Book. “Potez 84, le dernier avion d’Henry Potez”

A book that paints the portrait of the industrial and aeronautical landscape of France in the 1960s, through the career of its protagonist Henry Potez. His challenges, his successes, but also his failures…

Although the destiny of Henry Potez was tied to that of Marcel Bloch for a long time, it cannot be said that their respective companies saw comparable success as the years and decades went by.

The two men met in January 1914, before the First World War began, at the 1st Aerostat group of the French Army. Subsequently, they worked together on standardizing the production of the Caudron G.3, before devoting themselves to producing the Hélice Éclair propeller in 1915. They then jointly founded the Société d’Etudes Aéronautiques and developed the SEA IV C2 single-engine biplane, the first of which was delivered on a rather significant date: November 11, 1918…

While Henry Potez remained in the aeronautics sector, Marcel Bloch temporarily left it, but their paths crossed again a few years later, when the French aeronautics industry was nationalized by the Front Populaire.

Seaplanes, civil and military aviation, iconic models such as the Potez 25 (an aircraft synonymous with Aéropostale), the Potez 39 (a light aircraft), and so on; at that time, he was a businessman at his peak. Between 1939 and 1945, war broke out and the years passed by. The Potez 75 was rolled out in the mid-1950s: a failure. The manufacturer then decided to bet everything on a four-engine monoplane, the Potez 84. The decline narrated in the pages of this book signaled the advent of the inevitable domination, or even confirmed it, of Henry Potez’s ex-business partner: who still went by Marcel, but whose last name had by then become Dassault.

Book. “Potez 84, le dernier avion d’Henry Potez”. Author, Pierre Parvaud. Éditions Skyshelf. EAN: 295414789467