Born of the Popular Front

By the mid-1930s France was falling behind a rearming Germany. Its prototype programmes produced aircraft that were late, hard to build in quantity and obsolete on arrival. When the Popular Front of Léon Blum came to power after the great strikes of 1936, it nationalised much of the aircraft industry under a law of 11 August 1936 and regrouped it into six regional state companies. SNCAN, the northern one, took over five factories: Potez at Méaulte in Picardy, CAMS at Sartrouville, ANF Les Mureaux, Amiot at Caudebec-en-Caux and Breguet’s plant at Le Havre.

Building for the occupier

Before the war SNCAN mostly built the established designs of the firms it had absorbed and produced a string of prototypes; only one family, the Potez 63 series, went into full production. After the fall of France in 1940 all its plants lay in the occupied zone and had to work for Germany. From 1942 production of the Messerschmitt Bf 108 Taifun four-seat liaison aircraft was transferred to Les Mureaux, and 170 were built before the liberation. Two prototypes of the Me 208 followed.

Messerschmitts with French names

Liberation did not stop the line; it changed the name. In November 1944 SNCAN took on 1,898 people, 699 of them previously unemployed. It kept building the Bf 108 from leftover parts as the Nord 1000 until the German Argus engines ran out, then fitted Renault engines and called it the Pingouin; 286 were built in all, mostly for French forces. The surviving Me 208 became the Noralpha, of which some 200 went to the air force and navy and served until the mid-1970s. SNCAN also built German gliders as French trainers and, under licence, more than 900 Stampe SV.4 biplanes with its Algiers partner.

The Noratlas

SNCAN adopted the Nord brand and a run of Nor- names: the Norécrin tourer, the Noroit amphibian, the Noréclair and Norazur prototypes, even a two-seat Norélic helicopter. The great success was the Nord 2501 Noratlas, a twin-boom transport with rear clamshell doors, whose prototype first flew on 10 September 1949. Re-engined with SNECMA-built Bristol Hercules, it entered service on 6 December 1953. About 425 were built, 228 for the French air force, and the type dropped French paratroopers at Port Said in 1956, served Israel, Greece, Portugal and West Germany, and flew in electronic-warfare form until 1989.

Into Nord Aviation

The state kept reshuffling its companies. In June 1949 SNCAN absorbed most of the dissolved SNCAC, and on 1 October 1954 it merged with SFECMAS to form Nord Aviation, with its main base at Bourges. Nord Aviation went on to build the Noratlas until 1961 and to develop missiles, among them the Exocet, before merging with Sud Aviation on 1 March 1970 to create Aérospatiale. Among SNCAN’s more unexpected products was the Inter Autoscooter, a small car unveiled at the 1953 Paris Motor Show and built from 1954 to 1958.

Factories

• Méaulte · Méaulte, Picardy — Former Potez plant
• Sartrouville · Sartrouville, Île-de-France — Former CAMS plant
• Les Mureaux · Les Mureaux, west of Paris — Former ANF Les Mureaux plant; Bf 108 and Pingouin production
• Caudebec-en-Caux · Normandy — Former Amiot plant
• Le Havre · Le Havre, Normandy — Former Breguet plant