René Fonck

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René Fonck

René Fonck (born March 27, 1894 in Saulcy-sur-Meurthe , Département Vosges , † June 18, 1953 in Paris ) was a French fighter pilot . With 75 victories in the air, he was the most successful allied fighter pilot of the First World War .

Childhood and youth

Fonck was born in the small village of Saulcy-sur-Meurthe in the Vosges Mountains . As a technician, he was enthusiastic about aviation even before the beginning of World War I and took flying lessons.

First World War

On August 22, 1914, Fonck was recalled from his flight school in Dijon and drafted into the 11 e régiment du génie in Épinal , a pioneer regiment , in which he served until the spring of 1915. On February 15, 1915, he finally succeeded in being transferred to the Aéronautique Militaire , and on April 1, he began training as a military pilot at the Caudron flight school in St. Cyr .

He then came to the Escadrille C 47 in Corcieux , which was equipped with Caudron aircraft and carried out reconnaissance missions. On May 25, 1916, his observer was fatally hit by an exploding flak bullet, a fate that Fonck almost met himself. Fonck was commended several times in daily orders for his good reconnaissance results. He scored his first kill in July 1916. During a reconnaissance flight on August 6, 1916, Fonck maneuvered a German Rumpler C.III reconnaissance aircraft on the control stick of a Caudron G.IV so skillfully that he landed on the French side without firing a shot and was awarded the Médaille militaire .

After this and other successes, Fonck came on April 15, 1917 to the Escadrille p. 103, a squadron of the hunting group "The Storks" (fr. Escadrille des Cigognes ), which consists of the Escadrilles p P. 103 existed. His new unit was equipped with SPAD S.VII aircraft. This biplane was introduced in early 1916 and was considered one of the best fighters in the French Air Force because of its robustness and speed, around 190 km / h. With this aircraft, Fonck achieved another five aerial victories in May; by the end of 1917 his hit list had grown to 19. He was promoted to officer and made Knight of the Legion of Honor .

He often flew alone and scored numerous aerial victories . René Fonck developed into a master of surprise attacks. In nosedive coming from above, he brought his opponents often at point-blank range with a few shots to the track, where he deliberately took the pilots to target. Due to his robust health, he did not seem to mind any stress in battle or long flights at high altitude. Known for his cold-bloodedness, Fonck even tried to apply mathematical principles in aerial combat and was far superior to his comrades in terms of technical understanding.

In addition to the SPAD S.VII , Fonck also flew the SPAD S.XIII in a special version which, in addition to the built-in Vickers MG, had a 37 mm Puteaux cannon, which was in the block of the Hispano-Suiza V-8 in-line engine between the cylinders built in as a moteur-canon shot through the hub of the propeller . With this aircraft, Fonck destroyed 11 enemy aircraft.

On May 9th and September 26th, 1918, he succeeded in shooting down six enemy aircraft, which was unique at the time. Because of his achievements, he was awarded the Croix de guerre that same month .

Although René Fonck became the most successful Allied fighter pilot in World War I with 75 confirmed and 52 unconfirmed victories , he always remained in the shadow of the legendary French fighter pilot Georges Guynemer ; obviously his distant character prevented it from becoming more popular. Fonck was considered a selfish show-off and was often a nuisance to his comrades. In the air, however, he was a superior and astute fighter whose skill helped him survive the war without a single injury.

René Fonck wore a number of high war awards, including the highest being the Croix de guerre with 28 palm trees and one star. He was appointed commander of the Legion of Honor after the war .

Between the wars

At the victory parade on July 14, 1919, René Fonck carried the flag of the air force. Later, like his comrade Alfred Heurteaux , Fonck became politically active: As a member of the national “ Chambre Bleu Horizon ” (“horizon blue” was the uniform color of the French army , analogous to the “field gray” of the German) and deputy, he represented the Vosges department from 1919 to 1919 1924. He wrote his memoirs and published them as the book Mes combats (My struggles). He also laid down his view of military and civil aviation in the book L'aviation et la sécurité française (Aviation and the security of France).

