The watchmaker’s heir

Louis Charles Breguet came from one of the great names in precision engineering. His great-great-grandfather was Abraham-Louis Breguet, the watchmaker to European royalty, and the family had a factory at Douai. Louis, a graduate of France’s top electrical engineering school, turned to flight. With his brother Jacques and Professor Charles Richet he built the Gyroplane No. 1, a steel frame with four sets of rotors, and on 29 September 1907 it rose about 60 centimetres with a man aboard, steadied by four helpers. It was the first time a rotary-wing machine had lifted itself and a pilot. The brothers set up their aviation company in 1911.

An aluminium bomber

The First World War made Breguet a mass producer. Its Breguet 14, first flown on 21 November 1916, was among the first mass-produced aircraft to use large amounts of aluminium in its structure, which made it light, strong and fast enough to outrun some fighters. France ordered it in huge numbers, the American Army Air Service bought more than 600, and other firms built it under licence, Michelin alone producing almost 2,000 Breguet designs. Production ran until 1928 and reached about 8,000. Roget and Coli used one to fly 1,900 km from Paris to Kenitra in Morocco for a French distance record.

Question mark over the Atlantic

Its successor became the long-distance aeroplane of its day. The Breguet 19 flew in March 1922, and more than 2,000 were built in France plus about 700 under licence in Spain, Japan, Belgium and Yugoslavia. Specially tanked versions chased records. Dieudonné Costes and Joseph Le Brix flew one round the world in 1927 and 1928, crossing the South Atlantic non-stop on the way. Then, on 1 and 2 September 1930, Costes and Maurice Bellonte flew a long-range Breguet 19 named Point d’Interrogation, the Question Mark, from Paris to New York, the first non-stop flight between the two cities.

Double-deckers and gliders

War returned and Breguet, spared the 1936 nationalisation of its Villacoublay works, built the Br.693 ground-attack aircraft; of 205 delivered, 58 per cent were lost in 1940. After the Liberation it designed a remarkable airliner, the double-deck Br.763 Deux-Ponts, which first flew in 1951 and served Air France on North African and Mediterranean routes until 1971. Breguet also sold cheap, sturdy gliders from 1954 and experimented boldly: the Br.941 used propeller slipstream blown over its wing to land in very short distances, and the Taon set speed records in 1958. Louis Breguet died in 1955, and Sylvain Floirat took charge of an increasingly indebted company.

Hunting submarines, then Dassault

Breguet’s last big win was against the world. In 1958 its Br.1150 Atlantic won NATO’s competition to replace the Lockheed Neptune, beating several rivals. First flown at Toulouse on 21 October 1961, it was built by a European consortium, and about 87 went to France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Pakistan, followed by 28 Atlantique 2s. In the 1960s Breguet teamed with Britain’s BAC to create the SEPECAT Jaguar, based on its Br.121 design. In 1971 Marcel Dassault bought Breguet, forming Avions Marcel Dassault-Breguet Aviation. French Atlantique 2s are planned to fly until about 2035.

Factories

• La Brayelle · Douai, Nord — First workshops next to the family factory; destroyed in the First World War
• Vélizy-Villacoublay · near Paris — Design office, works, test flying and school from 1913
• Le Havre · Seine-Maritime — Seaplane works from 1929; nationalised into SNCAN in 1936
• Toulouse-Montaudran · Toulouse — Former Latécoère plant, acquired 1939
• Anglet · Pyrénées-Atlantiques — Acquired 1939 with the Latécoère assets

People

• Louis Charles Breguet · founder and designer — 1880–1955; descendant of the watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet
• Jacques Breguet · co-founder — Louis’s brother and partner on the Gyroplane
• Charles Richet · physiologist and Gyroplane collaborator — Helped the brothers design the 1907 Gyroplane
• Dieudonné Costes · record pilot — Flew Breguet 19s round the world and across the North Atlantic
• Sylvain Floirat · chairman from 1955 — Took over after Louis Breguet’s death

Records and firsts

• First rotary-wing aircraft to lift itself and a pilot, Gyroplane No. 1, 29 September 1907
• World distance record, 3,166 km Paris to Villa Cisneros, Breguet 19, February 1925
• Non-stop distance record, 7,905 km, Breguet 19 Point d’Interrogation, September 1929
• Non-stop Paris to New York, Costes and Bellonte, Breguet 19, 1–2 September 1930
• FAI helicopter speed record, 108 km/h, Gyroplane Laboratoire, 22 December 1935
• 1,000 km closed-circuit speed records, Taon, April and July 1958