Description

French text and captions. In 1945, national aeronautics came out of the war deeply devastated, with design offices five years behind those of the main belligerent countries, and dilapidated industrial resources, when they had not been destroyed. In 1960, it had already regained a number of prestigious speed and altitude records, mass-produced aircraft whose technical levels were those of the best world productions, and covered the range from bisonic interceptors and bombers to helicopters, including a remarkable transport twin-engine, ancestor of the “Airbus” family, whose latest model will perhaps allow Europe to wrest the monopoly from the United States that they have held for thirty years in the field of civil transport thanks to the aircraft of the Boeing firm… This book reveals the little-known, but decisive role played by the Flight Test Centre during these years of critical importance , in a revival of national aeronautics that many initially considered impossible. Produced after six years of an exhaustive analysis of the Centre’s archives, used for the first time, it places the main events of the time in their general context, and reports with rigor the performances and flight qualities actually demonstrated during their official tests, by the three hundred prototypes of French civilian and military aircraft produced and evaluated between 1945 and 1960