Joseph Le Brix

Joseph Le Brix (center) in 1931

Joseph Marie Le Brix (born February 22, 1899 in Baden , Morbihan Department (France), † September 12, 1931 at Ufa ( Soviet Union )) was a French military pilot and aviation pioneer .

Early career

Le Brix entered the École Navale , the naval officer school in Brest , on April 2, 1918 . He completed his basic nautical training on the armored cruiser training ship Jeanne d'Arc and after graduating from naval school he served on the armored cruiser Jules Michelet . He then switched to naval aviation, became an observer and navigator in September 1924 , and acquired a pilot's license in March 1925. From August 1925, he served with the Naval Air Squadron in 5.b.2 Rifkrieg in Morocco , where the 1923 proclaimed Rif Republic of Riffs was destroyed by a massive French military intervention. With a Farman F.60 "Goliath" he mainly flew reconnaissance flights in southern Morocco. He used maritime navigation techniques that were not yet widely used in aviation.

Flight around the world

On October 10, 1927, Corvette Captain (Capitaine de corvette) Le Brix, as navigator and co-pilot of Dieudonné Costes , began a flight around the world, which the two successfully completed with their arrival in Paris on April 14, 1928. Only the Pacific was crossed by ship from San Francisco to Tokyo . They first flew on their Breguet 19 GR "Nungesser-Coli" biplane on 10/11. October to Saint-Louis in Senegal . On 14./15. In October they made the first non-stop flight across the South Atlantic , from Saint-Louis to Natal . The two of them visited every country in South America before flying to the USA via Panama and Mexico . They reached Washington on February 6, 1928 . There they were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross on February 28, 1928 . After flying across the United States, they traveled from San Francisco to Tokyo by ship. Your flight then continued via Japan , Indochina , India , Syria and Greece . On April 14, 1928, after a total of 187 days, 57,410 kilometers flown, 43 stopovers and 338 flight hours, they reached Le Bourget near Paris again, where they were enthusiastically welcomed.

An undesirable side effect of their trip was that their friendship was broken. In Washington, when the French ambassador was received, there was almost a fight between them. After arriving in Le Bourget, Le Brix is ​​said to have said sharply: "At last I am no longer the servant of Costes."

Le Brix became a teacher at the flight school of the Naval Academy in Brest, where he trained future pilots of the naval aviation and the air force .

France-Saigon long-haul flight test

The enmity between Le Brix and Costes was very evident in February 1929, when each of the two wanted to be the first to fly from Paris to Saigon in French Indochina in less than five stages. Le Brix and his partner Antoine Paillard started in Istres near Marseille at the end of February and were already approaching Tunis before Costes was notified in Le Bourget. Although the engine of his machine had not yet been finally stopped, the furious Costes insisted on an immediate start. Although he was able to get the machine into the air with some difficulty, the engine failed after a short time. Costes survived falling into the trees of a forest near Paris. Le Brix, Paillard and their mechanic Camille Jousse flew about 11,220 km to Burma in their Bernard 197 GR , but then had to make an emergency landing in a rice field and cancel the operation. A second attempt on the Potez 34 , begun on December 16, 1929 , with Maurice Rossi as co-pilot, also failed; after 72 hours and 10,500 km they had to give up their machine on December 22nd, 1929 at night due to bad weather over the rainforest of Burma and rescue themselves by parachute.

Engine flight world records

From June 7th to 10th, 1931, Le Brix set a new distance world record on a circuit with the Dewoitine chief pilot Marcel Doret and the mechanic René Mesmin on the newly developed Dewoitine D.33 “Trait-d'Union” when they covered 10,372 km non-stop at Istres in 70 hours. In doing so, they set eight more circuit records, including the one for flight duration and average speed.

Long-haul flight test Paris-Tokyo

Then the three tried the first non-stop flight from Paris to Tokyo with the “Trait-d'Union”. They started on July 12, 1931 in Le Bourget and reached close to Lake Baikal in Siberia . Her engine froze there. Le Brix and Mesmin jumped off with their parachutes , and Doret lowered the machine into the treetops in a forest. The “Trait-d'Union” was a total loss, but the three planes were unharmed.

death

On September 11, 1931, they started a new attempt with the “Trait-d'Union II”, the second Dewoitine 33. On the morning of September 12th, while flying over the Urals near Ufa , their engine failed again and they had to give up the plane. This time Doret jumped first. It is believed that Mesmin had difficulty with his parachute and Le Brix did not want to leave his friend alone. The two were killed in the plane crash and the subsequent fire.

Le Brix was honored with a state funeral in the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral and then buried in his birthplace Baden (Morbihan).

Honors

• In January 1932, Lucien Bossoutrot and Maurice Rossi named their world record test aircraft Blériot 110 with the name “Joseph Le Brix”.
• The Rennes airport is named after him.
• In his birthplace, Baden, there is a museum dedicated to him and the Farkas, who are enthusiastic about porcelain and mechanical toys.
• A school in Baden is named after him.
• There is a plaque for him on the facade of the Collège Jules Simon in Vannes , where he was a student .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The machine was named in honor of the two French pilots Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli , who were lost on May 8, 1927 while trying to cross the Atlantic from Paris to New York .
2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ 342 flight hours are also mentioned.
4. ↑ ^{a b} AERONAUTICS: Flights of the Week: March 4, 1929
5. ↑ The machine, a single copy, was a total loss. Rossi was injured while jumping because his parachute tore; he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor . ( http://www.aviafrance.com/potez-34-hispano-aviation-france-9748.htm )
6. ↑ Les avions de record français (1928-1932) (PDF file; 2.00 MB)
7. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from July 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  

literature

• René Chambe: Histoire de l'Aviation. Flammarion, Paris, 1980
• Thierry Le Roy: Les Bretons et l'aéronautique des origines à 1939. PUR, Rennes, 2002
• Dieudonné Costes & Joseph Le Brix: Notre tour de la terre. Librairie Hachette, 1928
• José Le Bouché: Le destin de Joseph-Marie Le Brix. Nouvelle librairie française, 1932

Web links

• http://www.bretagne-aviation.fr/Aviateurs/Joseph_le_brix.htm
• http://www.vannes.aeroport.fr/uk/about-us/history.php
• Contemporary report on the 23-24 March 1931 set world records by Marcel Doret and Joseph Le Brix in Istres