The propeller partners

Henry Potez went into business during the First World War with a classmate from France’s aeronautical school, Marcel Bloch, the man later known as Marcel Dassault. In 1915 they founded the propeller maker Hélice Éclair, and their Potez-Bloch propeller went on to equip most Allied aircraft after 1917. Their next venture, the Société d’études aéronautiques, won an order for 1,000 SEA IV two-seaters. At the Armistice Bloch sold out, and in 1919 Potez founded Aéroplanes Henry Potez at Aubervilliers. Its first business was refurbishing war-surplus SEA IVs, then building an improved SEA VII.

The Potez 25

The aircraft that made Potez rich was the Potez 25, a two-seat sesquiplane that flew in 1924 and did almost everything: reconnaissance, light bombing, escort, mail. About 4,000 were built, 2,500 in France and about 300 under licence in Poland, and more than 20 air forces flew it, from Portugal to Japan. Aéropostale flew it on its South American mail routes, and in June 1930 pilot Henri Guillaumet survived a crash in a Potez 25 high in the Andes on an airmail flight. The earlier Potez XV had already sold more than 400.

The biggest factory in the world

In 1925 Potez moved to Méaulte, his home village on the Somme, into what French sources called the largest aircraft factory in the world. He bought the engine maker Anzani in 1923 and the flying-boat builder CAMS in 1933, and he reunited with Bloch in a selling group, Bloch-Potez-CAMS. Between 1932 and 1937 the partners won 57 per cent of French state aircraft orders while delivering only 28 to 38 per cent of output, a record the historian Emmanuel Chadeau judged harshly. Over twenty years about 7,000 aircraft left Potez lines, including the Potez 540 bomber, which Spanish Republicans flying it called the flying coffin.

Nationalised, and paid for it

In 1936 the Popular Front nationalised the French aircraft industry. Potez’s Méaulte and Sartrouville plants went to SNCAN and Berre to SNCASE, yet Potez and Bloch did very well. Between them they received 61 per cent of the compensation, kept their design offices and prototype shops, stayed on as managers and collected rent and royalties from the state companies. From Méaulte came the Potez 63 family, first flown in April 1936, of which hundreds were in service when war came. After 1945 Potez found himself sidelined, his factories destroyed and, unlike Dassault, without favour from the communist air minister Charles Tillon.

Stoves, Magisters and the 840

Potez reinvented himself. From 1947 his Dreux factory made oil-fired stoves, and by 1961 Potez heaters held two-thirds of the French market. In 1957 or 1958 he bought Air-Fouga, maker of the V-tailed Magister jet trainer, flown by the Patrouille de France and built in four countries. He bet his name on the Potez 840, a four-turboprop feederliner that first flew on 29 April 1961, and even opened a factory at Baldonnel in Ireland. It failed: only eight were built, and Ireland never produced an aircraft. In 1967 Sud-Aviation took over the Toulouse plants. Potez Aéronautique, at Aire-sur-l’Adour, survives as a parts maker run by the founder’s grandson.

Fábricas

• Méaulte · Somme, Picardy — Main works from 1925; nationalised into SNCAN in 1936
• Sartrouville · Yvelines — Ex-CAMS plant, to SNCAN in 1936
• Berre · Étang de Berre, Bouches-du-Rhône — Seaplane plant, to SNCASE in 1936
• Dreux · Eure-et-Loir — Oil-stove factory from 1947, 800 workers
• Aire-sur-l’Adour · Landes — Ex-Fouga plant; today Potez Aéronautique
• Baldonnel · County Dublin, Ireland — Opened for the Potez 840; closed without building an aircraft

Pessoas

• Henry Potez · founder — 1891–1981; born at Méaulte; co-inventor of the Potez-Bloch propeller
• Marcel Bloch (Dassault) · early partner — Co-founded Hélice Éclair and SEA; later partner in Bloch-Potez-CAMS
• Louis Coroller · designer — Called the soul of Potez aircraft in a French aviation-museum history
• Henri Guillaumet · Aéropostale pilot — Survived a Potez 25 crash in the Andes, June 1930
• Roland Potez · president of Potez Aéronautique since 1981 — Grandson of the founder