomer to the job delivered 600 aircraft before the armistice on 11 November 1918, to the great surprise of his competitors. The pioneering manufacturers, including Blériot, Breguet and , were already well-known heroes. They met regularly in the best Parisian restaurants where they treated newcomers with a certain degree of condescension, especially those who didn’t know how to fly.

But Pierre-Georges Latécoère had a gift for organisation and the government had sent him outstanding technicians like Émile . Dewoitine first attended the Breguet school before becoming an aircraft mechanic just before the outbreak of war. Mobilised at the beginning of the conflict as a continuation of his military service, Émile Dewoitine was sent to Russia in 1915 to organise the production of Voisin in the Simferopol and Odessa factories. In 1917 the Russian revolution obliged him to return to France where he was sent to join Latécoère. In the same year, Marcel Moine also arrived at the Montaudran factory. Former student of the Angers School of Arts et Métiers, he quickly rose up the ranks. Having started in the design office, he quickly became its manager before taking responsibility for the entire production department. Pierre-Georges Latécoère travelled constantly between Paris and Toulouse, often twice a week, to supply his factory with a variety of strategic parts such as aluminium tubes. He used his network of contacts to solve his procurement problems and could count on friends from his youth, such as former secondary school classmate René Fould, then working for the Armaments Ministry.

Lastly, to operate the new factory, Pierre-Georges recruited qualified workers from the southwest, because in the field of aviation the slightest error in assembly costs very dear. He could draw on a pool of local tradesmen and labourers who for decades had been successfully working in wood, iron, leather and canvas, materials still very much used in aircraft at that time. They came from trades like shoemaking, millinery, joinery and bodywork for horse- drawn vehicles. These trades, often very dispersed in small workshops, prospered in Toulouse and the southwest throughout the 19th century. They were now declining or had moved to other areas, millinery, for example, which had left Toulouse for the Pyrenees and joinery which had migrated to Revel. Everything was now favourable for the start of a new industry in Toulouse and, with the accumulated know-how of many of his employees, Pierre-Georges realised that his destiny could change dramatically. He made the most of the situation and took up the challenge of the Salmson aircraft in 1917-1918. But by 1919, making aircraft was no longer such a good idea because the stocks inherited from the war were enormous and at that time machines were going for a song. So, Pierre-Georges decided to explore the new possibilities of air transport.

1.3. The Latécoère airline

By 1918, he had made up his mind: railway equipment belonged to the past: the future was in airlines. Only 35, the young engineer didn’t want to sit back and manage his fortune – he needed new industrial challenges, so he hatched up original projects, different from the first air routes, which contented themselves with following the railway lines. First, immediately after the armistice, he registered the provisional statutes of a new company: the CEMA or Company for aerial navigation to Spain-Morocco-Algeria. In a typewritten note annotated in his own hand and dated 2 December 1918, he set out his ideas:

The objective of the Company for aerial navigation to Spain-Morocco-Algeria, 182, boulevard Haussmann, Paris, is to provide air travel between the south of France and Morocco on the one hand and between Morocco and the west of Algeria on the other. It is based on the principle of completing and extending existing rail links by air travel, which would appear to be both the most necessary programme in the short term, and that which would provide the most obvious service. […] Based on the following principle: the choice of Morocco, a colony with a future, already heavily exploited, which is only linked to France by maritime companies whose routes require several days’ journey and which is not linked to Algeria by any practical means of communication […]. Applying the same principle, it seems to us that the south of France, and particularly Toulouse, terminus of the Orleans railway, would be the best starting point from a geographical point of view. The choice of Toulouse may also be explained by the proximity of a big aircraft factory which could place its personnel and tools at the disposal of the Company.8

He drew the map of the route himself, identifying successive staging points between Toulouse and Rabat and the distances between them9. But Pierre-Georges Latécoère came up against administrative reluctance stimulated by certain pressure groups such as -based ship owners and other budding airlines which wanted to conserve their privileged links with Algeria. So, he decided to develop an idea that he had already formulated in 1918: linking Toulouse with Morocco by flying over Spain, thence to and finally , crossing the narrowest part of the Atlantic. Members of the government, whom he had been courting for several years, decided to support him.

Pierre-Georges didn’t hesitate to put his life on the line: he accompanied the pilot Cornemont in a Salmson during the first flight from Montaudran to Barcelona, on 25 December 1918. Morocco seemed easily within reach by 500-kilometre stages, but the first attempt was a failure, one of the two aircraft spun round through 180° on its first landing while the other had mechanical problems. The second attempt, on 9 March 1919, was more successful: Pierre- Georges Latécoère arrived triumphantly in Rabat, bringing violets from Toulouse for the wife of the famous Governor Lyautey. The journey had taken less than 24 hours whereas the fastest boats from Bordeaux took four days.

