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A Report
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It all began with Bleriot, the Wright brothers and Santos-Dumont, and such famous aviatrices as Adrienne Bolland, Amelia Earhart and Helene Boucher. Aviation is one of the decisive developments of the 20th century. The early pilots - Lindbergh, Mermoz and Saint-Exupery, to name but a few - pioneered the skies, while Gagarin and Shepard explored outer space. In August 1998, we pay tribute to these legendary aviators, and to the Aero-Club de France, which celebrates its one hundredth anniversary.
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On 20th October 1898, a few aeronautics buffs launched the Aero-Club to "encourage air transport in every way, shape and form". In 1903, the association officially became the Aero-Club de France.
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The 18-minute maiden flight of Court Ferdinand von Zeppelin's airship, built mainly of zinc and aluminum girders, took place over Lake Constance on July 2,1990; 420 feet long and 38.6 feet in diameter, it was equipped with two 15 HP engines.
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On 17th December 1903, the Wright brothers flew their Flyer four times at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville was at the controls first, then Wilbur. The final flight lasted 59 seconds and covered a distance of 852 feet.
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The Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont made the first flight in Europe, on Nov 12, 1906, in a huge aircraft equipped with a 50 HP Antoinette. It was the first feat officially recorded by the Aero-Club de France and officially sanctioned by the International Aeronautics Federation.
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On 10th October 1907, Robert Esnault-Pelterie flew his first powered plane, the REP 1, which could stagger into the air for brief stints. But he is better remembered for his innovations and inventions, such as his "joystick" design for the aircraft controls. This innovation would pit him against Louis Bleriot, the inventor of "cloche" controls; the courts ruled in Esnault-Pelterie's favor.
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Paul Cornu (1881-1944) is considered to be the first true helicopter pilot for his flight on 13th November 1907, near Lisieux. He had attached two sets of rotor blades to a light weight steel tube airframe, lifted about 1 foot off the ground by a 24 HP Antoinette engine. It went nearly 5 feet off the ground on a second flight, this time carrying a "passenger", his brother, who was clinging to the aircraft.
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In a Voisin biplane, Henri Farman flew the first European circular flight at lssy-les-Moulineaux on 13th January 1908.
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The Aero-Club de France granted the first "pilot-aviator" licenses on 7th January 1909. Louis Bleriot received license no1, soon followed by Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Wright brothers.
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On 25th July 1909, Louis Bleriot left Calais and reached Dover in 48 minutes.
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The Reims Meet of 1909, held from 22 to 29 August, provided a common meeting ground for budding aviation buffs of every stripe - Bleriot, Curtiss, Delagrange, Esnault-Pelterie, Farman and Latham. This was the event that triggered 19-year-old Roland Garros's decision to give up the piano and become a pilot. In addition, there was a 9-year-old present among the participants who was initiated into the thrills and adventure of aviation. His name was Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
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25th September 1909 : French president Fallieres inaugurated the first international aeronautics salon at the Grand Palais in Paris. In only three days, 10,000 visitors flocked to see the exhibit. The Bleriot XI flown in the English Channel crossing was on display at the main entrance.
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Henri Fabre's float plane - named the Hydravion - took off at La Mede, near Marseille, on 28th March 1910.
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Flying a Bleriot, the young Peruvian Geo Chavez set an altitude record of 8,484 feet on 8th September 1910. On 23rd September, he attempted the first crossing of the Alps, from Brigue, Switzerland to Domodossola, Italy. Unfortunately, the Bleriot nose-dived from only 30 feet. Chavez died four days later.
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The first postal delivery service by air was launched on 18th February 1911. Flying from Allahabad to Naini (India), the French pilot Henri Pequet carried 24 pounds of mail on a Sommer biplane. The stamps on the letters read "First Aerial Post".
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On 1st March 1912, American Albert Berry "parachuted" from a Benoist biplane flying over Saint Louis, Missouri, at an altitude of 2,475 feet. The first parachute jump, from a hot-air balloon, was completed by Frenchman Andre-Jacques Garnerin, on 22nd October 1797.
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At a time when medium- sized aircraft were being built, the Russian engineer Igor Sikorsky designed the first four-engine biplane, dubbed the Grand. It featured four 100-HP Argus engines, with a 16-wheel landing gear (equipped with skis in winter). On 2nd August 1913, it carried 8 passengers on a flight that lasted 1 hour and 54 minutes.