In his civil career after 1918 he was employed by the Ministry of Aviation. On official missions, Fonck has been to North Africa, Latin America, Central Europe and the USA. It was there in 1925 that he came into contact with the Americans' plan to cross the Atlantic by direct flight by plane. He convinced the aircraft engineer Igor Iwanowitsch Sikorski , who had emigrated from Russia to the USA , to implement various technical improvements to his three-engine Sikorsky S-35, which was intended for the Atlantic flight . When Fonck started the overloaded machine on September 21, 1926 with the four-person crew Fonck-Curtin-Clavier-Islamoff, its chassis collapsed. Two crew members were killed in this accident. So Lindbergh finally succeeded in winning the $ 25,000 prize donated by entrepreneur Raymond Orteig for his Atlantic crossing.

During the occupation

At the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, Fonck was reactivated and inspector of the fighter pilots of the Armée de l'air . After the defeat in June 1940 , Marshal Pétain , the "Hero of Verdun", offered the Colonel of the Air Force to join the Vichy regime without an official position . Fonck, who, as a war veteran and fighter pilot, had already made the acquaintance of Hermann Göring from pre-war times, was supposed to lead a squadron of 200 pilots to attack Great Britain , as Prime Minister Pierre Laval is said to have even offered .

Fonck eventually fell out of favor with Marshal Pétain and distanced himself from the Nazi collaborators of the Vichy regime. The American magazine Life published in its August 1942 issue a list of French "traitors" who were to be called to account after the victory of the Allies, on which René Fonck, Sacha Guitry , Maurice Chevalier and other celebrities were named.

In the foreword to André Maroselli's book, Le sabotage de notre aviation, cause principale de notre défaite (The sabotage of our air force as the main reason for our defeat), published in 1941 , Fonck noted the French aviators who fell in 1940, remembering that the defense of France was in spite of the bravery of the French Aviators failed because of their inadequate material equipment.

Although Fonck had now shown a critical stance towards Pierre Laval and advocated members of the Resistance , he was imprisoned there after the liberation of Paris in September 1944 and was not released until the end of 1944, following the intervention of Police Chief Edgard Pisani . On September 28, 1948, he was confirmed in writing that he had fought against the German occupation as a secret member of the Resistance. However, his behavior during the war remains unclear.

Grave of René Fonck

post war period

After the war Fonck lived in Paris , but often visited his company "France Engrais" in Lorraine .

He also held a political office as a member of parliament. During the Rif War, Fonck was asked by Abd el-Krim , who was fighting against Spain, to help set up an air force for the Rifkabylen. However, Fonck refused. He died on June 18, 1953 at the age of 59 in his apartment on rue du Cirque, Paris 8 ° . He left his wife Irène Brillant and two children, Edmond and Anne-Marie, and rests in the Saulcy-sur-Meurthe cemetery .

The Saint-Dié - Remomeix airfield was christened Aérodrome René-Fonck on June 21, 2009 .

Quotes

  • "I aim my balls as if I were placing them there with my hand."
  • "I prefer to fly alone ... then all alone I do the daring little things that I enjoy ..."

Fonts

  • René Fonck: Mes combats. Préface du Maréchal Foch . Editions Flammarion, Paris 1920.
  • René Fonck: L'Aviation et la sécurité française. Brossard, Paris 1924.

literature

Web links

Commons : René Fonck  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Over the Front , N. Franks & F. Bailey, Grub Street, 1992
  2. ↑ S-35 . Time. August 23, 1926. Retrieved April 14, 2007.
  3. ↑ Dirk Sasse: French, British and Germans in the Rif War, 1921–1926 , Munich, 2006, p. 198
  4. ^ Translated from The Aerodrome , accessed January 19, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Fonck, René
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fonck, Rene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French officer and fighter pilot
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Saulcy-sur-Meurthe
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1953
Place of death Paris