The Spain-Morocco-Algeria company could start its twice-weekly round trips between Toulouse and Rabat. On 1 June 1925, the Line, as it had become known, arrived at Saint- Louis in Senegal. New pilots had joined the adventure: Jean Mermoz and Marcel Reine in 1924, in 1925 and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in 1926. They needed a certain amount of courage because, between 1919 and 1922, the company lost 12 pilots and on-board mechanics.

At the end of 1922, Pierre-Georges Latécoère claimed that his international airline was the biggest in the world. The statistics proved him right, with a network of 3,000 kilometres, 75 aircraft, 22 pilots and 120 mechanics and assistant mechanics. But he was always looking further, and in 1925 he sent a team to carry out a reconnaissance flight between Rio de Janeiro and with a Breguet XIV flown by Paul Vachet. The following year, Pierre- Georges went to South America in person where he met the influential French banker Marcel Bouilloux-Laffont. But the French government procrastinated, deciding to abandon major air travel projects. To that were added financial difficulties related to accidents, and commercial obstacles in South America. So, in 1927, Pierre-Georges Latécoère decided to sell his General Company for Aeronautical Enterprise (CGEA) to Bouilloux-Laffont who quickly renamed it the Aéropostale. Henceforth, Pierre-Georges devoted himself to a big new scheme: building better and better machines in his Montaudran factory.

1.4. The flying boat adventure

The first “Laté” or “LAT” aircraft, heavily inspired by the Salmson and the Breguet XIV, had a rather mediocre history, like the three-engine Laté 4 which crashed after a few test flights. The first reliable twin-engine civil passenger aircraft, of which ten were produced in 1924, was the Laté 15 which could carry six passengers but which proved to have a number of

8. Laurent ALBARET, Pierre-Georges Latécoère…, op. cit, p. 19. 9. Jacques ARNOULD, Et la Ligne vivra ! Latécoère, 11 avril 1927, Privat, Toulouse, 2016, p. 28. weaknesses. It was 1926 before the robust single-engine Laté 17, followed by the Laté 2510 could usefully replace the Breguet XIV. The extreme conditions in the desert or over the led to significant losses; ten Laté 25 were involved in serious accidents, three of which cost the lives of their pilots.

However, at that time the post could only cross the Atlantic on fast cutters, which meant long delivery times. Pierre-Georges, who had kept shares in the Aéropostale, decided to move wholeheartedly into flying boats in 1926. The Montaudran engineers designed the Laté 21, a flying boat with twin push-pull engines, used to open a line between Marseille and Algiers in 1926. But this model never went into serial production because it could not take off from a rough sea. A Latécoère 23 and eight Latécoère 32s, direct descendants of the Latécoère 21, were used on the Marseille-Algiers line from 1927. A three-engine flying boat was then developed: the Latécoère 24 with a single, parasol wing. In 1927, tests were carried out at a base that had been built in 1924 at Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque on the Salses lagoon11. Prévot was at the controls and Hoff was the engineer12. But the Laté 24’s performance proved too disappointing to envisage using it to cross the South Atlantic. The aircraft was too heavy to reach its intended speed.

But the company was not discouraged and continued building what it did best: robust single- engine aircraft, designed to fly over the most hostile terrestrial environments. The Laté 25, 26 and 28 were launched in 1926-1927. More than 200 aircraft were produced and inspired confidence in their pilots. In 1928, the new Laté 380 flying boat project came to fruition to challenge the Atlantic. This machine really did look more like a “flying boat” with its large central hull. The sesquiplane machine with twin push-pull engines performed tests at Saint- Raphaël from 1930. It beat several records for flying time, distance and speed over long journeys. Five were built, of which three were for military use. Nevertheless, the idea of using it to cross the Atlantic was quickly abandoned due to its lack of reliability, confirmed by two accidents in 1933 and 1935. Then, defying the public authorities which refused to approve the use of single-engine flying boats over the ocean, Mermoz, his radio operator and his mechanic, succeeded in crossing from Saint-Louis (Senegal) to Natal (Brazil) on 13 May 1930 on board a Laté 28 belonging to the Aéropostale converted into a flying boat and named “Comte-de-La Vaulx”. This exploit introduced a new phase of Latécoère flying boats.

