Pumps, steam and a Swedish name

Émile Salmson, grandson of a Swedish family settled in France, opened a Paris workshop for steam compressors and centrifugal pumps around 1890. In 1908 two engineers from the Westinghouse works at Graville, Georges Canton and Pierre Unné, asked him to build an aero engine they had designed: a water-cooled radial with fixed cylinders, unlike the spinning rotaries of the day. The seven-cylinder Canton-Unné of 1908 gave 50 hp for 55 kg. Nine- and fourteen-cylinder versions followed, and early in 1913 the Société des Moteurs Salmson was set up at Billancourt.

The engine behind the first air victory

Salmson engines won all the endurance events at the Monaco seaplane meeting of April 1913. Then came war. On 5 October 1914 Joseph Frantz and Louis Quenault of escadrille V24 shot down a German aircraft from a Voisin III powered by a 120 hp Salmson 9M, the first aerial victory in history. Salmson radials drove Voisin, Farman and Breguet-Michelin bombers, including the Voisins of the Ludwigshafen raid of 1915. Late in 1915 the company flew its own first aircraft, the Salmson-Moineau S.M.1, whose sideways-mounted engine drove two propellers through shafts; 155 were built.

The Salmson 2

Salmson had built the Sopwith 1½ Strutter under licence, and its replacement, the Salmson 2 A.2, owed it more than it owed the strange S.M.1. Production was ordered on 29 April 1917 and deliveries began that October. With its 230 to 260 hp Salmson 9Z radial, the two-seater became, with the Breguet 14, the main French army reconnaissance aircraft of 1918; at the armistice one in three French reconnaissance aircraft was a Salmson 2. About 3,200 were built in France, 2,200 by Salmson, and the American Expeditionary Force bought some 700. In 1918 the Billancourt works turned out 200 aircraft and 650 engines a month.

Records, mostly by women

Peace gave the type a second life. On 25 December 1918 Pierre-Georges Latécoère opened his Toulouse to Barcelona air service, the future Aéropostale, with a demilitarised Salmson 2 built in his own factory. Japan built hundreds more under licence. Through the 1920s and 1930s Salmson concentrated on light air-cooled radials, and its engines carried 15 world records, many of them set by women. Maryse Bastié flew 37 hours 55 minutes in a Salmson-powered Klemm in 1930, and Léna Bernstein became the first woman to fly across the Mediterranean in 1929.

Cars, cricket and the end

The founder died in 1917 and his sons left in 1919; the new owners, with more than 6,000 employees, turned to cars. Salmson cyclecars and twin-cam sports cars won 550 races and ten world records between 1921 and 1928. Aircraft did not disappear. The Phrygane cabin monoplane of 1934 and the little Cri-Cri parasol of 1936, chosen for France’s Aviation Populaire, sold 329. The last Salmson aircraft, the D-211 Super Phrygane, came in 1956. The company went bankrupt on 26 February 1962, and flats designed by Fernand Pouillon replaced the Billancourt works.

المصانع

• Billancourt works · Avenue des Moulineaux, Billancourt — From late 1912; aircraft, engines and later cars
• Villeurbanne works · Villeurbanne, near Lyon — Engines and magnetos; aircraft building moved here

الناس

• Émile Salmson · founder — Engineer and pump maker; died 1917
• Georges Canton and Pierre Unné · engine designers — Designed the water-cooled radial Salmson built from 1908
• René Moineau · engineer — Co-designer of the S.M.1
• Émile Petit · car technical director — Designed Salmson’s twin-cam car engines

الأرقام القياسية والأولويات

• First aerial victory in history, Voisin III with Salmson 9M engine, 5 October 1914
• Maryse Bastié: women’s endurance record 37 h 55 min in a Salmson-powered Klemm, 2 September 1930
• Léna Bernstein: first woman to fly across the Mediterranean, Caudron C.109 with Salmson engine, 19 August 1929
• Salmson 4 described in French sources as the first armoured aircraft in history