Henri Guillaumet
See also: Guillaumet
Henri Guillaumet (May 25th 1902 with Bouy , close to Châlons-in-Champagne - November 27th 1940 in the Mediterranean) was a Aviateur French.
He was a pioneer of French aviation in the the Andes, the Atlantique Southern then the Northern Atlantique, contributed to open many news roads and probably regarded as the best pilot of the time. “I did not know any of larger” will say of him Didier Daurat, owner of the Aéropostale.
The shipwrecked man of snows
Friday June 13rd 1930, while crossing the the Andes for the 92e time for the Air-mail , it is crushed with its Potez 25 with the Laguna Diamante because of the bad weather. It goes during one week, passing three collars. It misses several times giving up but persists while thinking of his Noëlle wife. It reaches a village at the end of one week. The exploit which the inhabitants of the valleys summarize perfectly: “ impossible Es ”, built the legend of this discrete man in the middle of the stars of the Air-mail .
With Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, come to seek it, he declares: “What I did, I swear it to you, no animal would not have done it”.
Model of the airline pilots, Henri Guillaumet will cross 193 times Cordillières of the Andes and will make 12 crossings of studies of the North Atlantic between 1938 and 1939.
Last flight
The November 27th 1940, whereas it takes along new the High-Commissioner of France to Raising, Jean Chiappe in Syria, its four-engined plane Farman the Glassmaker is cut down by an Italian hunter above the the Mediterranean.
Catalog of films
In 1996, the Futuroscope pays to him homage in a film in IMAX 3D, produced by Jean-Jacques Annaud: Guillaumet, Wings of courage .
See too
- List of the pilots of Air-mail the