The silk broker and the shop window

Armand Deperdussin, born in Liège, had been a travelling salesman and a cabaret singer in Liège and Brussels before he made a fortune as a silk broker. Watching Louis Blériot’s triumphs turned his head. In 1909 he commissioned an aeroplane that was put on show in the windows of the Bon Marché department store in Paris, and that year he set up an aircraft works at Laon. He was no designer, so he hired one: Louis Béchereau, an Arts et Métiers graduate who had worked on Clément Ader’s machines. Aeroplanes Deperdussin was established in 1911 and became the Société de Production des Aéroplanes Deperdussin, SPAD for short, in 1912.

Béchereau’s wooden shell

After a failed canard, the Type A monoplane of 1910 was an immediate success and spawned a family of light monoplanes. The two-seat TT of 1912 was widely used by the French army before the war, sold abroad and was built under licence by Lebedev in Russia, 63 of them, and at Highgate by the British Deperdussin Company. Production moved to a new factory at Grenelle in Paris; there were boat and seaplane works at Le Havre and Juvisy, and in 1912 Deperdussin bought the airfield at Champagne near Reims, building 30 workshops and a flying school. The young Frederick Koolhoven worked for Béchereau in 1911.

Two hundred kilometres an hour

Béchereau’s great idea was the monocoque. Instead of a wire-braced box covered in fabric, the 1912 racer had a fuselage shell of three layers of tulipwood, about 4 millimetres thick, moulded in two halves and glued together, with a big spinner and a clean undercarriage. Jules Védrines won the 1912 Gordon Bennett race in it, the first pilot to race at over 100 miles an hour. On 16 April 1913 Maurice Prévost won the first Schneider Trophy at Monaco on a Deperdussin floatplane. In September 1913 at Reims he won the Gordon Bennett again at 200.8 km/h, making the Monocoque the first aeroplane to exceed 200 km/h.

Arrested in August 1913

By then the money had run out. Deperdussin entertained lavishly and paid for races and prizes, and on 6 August 1913 he was arrested. The bank that had lent to him found the loans were secured on forged receipts from his silk business. He was held until his trial in 1917, when on 30 March he was convicted of embezzling 32 million francs and sentenced to five years. He argued that much of the money had gone into building up French aviation; as a first offender he was reprieved and released at once. He killed himself in Paris in 1924.

From Deperdussin to SPAD

The company went bankrupt in August 1913 and was briefly run as the Société Provisoire des Aéroplanes Deperdussin. A consortium led by Louis Blériot bought the assets and renamed it the Société Pour l’Aviation et ses Dérivés, cleverly keeping the SPAD initials. Béchereau stayed as chief designer, and the line that began with the Monocoque led to the SPAD VII and SPAD XIII fighters of the First World War, flown by Guynemer, Baracca and Rickenbacker, and built in their thousands.

Заводы

• Laon works · Laon, Aisne — First aircraft works, 1909
• Grenelle factory · Paris — Main factory from 1911
• Champagne airfield · near Reims — Bought 1912; 30 workshops and a flying school
• Le Havre and Juvisy works · Le Havre; Juvisy-sur-Orge — Motor boats and seaplanes

Люди

• Armand Deperdussin · founder — Silk broker; arrested for fraud 1913, died 1924
• Louis Béchereau · chief engineer — 1880–1970; designer of the Monocoque and later the SPAD fighters
• Jules Védrines · racing pilot — Won the 1912 Gordon Bennett Trophy
• Maurice Prévost · racing pilot — Won the 1913 Schneider Trophy and Gordon Bennett Trophy
• Frederick Koolhoven · engineer — Worked with Béchereau in 1911

Рекорды и первые достижения

• First aeroplane to exceed 200 km/h: Monocoque, Maurice Prévost, Reims, September 1913
• World speed record raised to about 210 km/h by the Monocoque, 1913
• Winner of the first Schneider Trophy, Monaco, 16 April 1913
• Gordon Bennett Trophy wins in 1912 (Védrines) and 1913 (Prévost)