Caudron C. 635 Simoun

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Caudron 635 Simoun
Caudron Simoun Le Bourget 02.JPG
Caudron Simoun in the colors of Air Bleu
Type: Sport aircraft , liaison aircraft
Design country:

FranceFrance France

Manufacturer:

Caudron , Renault

First flight:

10.1934

Commissioning:

1935

Production time:

1935 to 1940

Number of pieces:

~ 589 (572)

The Caudron 635 Simoun was a French four-person touring aircraft that first flew in 1934. The French Air Bleu continued Simoun s as mail planes into France. French aviators used the type for long-haul flights. The type with a faired, rigid landing gear was ordered in larger numbers by the French Air Force ( Armée de l'air ) and used as a liaison aircraft , trainer and ambulance aircraft.

Development and construction of the Simoun

The Caudron Simoun was designed by Marcel Riffard (1886–1981), who derived it from the C.360 and C.362 racing aircraft developed for the Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe . The first prototypes, like all following series, mainly made of wood, were the Simoun C.500, C.520 and C.620 . A C.500 got a lighter Renault Bengali 4-cylinder engine of 150 hp to save weight. The other machines all received the air-cooled 6 cylinder Bengali in-line engine with hanging cylinders. The C.620 was finished first and made its maiden flight in July 1934 and was exhibited at the Aviation Exhibition in November 1934 with the C.520 . All of the machines in the series were cantilever low-wing aircraft with a clad, rigid chassis. The air-cooled Renault Bengali 6 engine was used as the power unit.

From the Simoun types C.500, C.520, C.620 (prototypes), the series type C.630 and their long-range versions C.631, C.632, C.633 and C.634 , about 36 machines were built for civil users that were powered by different versions of the Renault engine and differed in details. The prototypes C.500, C.520 had a larger, more extensively glazed cabin and a slightly different hull shape, which were abandoned for the series machines. The orders from the French armed forces for the C.635 and C.635M resulted in over 500 new builds. All machines were still made of wood until the end of series production in the spring of 1940. Equipped with adjustable Ratier propellers, the Simoun were among the first touring aircraft (alongside the Messerschmitt Bf 108 ) that could reach a top speed of 300 km / h.

The Caudron Simoun first came into a liner service with Air Bleu , founded in 1935 , which received twelve Simoun types C.630 and C.635 . In addition to these mail planes, which were only used within France, three military- order machines came to Madagascar as mail planes in order to be used within the island. From the end of 1935 the first 110 Caudron Simoun C.635M (ilitaire) were delivered to the French Air Force as liaison and training aircraft. The naval aviators received a further 29 machines. In total, the French armed forces ordered 650 machines until after the outbreak of war, of which almost 500 were completed for the French armed forces by May 1940. There is no exact information about the total number of Simouns built , especially since some machines were at least temporarily assigned to different variants.

variants

  • C. 500 Simoun IV, two four-seat sports aircraft prototypes, longer cabin with three large side windows, one later fitted with a lighter Bengali 4
  • C. 520 Simoun VI, a six-seat prototype
  • C. 620 Simoun, a prototype and conversions
  • C. 630 Simoun - first production model with Renault Bengali 6Pri engine, 20 machines
  • C. 631 Simoun - modified model for long-haul flights with a higher take-off weight, with Renault Bengali 6Q-01 engine, three machines
  • C.632 Simoun - single machine, converted C.631 , single-seater for Japan flight Japys
  • C. 633 Simoun - modified model with Renault Bengali 6Q-07 engine and modified hull, six machines
  • C. 634 Simoun - reinforced version for long-haul flights, three machines
  • C.635 Simoun - Version with improved cabin equipment, 46 new buildings, in addition to conversions of earlier Simoun
  • C.635M Simoun - military version, mostly three-seater, 489 machines delivered to Armée de l'air and Aeronavale (59)

The remaining machines

Of the almost 600 Caudron Simoun built , only two machines are left today. One is a stationary exhibit in the Aerospace Museum (Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace) in Paris-Le Bourget , the second belongs to the Association Renaissance du Caudron Simoun , which wants to restore it to airworthiness.

The Caudron Simoun of the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace is a C.635M T-585, now on display as an Air Bleu mail machine. With the machine on display, a French NCO tried to escape from Pau to Morocco in the summer of 1940 after France surrendered . During a stopover in Portugal, the pilot was interned and the plane was confiscated by Portugal. In 1973 the machine was returned to France and brought back by a Transall of the Armée de l'air to be issued as F-ANRO. The first F-ANRO, Simoun C.630 n ° 19/7017, was one of the first six Air Bleu machines that joined Air France in the autumn of 1940 when the company was dissolved. The whereabouts of the original F-ANRO machine could not be clarified.

