A believer in long wings

Maurice Hurel was a passionate advocate of very high aspect-ratio wings, and in November 1947 he found an understanding backer in the industrialist Léon-Joseph Dubois. Their company, based on the heights of Meudon outside Paris, set out to prove the idea. The HD.10 research aircraft, with a strut-braced wing of 32.5 to 1 aspect ratio, first flew with Hurel himself at the controls on 25 August 1948 and logged more than 218 hours before going to the Musée de l’Air.

The flying paper-knives

Next came the government-sponsored HD.31 and HD.32 twin-engined transports of 1953, nicknamed the flying paper-knives for their slender wings. Air France ordered 24 as feederliners and there was talk of SNCASE building 150, but none went to an airline. The only real customer was the Institut Géographique National, whose eight glazed-nose HD.34 survey aircraft flew from Creil from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, prized for slow, steady photographic runs. One still flies.

Second life in nacelles

Hurel-Dubois made its living instead as a subcontractor for nacelles and aerostructures for almost half a century. Snecma took it over in 2000 and renamed it Hurel-Hispano; it became Aircelle in 2005 and is now Safran Nacelles.

المصانع

• Meudon works · Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine — Closed in the year after the 2005 renaming

الناس

• Maurice Hurel · co-founder, engineer and test pilot — 1896–1982; flew the HD.10 himself
• Léon-Joseph Dubois · co-founder, investor — 1890–1966