Adolphe Pégoud

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Adolphe Pégoud

Célestin Adolphe Pégoud (born  June 13, 1889 in Montferrat , Département Isère , †  August 31, 1915 in Petit-Croix , Territoire de Belfort ) was a French aviation pioneer .

He succeeded as the second pilot after Pyotr Nesterov , a complete loop ( looping fly). It is unclear whether he knew about Nesterov's looping or whether he invented it a second time independently. During the First World War he served as a fighter pilot. He was the first pilot to as for his aerial victories flying ace was called.

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Pégoud came from a farming family. Military service offered a farm boy the chance to escape field work and see something of the outside world. He therefore enlisted in the cavalry on August 8, 1907 for 5 years. First he served with the 5th Regiment of the Chasseurs d'Afrique . After his return he was transferred to the 2nd Hussar Regiment in Gray ( Haute-Saône ), where the pilot's officer Louis Carlin gave him his first flight lessons.

Historic postcard from 1913

After the end of his service in the spring of 1913, he acquired his pilot's license and was hired by Louis Blériot as a test pilot . On August 19, 1913, he became the first pilot in the history of aviation to successfully parachute from an airplane that was sacrificed for this purpose. A little later he became known all over Europe because he managed to fly a complete loop - a loop. From then on, a loop was an integral part of Pégoud's repertoire and made him one of the first star pilots. Hundreds of thousands of spectators flocked to his spectacular flight event in October 1913 at the Johannisthal airfield in Berlin.

Although the Russian military pilot Nesterow had already made a first loop a few weeks before Pégoud, it was long believed in the West that Célestin Adolphe Pégoud had flown the first loop. That's because Pégoud was a popular show pilot while Nesterov was largely unknown. The looping of Nesterow is clearly documented because he was disciplined by his superior for his feat and the military files have outlasted this disciplinary punishment.

With the beginning of the First World War, Pégoud was drafted and initially used in the defense of Paris. In April 1915 he was transferred to Reims. He achieved six aerial victories, for which he received several awards and was mentioned in daily orders of the French army. He was killed on August 31, 1915 when he was shot down near Petit-Croix near Belfort .

Awards

Web links

Commons : Adolphe Pégoud  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Catillon, Marcel: Mémorial aéronautique: qui était qui? . Paris: Nouvelles éditions latines, 1997. - ISBN 2-7233-0529-5 . P. 147.
  2. Adlershof Stories Volume 1 ( Memento of the original from August 24, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.2 MB) p. 16 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.adlershof.de