The second still existing Simoun of the `Association Renaissance du Caudron Simoun´ has been restored to represent the C.630 F-ANRY, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's first aircraft that crashed in 1935 . This machine, too, was originally a C.635M  n ° 8433 T-499 of the French Air Force, built in 1939 , which entered the civil register in Morocco as F-DADY in 1950 and was used until 1966.

Until an accident in 2002, the Simoun C.635 n ° 7863 F-AZAM (ex F-ARCH, as N85E 1973 to 1977 in the USA) was the last airworthy Caudron Simoun to fly in France.

Long haul flights

The price of the Caudron Simoun (then between 128,000 and 157,000 French francs) only allowed wealthy aviators to buy it. Famous pilots such as Michel Détroyat (1905–1956), Marcel Doret (1896–1955) and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) owned a Simoun . Others such as André Japy (1904–1974), Maryse Bastié (1898–1952) and Maryse Hilsz (1901–1946) were made available by the factory.

The first successful long-distance record flight led Gaston Génin (1901-1936) and André Robert with the two-seat Simoun C.631 F-ANXA Gody radio with auxiliary fuel tanks in the rear of the cabin from 18 to 21 December 1935 from Le Bourget to Antananarivo on Madagascar by who covered the 8,665 km in 57 h 6 ' with stopovers in Syrte and Juba and thus broke their own course record. From January 19 to 22, 1935, they flew from Paris to Madagascar in Farman 199 N ° 2 F-ALHG in three days, 23 hours 25 minutes.

Crash landings by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

de Saint-Exupéry in front of his caudron which crashed in 1935

Already in the night of 29./30. December 1935, the experienced aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry had an accident 200 kilometers from Cairo in the Egyptian desert while attempting to set a route record from Paris to Saigon . After a 19 hours 44 minute flight with its Simoun C.630 F-ANRY, the machine crashed after touching the ground over the desert in Egypt. Without equipment, Saint-Exupéry and his mechanic André Prévot (1907–1947) left the wreck and wandered through the desert for almost four days before they were found by the Bedouins . They managed to nurse those who had almost died of thirst to health. Saint-Exupéry's depiction of these near-death experiences in 1939 in wind, sand and stars contributed to the book's great success. It was award-winning and received the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Académie française ; the American translation was a great sales success.

The completion of this anthology partly new and already older texts with the original title Terre des hommes ("The Earth of the People") was done by Saint-Exupéry in New York during recovery after another serious accident with a Simoun on February 16, 1938 Attempting a record flight from New York to Tierra del Fuego with the C.635M F-ANXK and again with André Prévot as a companion, the writer and pilot crashed after a stopover in Guatemala City on the start of the onward flight because the machine had too much fuel loaded, and both inmates were seriously injured. For Prévot it was the end of his aviation career.

Try to fly to Tokyo

Memorial stone at the Japy crash site

Further attempts at record flights with Caudron Simoun to East Asia also ended in accidents. After several flights with Caudron Simoun in Europe, so u. a. on July 31, 1936 from Paris directly to Algiers in 5 hours 3 minutes with an immediate return flight after 58 minutes of maintenance time in 5 hours 48 minutes and on August 6, 1936 from Paris to Moscow with stopovers in 16 hours 5 minutes and a non-stop return flight on August 8th in 9 hours 50 minutes, the successful long-haul pilot André Japy tried to win the price for the first flight in under 100 hours from Paris to Tokyo with the single-seater Simoun C.632 F-ANXA provided by the factory . Japy, the test pilot of the Caudron works, had already carried out a flight with a Simoun to Saigon in 87.5 hours in December 1935 .

As a solo pilot, he reached Hanoi in a record time of 50 hours and 59 minutes . On the first approach to Japan from Hong Kong, he had to turn back due to bad weather. On the second approach on November 19, he lost control of his aircraft over Kyūshū and crashed in the Sefuri Mountains after a total flight time of more than 75 hours, also due to a lack of fuel. Over 100 residents of a nearby village in Saga Prefecture , under the direction of the local fire brigade, searched for the crashed machine in very difficult terrain and were able to recover the seriously injured Japy and finally transport him to the hospital at Fukuoka University .

