The man who changed his name

On 11 April 1945 Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated. Among the prisoners freed was a French aircraft maker, Marcel Bloch, who had been interned by Vichy and then held by the Germans after repeatedly refusing to collaborate. After the war he took the name Dassault, the military nickname adopted by his brother Darius, and his company became Dassault Aviation, maker of the Mirage and the Falcon. But before Dassault there was Bloch, and every aircraft carried his initials: MB.

From ambulances to bombers

Bloch had been a leading figure at the S.E.A. firm in the First World War and then left aviation for property. When France created an Air Ministry in 1928, he came back and founded the Société des Avions Marcel Bloch. An early order from the engineer Albert Caquot was for a three-engined mail plane; the first government contracts, in 1931, were for the MB.80 air ambulance and the MB.120 colonial transport. Bigger premises followed at Courbevoie in 1932, and in January 1935 Bloch and his old associate Henry Potez bought the Société Aérienne Bordelaise to build the MB.200 and MB.210 bombers. Bloch also gave his workers a week’s paid leave in 1935, before the law required it.

Nationalised, interned, reborn

On 16 January 1937 the company was nationalised and its factories at Courbevoie, Châteauroux-Déols, Villacoublay and Bordeaux became the core of SNCASO, with Bloch as delegated administrator. His designs went on into mass production for rearmament: the MB.150 family of fighters, of which about 120 had been delivered by September 1939, and the MB.174 reconnaissance bomber, first flown operationally by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on 29 March 1940. Bloch left SNCASO in February 1940 after a dispute with the Air Ministry.

Fabrikalar

• Courbevoie works · Courbevoie, near Paris — Rented from September 1932
• Châteauroux-Déols works · Châteauroux, Indre
• Villacoublay · Vélizy-Villacoublay
• Bordeaux (ex-SAB) · Bordeaux — Bought with Potez in 1935

İnsanlar

• Marcel Bloch (Dassault) · founder — Freed from Buchenwald 11 April 1945; renamed himself Dassault
• Henry Potez · partner — Co-bought SAB and Lorraine with Bloch in 1935
• Antoine de Saint-Exupéry · pilot — Flew the MB.174’s first operational mission