Nobody at the graveside

In August 1998 an 84-year-old Frenchman was buried in the cemetery at Hyères on the Riviera. Reportedly no one came. He had returned from South America three years earlier, ruined, divorced and estranged from his children, and he died in anonymity. Yet Max Holste had designed the aircraft the French Army relied on throughout the Algerian War, and he had been lead designer of the Bandeirante, the airliner that launched Embraer and was built in some five hundred examples. Few aircraft designers have been so important and so quickly forgotten.

A garage aircraft and a car-maker’s trainer

Holste, born in Nice in 1913, caught flying from a godfather who had flown in the Great War, joined naval aviation at 18 and spent his spare time drawing aircraft. His first design was abandoned when the joinery building it went bankrupt. He worked in the design offices of Farman and Amiot, and built racers on his own account. After the Liberation the MH.52 two-seat trainer, built by Borand, flew on 25 July 1945, the first French aircraft designed and built since the Liberation. On 27 September 1946 he founded the Société anonyme des avions Max Holste, which moved to Reims on 1 January 1950.

The French Beaver

The French Army wanted a robust bush aircraft along the lines of the de Havilland Canada Beaver. Holste’s answer, the MH.1521 Broussard, flew on 17 November 1952: a slab-sided high-wing six-seater with twin fins and a Pratt and Whitney Wasp Junior radial. It was nicknamed the French Beaver, and in Algeria more than 150 worked as artillery spotters, air ambulances and supply aircraft. Its one flaw was noise; guerrillas could hear it long before it arrived. The war hero Pierre Clostermann, a close friend of Holste, championed it politically and flew it in Algeria himself.

Too much success, too little future

The Broussard’s success was also the company’s trap. French military demand absorbed almost everything, exports barely happened, and when the war ended and the design aged, sales fell away. Holste bet on a twin, the MH.250 Super Broussard, which flew on 20 May 1959, and a turboprop MH.260. It was too much for a small firm. On 15 February 1960 Cessna bought into the company to build its light aircraft in Reims; in November that year Nord Aviation took over the MH.260, which became the Nord 262. The last Broussard left the line on 6 December 1961, and on 30 January 1962 the company was renamed Reims Aviation.

Exile in Brazil

Pushed aside by Cessna, Holste left for Brazil in 1964, where he had contacts from his Broussard sales tours. The nascent Brazilian industry welcomed him as a star, and he became lead designer on the government’s light transport project, the Bandeirante, which first flew four years later and went on to found Embraer’s fortunes. Unhappy there, he set up his own company and drifted between South American countries before coming home in 1995. He was an officer of the Légion d’honneur. In 2016 a commemorative service was held at his grave, and a street in Reims bears his name.

المصانع

• Rue Gosset works · Reims, Marne — Company’s home from 1950, after a brief stay in the impasse Baussonnet

الناس

• ماكس هولست · founder and designer — 1913–1998; later lead designer of the Embraer Bandeirante
• Pierre Clostermann · fighter ace, Broussard champion, later head of Reims Aviation — Close friend of Holste; flew Broussards in Algeria and wrote a novel about it
• Vincent André · partner — Built the MH.52 with Holste from January 1945