SPADs, then bankruptcy

Adolphe Bernard founded his company in April 1917 to licence-build SPAD fighters. After the war it became the Société Industrielle des Métaux et du Bois, but built nothing new until 1922, when Jean Hubert arrived as head designer. A stream of one-off fighters and racers followed, and in 1927 the company went bankrupt. Bernard re-formed it once more as the Société des Avions Bernard to build airliners for the airline CIDNA.

The Canary Bird and the stowaway

The airliner was the Bernard 190, and CIDNA disliked it. But three long-range 191 GR versions made the name. On 13 June 1929 the bright yellow Oiseau Canari left Old Orchard Beach, Maine, with Jean Assollant, René Lefèvre and Armand Lotti — and a stowaway, Arthur Schreiber — and came down 29 hours 52 minutes later on a beach in Cantabria: the first French crossing of the North Atlantic. It is preserved at Le Bourget.

Racers and record-breakers

Bernard’s wooden racers were beautiful and unlucky: the H.V.120 Schneider Trophy seaplane missed the 1929 race for want of engines, and its sister killed its pilot in 1931. The 80 GR did better. Flown by Jean Mermoz and Antoine Paillard from Oran, it set a closed-circuit distance record of 8,960 km in April 1931. The firm bought FBA in 1935, but was struggling again as French aviation was nationalised.

אֲנָשִׁים

• Adolphe Bernard · מייסד
• Jean Hubert · head designer from 1922
• Antoine Paillard · test and record pilot — Died after appendicitis surgery in 1931

שיאים וראשונות

• First French aerial crossing of the North Atlantic, Bernard 191 GR Oiseau Canari, 13–14 June 1929
• Absolute closed-circuit distance record, 8,960 km, Bernard 80 GR, 30 March–2 April 1931
• Two world speed-with-payload records by the third 191 GR, Antoine Paillard