Bullets off the propeller

In April 1915 a French pilot named Roland Garros shot down three German aircraft in about a fortnight, an astonishing tally when most air combat still meant observers firing rifles. His secret was fixed to the propeller of his Morane-Saulnier Type L: steel wedges that deflected any of his own bullets that struck the wooden blades, letting him aim the whole aircraft at the enemy. Then Garros came down behind German lines. Anthony Fokker’s engineers examined the wreck, and soon afterwards Germany fielded a proper synchronised gun. Morane-Saulnier had started the race for the fighter aircraft.

The fastest men in the world

The company’s founders were already famous. On 9 September 1910 at Issy-les-Moulineaux, the brothers Léon and Robert Morane became the first pilots in the world to pass 100 km/h. On 10 October 1911 they founded the Société Anonyme des Aéroplanes Morane-Saulnier at 3 rue Volta in Puteaux with their childhood friend Raymond Saulnier, who had worked for Louis Blériot. Their first product was a development of the Morane-Borel monoplane in which Jules Védrines had won the Paris to Madrid race that May.

Across the Mediterranean

The light wing-warping monoplanes that followed were superb record breakers. On 23 September 1913 Garros flew a Morane-Saulnier from Fréjus to Bizerte, the first non-stop crossing of the Mediterranean. The same year Marcel Brindejonc des Moulinais toured the capitals of Europe in one. In April 1914 Saulnier patented a system for firing through the propeller arc, though it was the cruder deflector idea that went to war. About 600 Type Ls were built, and licence copies were made in Russia, Germany and Sweden; the Type N, called the Bullet by the British, followed.

The fighter France went to war with

Between the wars Morane-Saulnier built trainers and parasol fighters such as the MS.230, of which more than 1,000 were made. Then came the MS.406, designed under Paul-René Gauthier: the company’s first low-wing monoplane, with an enclosed cockpit and retracting undercarriage. It entered service in early 1939 and was France’s most numerous fighter of 1940, with 1,176 built. Sturdy and agile but underpowered, it was outclassed by the Bf 109E, and about 400 were lost in the Battle of France, though its squadrons claimed 191 confirmed victories.

Criquets, a jet called Paris and the Rallye

Under German occupation the factory built the Fieseler Storch, and after the Liberation it kept building it for France as the MS.500 Criquet, which served in Indochina and Algeria. In 1954 the four-seat MS.760 Paris flew, a small jet that Beech tried to sell in America as the first business jet. The MS.880 Rallye followed on 10 June 1959 and about 3,300 were built. But finances failed: in 1962 Henry Potez took the company over as SEEMS, and its light-aircraft business became SOCATA in 1965 or 1966, today part of Daher.

Továrny

• Rue Volta works · Puteaux, west of Paris — Registered seat at founding in 1911

Lidé

• Léon Morane · co-founder and pilot — With his brother, first to exceed 100 km/h in 1910
• Robert Morane · co-founder — Co-founder with his brother and Saulnier
• Raymond Saulnier · co-founder and engineer — Former Blériot collaborator; patented a firing synchroniser in April 1914
• Roland Garros · pilot — First non-stop Mediterranean crossing in 1913; pioneer of forward-firing guns in 1915
• Paul-René Gauthier · engineer — Designed the MS.406 and led the MS.760 Paris
• Henry Potez · industrialist — Took over the company in 1962

Rekordy a prvenství

• First pilots to exceed 100 km/h: Léon and Robert Morane, 9 September 1910
• First non-stop crossing of the Mediterranean, Garros, 23 September 1913
• One of the first aircraft to fire a machine gun through the propeller arc, 1915