On January 20, 1937, the next attempt was made to fly a Caudron Simoun from Paris to Tokyo in under 100 hours. The experienced long-distance, world record pilot and test pilot Marcel Doret started this morning in Le Bourget with his radio operator Jérôme Micheletti with the Simoun C.635 F-ANXM. They wanted to reach Tokyo in three days via Brindisi , Cairo , Baghdad , Karachi , Hanoi , Hong Kong and Shanghai . Despite bad weather, the planes reached Hanoi on January 23, 1937 via Brindisi, Cairo, Basra , Karachi, Allahabad and Akyab . After a further 200 kilometers and a total flight time of 71 hours and 15 minutes over a distance of now 10,775 kilometers, the machine almost overturned during an emergency landing on the beach of an island in the Gulf of Tongking, stuck its nose in the beach and had a totally damaged propeller . The machine was abandoned by the uninjured crew.

Back in France, Doret and Micheletti started on May 22, 1937 with the Simoun C.635M F-APMS for a second attempt to reach Tokyo in 100 hours. On the 24th they reached Hanoi in a new record time. Due to very bad weather again, there was a stopover in Fort Bayard . A tire burst on landing on May 26th in Shanghai. Exact radio navigation could no longer be carried out on the onward flight to Tokyo when the weather was still very bad. The two French tried to land on a beach. The machine overturned and both occupants were seriously injured. They had reached the village of Tohara on Tosa Bay in Kōchi Prefecture on Shikoku, southwest of Osaka , about 500 km from Tokyo.

Maryse Bastié's Atlantic flight

The first solo flight over the South Atlantic was carried out on November 26, 1931 by the Australian Bert Hinkler in a 120 hp de Havilland DH.80 Puss Moth when he flew from Natal to Dakar in 22 hours . Further solo flights with light aircraft followed on 18/19. August 1932, when Jim Mollison also flew over the North Atlantic from Ireland to Canada with a Puss Moth . and on February 6, 1933 the plane crossed the South Atlantic from Thiès / Senegal to Natal in 17.5 hours. This was followed on April 27, 1933 by the Polish captain Stanislaw Skarzynski , who flew in a RWD 5bis from Saint Louis / Senegal to Maceió / Brazil in 20 hours and on May 20, 1935, the Spaniard Juan Ignacio Pombo in a British replica of a Klemm Kl 32 , which reached Bathurst Natal in a new record time of 16 hours 42 minutes (~ 192 km / h). On November 13, 1935, Jean Batten from New Zealand flew from Thies / Senegal to Natal as the first woman to fly solo and in record time over the South Atlantic in 13 hours 15 minutes. She used the Percival Gull Six G-ADPR Jean with a 200 hp de Havilland Gipsy Six engine.

The French aviator Maryse Bastié, who had set the first FAI recognized women's world record in 1928, followed by other long-range and endurance flight world records for women, then planned a faster flight over the South Atlantic. She was supported by Air France, her chief pilot Jean Mermoz and the French authorities. December 1935 on board the Blériot 5190 F-ANLE Santos-Dumont on a scheduled mail flight to South America as a passenger and on 30/31. December 1935 returned to Dakar with the machine under Mermoz. At the end of August 1936, Aviation Minister Pierre Cot Bastié made the Caudron Simoun C.635 F-ANXO available, with which Maryse Bastié and her friend Suzanne Tillier flew over Corsica and Algeria to Dakar in October.

In honor of Jean Mermoz, who had an accident on December 7, 1936 over the South Atlantic with the Latécoère 300 F-AKGF Croix du Sud , Maryse Bastié took off on December 12, 1936 with the F-ANXO, now named Jean Mermoz , in Paris- Orly and flew until 19 to Dakar. There, the mechanic Lendroit that was flown along provided the aircraft with a large tank in the cabin. On December 30, 1936, Maryse Bastié set off for Natal alone and without radio equipment, which she achieved in the absolute record time of 12 hours 5 minutes. Over the distance of 3,173 km reached an average speed of 264 km / h. Bastie flew to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, where the machine was given to the French Air Force Attaché. She returned to France as a passenger by air with the Air France mail line and crossed the South Atlantic on February 2, 1937 on board a four-engine Farman F.220 under Henri Guillaumet and Henri Delaunay.

