Wagons on the Canal du Midi

Fouga began as a railway business, not an aviation one. On 6 December 1919 Gaston Fouga, with partners named Froustey and Valette, founded Établissements Fouga et Cie at Béziers to repair rolling stock for the Compagnie du Midi. The great rail strikes of May 1920 made the firm: the Midi sacked strikers, closed its own 800-strong repair shop and handed the work to Fouga, which grew from 75 to 900 workers in a single year. Its two plants straddled the Canal du Midi, joined to the railway by a lift bridge, and timber for wagon bodies came by canal from Fouga’s own sawmill at Aire-sur-l’Adour.

A sawmill that built gliders

When the railways were nationalised in the 1930s, Fouga looked for other work. In 1935–1936 it turned the Aire-sur-l’Adour woodworking shop into an aviation department, buying designs from the engineer Pierre Mauboussin and hiring him along with Robert Castello from Dewoitine. Their initials gave many Fouga aircraft the prefix CM, and the early types are often called Castel-Mauboussin. The firm built gliders by the hundred, including 170 Castel C.25S trainers, and after the war a 35-seat assault glider, the CM.10. Gaston Fouga himself died in Toulouse on 11 August 1944, days before Béziers was liberated.

The V-tailed Magister

Gliders led directly to jets. Fouga fitted a tiny Turbomeca engine to a sailplane-like airframe, and in 1948 began work on a jet trainer. Enlarged and given two Marboré turbojets at the air force’s request, the CM.170 Magister first flew on 23 July 1952. With its slender glider wings and distinctive butterfly V-tail, it was nimble enough to rival much larger aircraft yet simple enough for a student. A new final assembly plant was built at Toulouse-Blagnac, licence lines opened in West Germany, Finland and Israel, and 868 were built in all. A carrier version, the CM.175 Zéphyr, served the French Navy until 1994.

Trainers that went to war

The Magister flew with the Patrouille de France from 1964 to 1980 and with Belgium’s Red Devils and Ireland’s Silver Swallows, but it also went to war. In the 1967 Six-Day War, while Israel’s fighters struck Arab air bases, 44 Israeli Fougas flew close support in Sinai and against Jordanian armour on the West Bank, reportedly destroying more than 50 tanks for the loss of seven aircraft and six pilots. A Katangese Magister attacked UN peacekeepers at Jadotville in 1961, and El Salvador used them in its civil war. The Finns, who flew 80, nicknamed it the Ocarina for the sound of its engines.

Swallowed by Potez

The parent company did not share the Magister’s luck. Its attempt to move into equipment for the oil industry ran into cash trouble, and on 25 July 1956 Établissements Fouga filed for bankruptcy. The aviation department carried on as Air-Fouga until Henry Potez bought it in May 1958, creating Potez-Air Fouga, and the Fouga name was dropped altogether in late 1961. The railway repair branch closed in 1964 and the petrochemical branch in 1966. Through Potez, Sud-Aviation and Aérospatiale, the Toulouse and Aire-sur-l’Adour works passed into the lineage of today’s French aerospace industry.

Factories

• Fouga-Nord and Fouga-Sud · Béziers, Hérault — Railway works either side of the Canal du Midi, built 1920–1923; bombed 5 July 1944
• Aire-sur-l’Adour · Aire-sur-l’Adour, Landes — Sawmill turned glider and aircraft works in 1936
• Toulouse-Blagnac · Toulouse, Haute-Garonne — Magister final assembly plant from 1953–1954

People

• Gaston Fouga · founder — Died in Toulouse on 11 August 1944
• Pierre Mauboussin · designer — The M in the CM designations
• Robert Castello · designer — Formerly of Dewoitine; the C in the CM designations
• Henry Froustey · director — Confirmed as director after the Liberation

Records and firsts

• Magister flew with the Patrouille de France from 1964 to 1980
• Belgian Air Force was the last to fly Magisters on full duty, until September 2007