Latecoere. an Ambitious Family Company (1917-1945) Jean-Marc Olivier
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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 HAL Id: hal-01653703 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01653703 Submitted on 1 Dec 2017 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 France 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 Toulouse-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 The financial situation and the outdated production facilities profoundly worried all the analysts.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: Airbus, 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 Salmson aircraft in its Montaudran factory in 1917, Latécoère gave birth to the Toulouse aeronautical industry. Later, the Lignes Latécoère, the world’s biggest international airline 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, Morocco, Mexico, Brazil…), 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 Zodiac Aerospace’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 Paris 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.