The new French fighter Rafale blasting off over Concorde.
The Champs d'Aviation
The Aéro Club's 100th Birthday Party Idea
By Richard Erickson
Paris Kiosque - October 1998 - Volume 5, Number 10
Copyright (c) 1998 Richard Erickson - used with permission
I was minding my own business in Spain last
month when I chanced to notice a small announcement in
the International Herald Tribune about the 'Champs d'Aviation' exhibition on
the Champs-Elysées.
Being a bit sunstroked, I read the thing
all wrong and imagined it was planned to take place
on the part of the avenue where all the people
and traffic are.
This seemed like such an unlikely
idea that I wrote a note about it by hand
and mailed it by regular post; to be included as
a coming event in one of the summer's 'Café' columns.
Since then I have learned several things. The reason for
the event is the celebration of the Aéro Club de
France's 100th anniversary.
This might seem to be a
ho-hum reason for parking a lot of aircraft on the
Champs-Elysées - between
the place de la Concorde and the Rond-Point,
where there's room for them - but the fact is,
aviation was invented in France.
Fokker's slightly wierd but effective
WWI fighter. 'Hang On, Snoopy!'
That's right. Just over two
hundred years ago, before the Révolution, several people in different
places decided it was time for man to fly.
One evening, Etienne Mongolfière was idly watching the smoke from
his fire going up the chimney, when it occurred to
him that the smoke was rising - which meant it
was lighter than air. This may seem to be an
obvious conclusion to you, but it was a revelation at
the time.
The next step was for Mongolfière to get
the idea that if the smoke could be captured in
some kind of container, the container might be able to
lift something. Mongolfière tried this out and it worked.
The steps taken from there to deep space probes and
giant jet aircraft hauling hundreds of people to Paris from
the other side of the earth have been quite a
few. Today we tend to take flying for granted, but
it is not so long ago that it was a
tremendous novelty.
When the Aéro Club de France was formed
in 1898, no winged airplanes had flown; only balloons. The
founders of the Aéro Club were pure dreamers, because it
was also the world's first aero club.
Imagine, if you
will, reading a newspaper in Pago-Pago in 1898, about the
formation of France's Aéro Club. It must have seemed like
a tremendous joke. But to Parisians at the time, it
probably seemed sensible; because every city, town and village had
its tinkerer
who was building something mysterious with wood and bicycle wheels
and wire and paper or fabric.
To match the US
Army's Piper, the Fleseler Storch. It could almost fly backwards
and it could land on a pfennig.
When man finally
took off for good, 11 years after the founding of
the club, the club issued the world's first pilot's licenses
to Orville and Wilbur Wright, Louis Blériot, and Alberto Santos-Dumont.
In America, the Wright brothers got the first fixed-wing, powered
aircraft off the ground on Thursday, 17. December 1903.
In Europe, Alberto Santos-Dumont, who had been flying around Paris
a lot with his own balloons, had the first airplane.
For a prize of 3000 francs, he flew about 125
metres at Bagatelle on 23. October 1906. Two weeks later
he flew 450 metres to win the Aéro Club's prize
for a flight of more than 100 metres.
While Europe
was electrified, almost no one was aware of the Wright's
flight in Ohio. In France, Blériot made five short flights
in 1907 before having a crash landing. Meanwhile, the Wrights
were getting competition from Glenn Curtiss, who flew his 'June
Bug' in public for more than a mile on 4.
July 1908.
On 8. August 1908, Wilbur Wright gave a
demonstration flight in France that outshone anything seen until then.
Blériot
conceded that the Wright machine was obviously superior - although
he was already planning his own monoplane.
At 04:35 on
Sunday, 25. July 1909, Louis Blériot pointed his model XI
plane at the channel and flew to England without a
compass in 37 minutes, to land near Dover Castle. There,
officials performed a customs inspection, but 120,000 people later flocked
to see the airplane in London.
The Aéro Club has
a sense of humor, as shown here with 'Tin Tin's'
famous rocket.
In those days, flight produced a tremendous 'wow'
effect and drew huge crowds to all sorts of aeronautical
shows and demonstrations. One sad note is the fact that
so many historical aircraft have completely disappeared - no examples
of the pre-WWII 'flying clippers' are left today.
Picking the
Champs-Elysées in the centre of Paris for an airplane show
is an idea about a farfetched as man's flying itself,
but here it is.
Coming out of the métro
at Clemenceau, on the right there is a replica of
Orly's tower and behind it a nose of an Airbus
A320, while to the left there is a whimsical wreck
of an 'Aeropostal Argentina' biplane and straight across the avenue
there are a pair of WWII fighters; a Navy F4U
Corsair and a Yak 11 with a very bright red
star on its side.
Museum pieces are the 1867 Albatros
of Jean-Marie Le Bris, the 1907 'Demoiselle' of Santos-Dumont and
an Bléirot XI, the oldest plane capable of flight in
the world.
Most of these are exposed, under temporary roofs,
but with only a guard-rail between them and the public.
Many look too well-painted and oil-free to be as old
as they are.
A fair number of the exhibits
are military aircraft and do not have the historical value
of the older models. Many of the helicopters tend to
look like they've emerged from science-fiction movies, but the new
Rafale at the place de la Concorde is a pretty
elegant looking airplane, even without a propeller.
As all of
the 50 exhibits are out in the open air, there
is no entry
charge. A fair number of people were looking
things over last Tuesday before the opening and today most
of the no-passage tapes are gone, so it is possible
to see and photograph the aircraft from most angles.
This
Corsair has a motor blanket, so I guess its engine
is ready to go.
The exhibition's catalogue costs 45 francs
and it contains photos of most of the aircraft displayed.
A drawing is substituted for the very real Catalina flying
boat, also at Concorde, on loan from the 'Canadian Air
Legend' company.
Also near Concorde, there is a tent with
video displays in one part and an aircraft restoration atelier
at the further end.
I find it a bit strange
to see all the ordinary people here, including moms with
babies in strollers. I can't tell whether it is because
it is a free show or because toddlers are fond
of old flying machines.
For air fans, I regret not
being able to run more photos. Most of the aircraft
shown with this article, and elsewhere in this issue, are
on year-round display in the Paris area - and this
applies as well to all of the aircraft not pictured
here.
For hard-core air fans, next weekend there will be
a flying show at the airfield at Pontoise-Cormeilles, billed as
'Avions de Légende.' Flights will be every 20 minutes and
these will include a Spitfire, a Corsair, a P51 Mustang,
a B17 and a Yak 11 - which is supposed
to be 'built like a tank.'
Entry at the
site is 90 francs for adults and 35 francs for
those under 12. Helicopter rides are offered for 195 francs.
The show is open from 9:00 to 19:00 each day.
Info. Tel.: 01 47 05 47 05.
Richard Erickson, living in Paris for the last twenty years, has been putting
Paris online as long as anyone. More of his writings can be found in
Metropole Paris
where this article first appeared.
He can be contacted via
erickso@world-net.sct.fr.