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Test pilot Adolphe Pegoud climbed to 10,000 feet on 21st September 1913 and looped the loop. This was the first loop in Western Europe. The same feat had been carried out earlier that month by the Russian Nesterov, who was placed under house arrest as a result.
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Flying a Morane-Saulniers, Roland Garros left Saint-Raphael on 23 September 1913, crossed the Mediterranean and touched down in Bizerte, Tunisia, covering the 453 miles in 7 hours and 53 minutes.
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The brainchild of a local financier, the first regular route from Saint Petersburg to Tampa, Florida, was launched on 1st January 1914. The Benoist 14 float plane could carry a single passenger along the 18-mile route-at a rate of 5 dollars per 145 pounds, and 13 cents for each additional pound and a half.
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11th Feb 1914 : Igor Sikorsky's llya Mourometz, named for a 10th-century Russian hero, was an improved version of the Grand. Equipped with 125 and 140 HP engines, it also featured electric lighting and central heating and could carry 16 passengers. It was the first plane to be used as a bomber during the impending war.
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Jules Vedrines had already made quite a name for himself as one of the best race pilots in Europe. He demonstrated the flexibility of the Caudron G3 and his own flying skills by landing the aircraft on the rooftop of Galeries Lafayette on 19th January 1919.
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On 8th February 1919, 12 passengers set out for Kenley, near London, aboard a Farman Goliath piloted by Lucien Bossoutrot. The flight was classified as a military one, as Great Britain had banned all civilian flights to the British isles. Two days later, Farman inaugurated the Paris-Brussels link.
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On 14-15 June 1919, John Alcock and Arthur Brown completed the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic in a Vickers-Vimy, flying from Saint John's in Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland, in 15 hours and 57 minutes.
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On 1st September 1919, Didier Daurat, Jean Dombray and Pierre Beaute, flying three Breguet XIVs, officially opened the Toulouse-Rabat line, the first leg in Pierre-Georges Latecoere's grand plan for a regular air link between France and South America.
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At the controls of her Caudron G3, the French aviatrix crossed the Andes cordillera on 1st April 1921. It may have been April Fool's Day, but her flight was no joking matter.
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In December 1921, the journalist Louise Faure-Favier published the first guides designed to inform and entertain airline passengers. She was the godmother of in-flight magazines like this one. Never short on ideas, she also demonstrated the efficiency of the wireless telephone by reading her novel, Les Chevaliers de I'air, from an airplane.
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The young Spanish engineer Juan de La Cierva invented the autogiro, a hybrid of the helicopter and the airplane, with a tractor propeller and four rotary blades. He reached an altitude of nearly 13 feet on his maiden flight (9th January 1923) and crossed the English Channel in 1928.
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The first helicopter flight, of one kilometer, is made on 4th May 1924, by the French engineer Etienne Oehmichen (1884-1955), who had been working on the perfection of rotating wings since the end of World War I. Unable to find financing, he stopped his research in 1937.
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Four Douglas World Cruisers left Seattle on 6th April 1924, on the first round-the-world flight. On board were eight pilots from the Army Air Force. Only two of them completed the 27, 494-mile trip 175 days later, after 371 hours and 11 minutes in the air, but they all returned home safe and sound.
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On 25th December 1925, after working for Latecoere for a year, Jean Mermoz received a medal from the Aero-Club de France for his performance during the year : he covered 74, 400 miles in 800 hours of flight.
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Pierre-Georges Latecoere had nearly achieved his dream when he was forced to sell his company to Marcel Bouilloux-Laffont in April of 1927. Didier Daurat was the boss, and Jean Mermoz, Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Henri Guillaumet were at the controls. The legendary air mail deliveries began.
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Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli took off from Le Bourget Airport near Paris for New York on 8th May, 1927, aboard L'Oiseau-blanc. They were never seen again.
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On 20-21 May 1927, Charles Lindbergh made the first nonstop New York-Paris flight in 33 hours and 30 minutes aboard the Spirit of Saint Louis.
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The French aviators Costes and Le Brix made a nonstop flight between Saint-Louis, Senegal and Natal, Brazil, on 14th October 1927, aboard the Nungesser et Coli, a Breguet XIX.
