Paris (AFP)
A final shudder and the 5 and a half tons of metal land gently on the Rio Potengi. On May 12 and 13, 1930, in 9 hours and a handful of minutes, Jean Mermoz completed the first commercial air crossing of the South Atlantic, joining the ranks of the legendary figures of Aéropostale.
It is on board the Laté 28-3 seaplane, baptized "Comte de la Vaulx", that the French aviator, assisted by the navigator Jean Dabry and the radio Léopold Gimié, swallows the 3,200 kilometers separating Saint-Louis from Senegal from Natal (Brazil), with 130 kilos of mail on board.
A former Air Force pilot eager for adventure, Mermoz joined in 1924 the company founded by the industrialist Pierre-Georges Latécoère. The latter has established regular postal air links between France, Spain, Morocco and Senegal, which he dreams of extending to South America.
In 1930, Mermoz - nicknamed "the Archangel" - already had several exploits to his credit for the Aéropostale, such as the first night flights between Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, and the crossing of the perilous Andes mountain range. But between Africa and South America, the mail remains transported by boat, in four days.
To the great exasperation of the pilots, French regulations then prohibited commercial overflight of the Atlantic by plane, for safety reasons. It is therefore necessary to transform the Latécoère-28 into a seaplane, by providing it with reinforced floats and engines.
Mermoz passes his seaplane pilot's license and tests the aircraft by taking off and continuously landing on the Etang de Berre (south of France). As a final test, it broke the world record for duration and distance in a closed circuit seaplane.
- "Black horizon" -
Ultimate constraint, the crew must wait for the full moon to attempt the crossing. "In this flight which was to last one day and one night, the night had to be as clear as the day," wrote Joseph Kessel in "Mermoz".
On May 12, a large crowd attended the takeoff of the heavy seaplane painted in bright red, from a lagoon on the Senegal river, near Saint-Louis.
Two notices are posted on the route of the aircraft, to guide it with their transmitters or to rescue it in the event of forced ditching.
After several hours of a peaceful flight, some 150 meters above the ocean, the seaplane meets at nightfall the famous "doldrums", a formidable zone of intertropical convergence of the trade winds.
"The whole horizon was black, a sort of gigantic wall seemed to block our path," wrote Mermoz. "In the middle of this cyclone, a kind of tornado without wind, it was suffocating heat. We could not avoid grains of incredible violence, which gave off an even stronger heat than that of the steam baths. suddenly, without our being able to be suspicious, our cabin, from the front to the back, was bathed in water. We were flooded. "
The pilot sneaks his "Laté" in a corridor while flying 50 meters above the waves. The crossing of the equator is duly celebrated with "sandwich, bananas, and champagne".
- Oil failure -
On the morning of the 13th, just over 21 hours after his departure, Mermoz delicately placed the seaplane on the Rio Potengi, near Natal.
The mail is transferred to another device and continues on its way to Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile.
"Banquets, speeches, music, balls and galas", the three men are celebrated for two weeks in the capitals of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina.
The return is more laborious. Between June 8 and July 9, Mermoz made 52 takeoff attempts, thwarted by the winds. At the 53rd, he finally flies away.
But an oil failure 900 kilometers from the African coast forced him to land. The Aviso Phocée retrieves the mail, rescues the crew and tries to tow the seaplane, but the aircraft sinks.
Like other "land clearers" of his friends (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Henri Guillaumet ...), Mermoz will disappear at sea. On December 7, 1936, during his 24th crossing of the South Atlantic, this time with the "Croix du Sud" seaplane, the radio spits "Right rear engine coupons ..." and stops.
"The accident, for us, would be to die in a bed," said Mermoz.
Sources: biographies of Mermoz by historian Michel Faucheux and by Joseph Kessel, journal Icare, association "Mémoire de Mermoz", AFP.
© 2020 AFP