Italian roots

CAMS began as a French outpost of Italian design. Lawrence Santoni founded the Chantiers Aéro-Maritimes de la Seine at Saint-Ouen in November 1920 to build SIAI flying boats under licence. In 1922 he lured Raffaele Conflenti away from SIAI to be his head designer, and CAMS began producing its own boats, from racers and trainers to the CAMS 30T, which set a speed record for passenger-carrying flying boats in 1924.

Boats for the Navy and the mail

Its signature formula, a biplane hull with two engines mounted back to back between the wings, served both the Navy and the airlines. Maurice Hurel’s CAMS 53 carried Aeropostale and Air Union passengers from Marseille to Algiers, Ajaccio and Beirut; about 25 were still flying when Air France was formed in 1933. The military CAMS 55 was built in 112 examples, equipped 15 French Navy escadrilles and soldiered on in Tahiti until January 1941.

Nationalised

In the 1930s the company worked under the Potez-CAMS name on ever more ambitious boats, including the four-engined 141 and the six-engined 161 airliner. Nationalisation ended its independence in 1936–37: its Sartrouville works were folded into the state-owned SNCAN, the northern group that later became Nord Aviation.

Fábricas

• Saint-Ouen works · Saint-Ouen, Seine — Founding site, 1920
• Sartrouville works · Sartrouville — Transferred to SNCAN on nationalisation

Gente

• Lawrence Santoni · fundador
• Raffaele Conflenti · head designer from 1922 — Recruited from SIAI
• Maurice Hurel · designer — CAMS 53 and CAMS 55

Récords y primicias

• CAMS 30T: speed record for passenger-carrying flying boats, 1924