A base was created in 1930 on the southern lagoon at Biscarrosse, in the Landes. The various parts of the aircraft were still manufactured at Montaudran, then transported by road to the Atlantic coast to be assembled. After a few disappointing prototypes such as the Laté 38 and the 500, in 1931 the four-engine Laté 300 arrived, called “Croix-du-Sud” (Southern Cross). With 3,000 HP and a 40-metre wingspan, it could transport nearly a tonne of post over 4,500 km. It was aboard this aircraft that Mermoz disappeared in 1936 during a crossing between and Natal. Despite these accidents, , the company created in 1933 by merging five existing companies including the Aéropostale, started ordering Latécoère flying boats in 1934. Three civil versions of the Laté 301 were delivered in 1935, then three Laté 302s were ordered by the army for maritime reconnaissance. In fact, Latécoère had started supplying the army from 1931, in particular with the Laté 290, a single-engine torpedo

10. Jean CUNY, Latécoère. Les avions et hydravions, “Docavia” collection, vol. 34, Éditions Larivière, Paris, 1992, p. 61-67. 11. Jean-Pierre BOBO and Louis BASSERES, L’épopée Latécoère et la base aéronavale de Saint-Laurent-de-la- Salanque (1924-2015), Editions Les Presses littéraires, Saint-Estève, 2015. 12. Jean CUNY, Latécoère. Les avions et hydravions…, op. cit, p. 104-106. derived from the Laté 28. Thirty-five were produced before it was withdrawn from service in 1939. The Laté 298, torpedo or reconnaissance seaplane, replaced it from 1936 and remained in operation until 1951. This represented a great commercial success for the company, with about 200 of the single-engine 298s delivered between 1936 and 1940. They were manufactured in Toulouse in the Montaudran factory, then reassembled at Biscarrosse for tests13. Throughout this period, the company’s design office engineers never stopped exploring new horizons. In 1935, a strange four-engine , the Laté 550, had its maiden flight. It was built for the BN5 programme (5-seater night-flying bomber) launched by the military authorities in 1932. In 1935, a new attempt to develop the four-engine D550, to be available as a flying boat or as a terrestrial bomber, came to nothing.

The arrival of the Popular Front in 1936 completely changed the situation. Confronted with the nationalisations of 1936, Pierre-Georges Latécoère, an authoritarian company owner, immediately decided to do whatever was needed to remain a private manufacturer. But the majority of the company’s workers were opposed to remaining in the private sector and demonstrated their discontent with sit-down strikes or go-slows at the Toulouse site. At the same time, the Popular Front applied its policy of nationalising arms companies and created the National Aeronautical Construction Company of the Midi (SNCAM) on 1 April 1937. This company took control of Constructions Aéronautiques Émile Dewoitine which had several sites in the Toulouse area. Latécoère’s employees were strongly encouraged to come and work for this national company. Then, in 1939, the SNCAM built a new factory at Saint- Martin-du-Touch. Finally, in 1940, the SNCAM was absorbed by the National Aeronautical Construction Company of the Southeast (SNCASE). For his part, in the space of three months in 1937 and with the agreement of Air Minister Pierre Cot, Pierre-Georges Latécoère constructed a huge factory at Anglet to build his flying boats. Then, two years later, he sold his sites at Montaudran, Anglet and Biscarrosse to Breguet and built a new factory in rue de Périole, Toulouse, from which in 1942 emerged his “ocean liner”: the Laté 631. The 75-tonne monster, built completely in metal and requiring six engines to lift it off the waves, had a range of more than 6,000 kilometres, i.e. non-stop across the Atlantic. It could transport up to 50 passengers. The Germans seized the first prototype, which the allies then bombed. Thus Pierre-Georges Latécoère barely had time to see his latest creation before he died in 1943. In 1945, the project was re-started when Air France ordered ten Laté 631s. Development of the giant flying boat had discreetly continued during the Occupation14. The first Laté 631 was named after a hero of aviation from both world wars: Lionel de Marmier15. But the family company’s situation became increasingly fragile because the choice of giant flying boats proved to be a chimera after 1945. Moreover, this unfortunate technical choice, made by most of the world’s major aircraft constructors at that time, was aggravated in France by a difficult socio-political context.

13. Gérard BOUSQUET, French Wings 1. Latécoère 290 and 298, Stratus, Sandomierz, 2010. 14. Marcel MOINE, Il était une fois Pierre Georges Latécoère, Latécoère Foundation, Paris, 2010, p. 28. 15 . “Free French air transport and Lionel de Marmier”, http://www.france-libre.net/temoignages- documents/temoignages/transport-aerien-fl.php, site consulted on 9 June 2013.