In July / August 1937 the Frenchwoman again made a flight with her friend Suzanne Tillier in the Caudron Simoun C.635 F-AQAY via Königsberg to the Soviet Union as far as Kazan and Irkutsk and Bucharest . Presumably the French wanted to win the Soviets for the approval of a direct flight to Japan via Siberia; Maryse Bastié received an award in Bucharest.

Record flights by Maryse Hilsz

The well-known French aviator Maryse Hilsz also made successful long-haul flights with a Simoun . On December 19, 1937, she started in Istres to improve the long-distance world record for women, which Amelia Earhart held with 3939 km. She used the Caudron Simoun C.635M / 620 F-AQDY, which was powered by a more economical 180 hp Renault Bengali 6. Due to technical problems Hilsz had to land in Alexandria and give up the original destination. She continued the flight from there with stopovers to Saigon , which she reached on December 23 in 92 hours 31 minutes from France and thus undercut the previous course record of André Japy with a Caudron Aiglon by six hours. On the return flight, Maryse Hilsz had to make an emergency landing in the desert near Jask / Iran and was lost for 48 hours. With the machine mentioned, Maryse Hilsz could on 19./30. December 1938 set another long-distance record for light aircraft with 3230 km from Istres to Port Étienne .

More users

France

In addition to the individual civilian users, Air Bleu , founded in 1935, took over twelve Caudron Simoun types C.630 and C.635 with which it set up four (last eight) airmail lines within France. Founders of this company were Didier Daurat and Beppo di Massimi from the former Aeropostale. French private companies were the donors. The machines left Le Bourget in the morning to return from the French provinces in the evening. Occasionally they also took passengers. On December 4, 1935, the company lost its first machine with the F-ARNK near Tours ; the pilot Tessier was killed in the accident. In the summer of 1936, the company stopped its service again due to the lack of economic success. It was not until July 1937 that the company, now under state control, took service. The private donors only held 24% of the shares, Air France 24% and the state 52%. They reopened three lines to Bordeaux and Pau , Toulouse and Perpignan and to Clermont-Ferrand , Lyon and Grenoble . Eight pilots and eleven Simoun as well as a twin-engine Caudron C.440 Goeland served the lines, which were successful from the start. The desire to fly at night prevented the procurement of more Simoun who could not get the necessary equipment.

Five more, red-painted Simouns received the Escadrille Ministerielle for flights from the French government. In Madagascar, too, three Caudron Simoun were used for the postal service, one of which crashed in 1939, with the pilot Jacques Ringel dying.

Well-known French pilots, such as Bastié and Hilsz, were temporarily made available to machines from the military orders that had been delivered since 1936. The series aircraft for the military orders were partly equipped with double controls and used as three-seat training aircraft by the Armée de l'air and the Aéronavale . Even after the capitulation of France, the French air force kept a number of Simoun as liaison aircraft in France and the colonies. French aviators used these machines several times to escape to the Free French Armed Forces .

At the end of the war in 1945 only a small number of usable Caudron Simoun were left . The last machines of the Armée de l'air were segregated in Morocco in 1949; In February 1950, the Aéronautique navale also put its last Simoun out of service with the 56S squadron . Few of the former military planes were still used as sport aircraft. In 2002 the last airworthy machine at the time crashed in France (sv).

Belgium

Before the Second World War, individual machines went to sports pilots from other nations. As early as 1936, two Caudron Simoun C.630s were entered in the Belgian civil register, and shortly before the surrender in 1940, the Belgian Air Force had four machines of the type from the confiscation of private planes. At the end of June 1940, the Belgian aviators Alexis Jottard and Jean Offenberg stole two Caudron Simouns and flew via Corsica to Philippeville , Algeria, and to Oujda , Morocco , where the Belgian Air Force ran a flight school. French pilots also used Simoun s to flee across the Mediterranean.

United States

The United States Navy acquired a Caudron Simoun for the US Naval Air Attache in Paris. James Marshall Shoemaker (1895–1983) was a Naval Attache for the US embassies in Paris, Madrid and Rome. The C.635 n ° 7089, stationed in Villacoublay, flew as USN 0725 and was registered as F-ANXL in 1936. It was confiscated by the French during the war.

Great Britain

Several Simoun came to the British Isles by fleeing to Great Britain and because of their mission . After France surrendered, the British confiscated these machines and more were used by the Royal Air Force during the war . Of the squadrons, the No. 267 Squadron RAF brought a Caudron Simoun into North Africa, which came from stocks captured in Syria.

