Henri Frochot

Henri Frochot , actually Joseph Emmanuel Henri Frochot (born December 25, 1871 in Troyes , Aube department , † August 12, 1929 in Dole , Jura department ) was a French admiral .

Life

Frochot was the middle (of three) sons of the forest manager Alexis-Thérèse Frochot and his wife Mathilde Dufour d'Astafort. The politician Nicolas Frochot was an ancestor of the family.

At the age of 17, Frochot joined the French Navy in 1888 after spending a few years at the École navale in Lanvéoc ( Finistère ). With effect from October 5, 1891 he was transferred to the battleship "La Triomphante" and two years later he was transferred to the gunboat "Aspic", on which Frochot took part in the Franco-Siamese war .

A year later Frochot was on the "Hirondelle" off Tunisia in 1894 and after another promotion he commanded a torpedo boat off Brest (Finistère department) in 1896 . In 1898 Frochot was transferred as second officer to the ship "La Surprise", on which he took part in the siege of Guangzhou on the Leizhou Peninsula . Further operations on the Chinese coast followed during the Boxer Rebellion .

With effect from June 29, 1900 Frochot was appointed "lieutenant de vaisseau" and a year later was transferred to Cherbourg ( department of Manche ) as commander of a torpedo boat . On January 1, 1903, Frochot came as an officer on the cruiser "Duguay-Troui" under Captain Lucien-Joseph Berryer . Through his intercession, Frochot was entrusted with a mission in the spring of 1904 that took him to the Naval Academy in Fiume . Modern torpedoes were to be tested in cooperation with the Whitehead shipyard .

February 11, 1905 Frochot married a daughter of his friend and superior Lucien-Joseph Berryer. With Caroline Berryer (1884–1972) he had two daughters and two sons.

After further promotion, Frochot was given command of the submarine "Espadon" in 1906 and, two years later, a teaching position at the École supérieure de la Marine . On March 26, 1910, he was given command of the submarine "Archimède" and again stationed in Cherbourg. In 1912 he was transferred to the "Justice" and at the same time as an aide-de-camp in the general staff.

On January 12, 1914, Frochot patrolled the Mediterranean Sea with the battleship “Diderot” and helped evacuate parts of the Serbian army on the Salonika Front (→ First World War ) . Under President Raymond Poincaré , Frochot was sent to Rome in 1918 as a marine attaché . And a little later he accompanied Admiral Fernand-Jean de Bon to a politico-military conference in Washington, DC , at which France , Great Britain , Italy , Japan and the USA discussed naval issues.

In 1922 Frochot was appointed by the Marshal of France , Ferdinand Foch , to teach at the Center des hautes études militaires military school in Paris . On April 9, 1923 he was appointed rear admiral and in September of the same year he sailed aboard the battleship “Jules Ferry” to Shanghai and came back to Brest in November two years later.

From July 1926 Frochot began to successfully build up an aircraft squadron for the Navy. With effect from January 4, 1927 Frochot was appointed Vice-Admiral and as such he undertook a test flight on April 26, 1928 with the flying boat " Latham 47 ". Together with the pilots René Guilbaud and Albert de Cuverville, they successfully flew from Caudebec-en-Caux ( Département Seine-Maritime ) to Bizerte ( Tunisia ). In the same year Frochot was promoted to Vice Admiral and appointed to the Conseil supérieur de la marine .

Henri Frochot died on August 12, 1929 in Dole (Jura), where he found his final resting place.

Honors

• July 14, 1916 Officer of the Legion of Honor
• Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor
• Knight Order of St. Mauritius and Lazarus
• Order of the Crown of Italy
• Order of the Bath

literature

• Volkmar Bueb: The “young school” of the French Navy . Boldt Verlag, Boppard 1971, ISBN 3-7646-1552-4 .
• Günther Fuchs: The French colonial empire . Verlag Das Europäische Buch, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-88436-188-0 .
• Wilhelm Treue: History of the French Navy . Verlag Mittler, Herford 1982, ISBN 3-8132-0151-1 .