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On 11th June 1928, Fritz Stamer, a German engineer and pilot, flew on a "duck" glider, the Espenlaub 5, equipped with rocket boosters. After a half-mile flight, it caught fire and broke up on landing. This first flight of a jet-propelled plane was followed by Fritz von Opel's more successful one, on 30 September 1929, although he, too, had landing problems.
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On 13th June 1929, the Bernard monoplane Oiseau Canari, piloted by Frenchmen Assollant, Lefevre and Lotti, had trouble taking off in spite of its powerful Hispano Suiza engine. The crew later discovered the cause of the problem : a stowaway on board, the young American Arthur Shreiber. Despite the overload, the plane landed in Spain after 22 hours of flight over 2,410 miles, setting many records: a first for France over the North Atlantic, the longest flight over the ocean and the first stowaway in air history.
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Ellen Church, a young nurse, offered her services to United Airlines, and on 15th May 1930, the first eight air hostesses made their debut on the Chicago-San Francisco run.
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It was said that no human being could survive the cold and snow of the Andes Cordillera. Henri Guillaumet proved them wrong in June of 1930.
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The French pilots Costes and Bellonte left Le Bourget Airport near Paris at 10:55 am on 1st September 1930, aboard their Breguet XIX Point d'interrogation and landed at Curtiss Field in New York 37 hours and 18 minutes later. Charles Lindbergh himself was there to welcome them.
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20-21 May 1932 : Five years after Lindbergh's pioneering flight, Amelia Earhart crossed the North Atlantic on a solo flight between Newfoundland and Ireland aboard her Lockheed-Vega.
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On 17th August 1933, four French companies (five when they were later joined by Aeropostale) became one. The new company needed a name. A journalist suggested "Air France". The sea horse became its emblem, and Ernest Roume was its first chairman. The merger was the idea of Air Minister Pierre Cot, who presided over the inauguration ceremonies on 7 October at Le Bourget Airport.
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On her third attempt, Jean Batten, a young pilot from New Zealand who had given up the piano to take to the air, succeeded in flying from London to Port Darwin on 8-23 May 1934: 9,920 miles in 14 days, 23 hours and 25 minutes.
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Helene Boucher's desire to push her Caudron Rafale beyond its limits made her the fastest woman in the world, on 8th August 1934.
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On 31st December 1934, in a first, the American pilot Helen Richey was hired by Central Airlines, but opposition from the unions soon forced her to quit.
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The Douglas DC-3, the aircraft that revolutionized air transportation, made its test flight on 17th December 1935.
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"… More than once, Mermoz disappeared in the desert, the mountains, the night and the sea. He returned only to leave once again… After 12 years, he radioed from the South Atlantic that he was cutting his rear right engine. And then there was silence". Antoine de Saint-Exupery, describing the disappearance of Jean Mermoz on 7th December 1936, in Terre des hommes (Gallimard).
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Amelia Earhart took off on 2nd July 1937, to attempt the longest circumnavigation of the globe ever made, an exploit from which she never returned.
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11th July 1938 The eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes was also a pilot. He made a "small" trip around the world in July 1938, starting in New York aboard a Lockheed Cyclone. He broke the New York-Paris speed record and received a hero's welcome at Le Bourget Airport.
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The first paying passengers crossed the Atlantic Ocean on 28th June 1939, aboard a Pan Am Boeing 315, a four-engine float plane. The cost of a one-way transatlantic trip between New York (Port Washington) and Marseille: 375 dollars.
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2nd Jan 1946 Air France once again became the official name of the newly nationalized airline company. Henri Desbrueres was named Managing Director.
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On 1st July 1946, Air France inaugurated the New Yrok-Paris route with the Ciel Ile-de-France. The Minister of Transporation, Jules Moch, was one of the VIPs aboard the DC-4.
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An ejection seat was used for the first time on 26 June 1946, when the British pilot Bernard Lynch ejected himself from his Meteor plane, while flying at a speed of 300 mph and an altitude of 8,200 feet.
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On 14th October 1947, Chuck Yeager shattered the sound barrier, reaching a speed of Mach 1.05 aboard a Bell X-1 rocket plane, launched from a Bell X-1 rocket plane, launched from a B29 plane.
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(Extracted from the AIR FRANCE magazine - August 1998 issue)
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