German Empire

When the Germans occupied the zone of France under the Vichy regime , which remained unoccupied after the campaign in the west, in November 1942, 103 Caudron Simoun fell into their hands. The Luftwaffe took over 65 aircraft as training and liaison aircraft . Others were sold to other countries (Hungary, Sweden).

Hungary

In 1943, six Caudron Simoun from German booty were sold to the Hungarian Air Force , all of which were lost in 1944 at the latest.

Sweden

In 1942/43 at least four Caudron Simoun from the German prey stocks, which were registered in the civil register and served as mail planes and as target tugs, went to Sweden . One machine crashed in 1943, killing two people.

Technical specifications

Three-sided view of Caudron, c. 635
Parameter Caudron C. 630 Caudron C. 635
First flight July 11, 1933 January 17, 1935
built 20th 46
crew 1-2
Passengers 2-3
length 8.70 m
span 10.40 m
height 2.15 m
Wing area 16 m²
Empty mass 810 kg 855 kg
Takeoff mass 1250 kg 1330 kg
Cruising speed 270 km / h 280 km / h
Top speed 300 km / h 310 km / h
Service ceiling 6000 m 7300 m
Range 950 km 1125 km
Engine a Renault Bengali 6Q-07 a Renault 6Q-01 / -09
power 180 PS (approx. 130 kW) 220 PS (approx. 160 kW)

literature

  • Enzo Angelucci, Paolo Matricardi: World Aircraft Commercial aircraft 1935-1960, Europa Verlag 1978, p. 187
  • Gérard Collot, Robert Espérou, Alain Cornu: La poste aérienne Francaise. Deuxième partie. Icare N ° 177, Pantin, 2001, pp. 50, 68-72.
  • wv: La poste aérienne Francaise. Trisième partie. Icare N ° 179, Pantin, 2002, p. 129f.
  • Carlo Demand: The great Atlantic flights from 1919 to the present day. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-87943-909-5 .
  • Gérard Bousquet: Les Paquebots Volants - Les hydravions transocéaniques francais , éditions Larivière, 2006, ISBN 2-914205-00-7 .
  • Joseph Kessel: Mermoz. Schwarzwald-Verlag, 1948.
  • Jean Romeyer: L'Aviation Civile Francaise , J. de Gigord, Paris 1938

Web links

Commons : Caudron Simoun  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Caudron C. 635 Simoun n ° 8519.428 F-ANRO
  2. ↑ Report relatif à l'accident survenu le 6 septembre 2002 sur l'aérodrome de Roanne (42) au Caudron C 635 immatriculé F-AZAM ( Memento of 23 September 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Farman F-199 ALHG
  4. ↑ F-ANRY crash with pictures ( memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Crash of the F-ANXK with pictures ( memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ French Flyers hurt in Japan UP May 26, 1937
  7. ^ Demand: Atlantic flights , pp. 44, 196
  8. ^ Demand, pp. 50, 196
  9. ↑ Demand, p. 196
  10. ^ Demand, pp. 51, 196.
  11. ↑ Demand, pp. 67, 197.
  12. ^ Demand, pp. 66, 197
  13. ↑ Women's endurance world record flight on July 28, 1928 over Le Bourget in a ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Caudron 107 high-decker with 26 hours 47.5 minutes in the air.
  14. ^ Bousquet: Les Paquebots Volants , p. 255
  15. ↑ Demand, pp. 72, 198
  16. ↑ 12353 C 1st category 1937–1949 (Singleseat - engine 6.5 - 9l (Light Landplane))
  17. ↑ Crash of the F-ARNK ( memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  18. ↑ Jean Pierre et al. Christine Pénette: Le livre d'or de l'aviation Malgache , p. 22.
  19. ↑ Crash of a Caudron C.635 Simoun in Morondava: 1 killed ( Memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  20. ↑ The US Navy Simoun
  21. ↑ Caudron Simoun - impressed into service with the RAF ( Memento from April 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  22. ↑ Ketley, Barry, and Rolfe, Mark. Luftwaffe Fledglings 1935–1945: Luftwaffe Training Units and their Aircraft (Aldershot, GB: Hikoki Publications, 1996), p. 11.
  23. ^ Roba: Foreign Planes in the Service of the Luftwaffe (Casemate Publishers, 2009), p. 65.
  24. ↑ Crash of a Caudron C.635 Simoun into the Vättern Lake: 2 killed ( Memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  25. ^ Caudron C. 630 Simoun
  26. ↑ C. 635 Simoun