Across the Andes in a G.3

In 1921 Adrienne Bolland, a test pilot working for Caudron, flew a Caudron G.3 from Argentina over the Andes to Chile, the first woman to cross the range by air. The same year a G.3 landed on Mont Blanc. The G.3 was by then an old design, a slow sesquiplane of 1913, but it was the aircraft on which thousands of pilots learned to fly, and it summed up the farm-bred practicality of the brothers who built it.

A biplane towed by a horse

Gaston and René Caudron were farmers’ sons from Favières in the Somme. In August 1908 they began building a large biplane; with no engine available, they flew it as a glider towed by a horse, and only in September 1909 did it fly under power. They set up a factory and flying school on the wide beach at Le Crotoy, opened a second school at Port-Aviation near Paris in 1913, and moved to Rue. Gaston was killed in a crash at Bron on 12 December 1915.

Four thousand aircraft for the war

War made Caudron a mass producer. The G.3 was ordered in huge numbers: of 2,450 built in France, Caudron made 1,423, with more in England, Italy and elsewhere. The twin-engined G.4, 1,421 built, followed as a bomber and reconnaissance aircraft, and the R.11 escort. With the Somme too close to the front, production moved to Lyon and Issy-les-Moulineaux, which together turned out nearly 4,000 aircraft during the war.

Renault’s racers

In 1933, under pressure from the Air Ministry, Renault bought 55 per cent of Caudron, and the rest in 1937. Under the designer Marcel Riffard, Caudron-Renault built streamlined light aircraft with Renault engines: the Luciole, the Simoun and the Goéland twin, 1,702 built. Its racers took records too. Hélène Boucher set women’s speed records in a C.450 in 1934, Raymond Delmotte reached 505 km/h in a C.460 on Christmas Day 1934, and Michel Détroyat won the Thompson Trophy in the United States in 1936.

Occupation and the end

Caudron’s last fighter was a disappointment. The C.714 Cyclone, a wooden light fighter meant to be built quickly in large numbers, was underpowered and withdrawn from front-line French service in February 1940; about 90 were built, a few went to Finland, and the rest were flown by Polish pilots who had escaped to France. Under German occupation Caudron-Renault built Messerschmitt Bf 108s, Siebel Si 204s and its own types for the Wehrmacht. RAF and American bombing destroyed the Issy works in September 1943, and in 1944 the remains were nationalised into SNCAC. René Caudron, who had stayed in the business until the fall of France, died in 1959.

Factories

• Le Crotoy · Somme estuary — Factory and flying school from 1910
• Lyon works · Lyon — Wartime production until 1920
• Issy-les-Moulineaux works · Issy-les-Moulineaux, Paris — Headquarters from 1920; destroyed 1943

People

• Gaston Caudron · co-founder — 1882–1915
• René Caudron · co-founder — 1884–1959
• Marcel Riffard · chief designer under Renault
• Adrienne Bolland · test pilot — First woman to fly over the Andes, 1921

Records and firsts

• Light aircraft speed record 505 km/h, 25 December 1934, C.460, Raymond Delmotte
• Thompson Trophy 1936, C.460, Michel Détroyat
• First crossing of the Andes by a woman, Adrienne Bolland, G.3, 1921