FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1949
1949 - 1725.PDF
FLIGHT, 13 October, 1949 The cleverly constructed and popular Norecrin. THE FRENCH AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY . . . numbers will be built under licence or purchased abroad. Aircraft requirements will be estimated quantitatively and the depreciation of the machines taken into account, so that the tonnage of airframes to be built annually can be determined. From this figure, man-power and plant requirements can be estimated. Plants at present at the disposal of the industry were inspected and it was decided (a) to limit the number of State-owned airframe-production companies to three, and (b) to release for other production purposes certain poorly equipped factories which represent an unnecessary handi- cap on an industry already too far expanded for the new production programme. Finally, to palliate the effects of the cuts made in the preceding years the Secretary of State for Air and the Defence Minister have caused a Bill to be prepared based on a five-year plan of reconstruction. When the Assembly reopens, this Bill will be laid before it. If it is adopted it will ensure for aeronautical development that measure of continuity which it has up to the present lacked. The structure of the industry before and after reorganiza- tion is summarized in Table II. Weeding-out of a certain number of factories judged to be inadequately utilized, or inconveniently situated geo- graphically, will obviously be accompanied by a diminu- tion in the number of personnel necessary both for manage- TABLE fit : PRINCIPAL PRIVATELY OWNED FACTORIES Company Airframes:— Ateliers d'aviation Louis Breguet Societe M. Dassault Societe de Construction Aeronavale (S.C.A.N.) Castel Mauboussin Ste Morane et Saulnier S.I.P.A. S.E.C.A.N. •'- '•'- -•Engines;— Hispano-Suiza Cie Electro-Mechanique (S.O.C.E.M.A.) Turbomeca Societ* des Moteurs Potez Society Mathis Factories " Toulouse, Villacoublay, Anglec St. Cloud Tale nee La Rochelle Boulogne, Aire-sur-Adour Puteaux Ossun Suresnes Le Havre Colombes Le Bourge: Bordes(Pau) Courbevote Present Work Breguet 761, Breguet 890/892, HelicopterG II.E M.D.3I5,* M.D.45O S.C.A.N. 20 and 30 CM. 100 gliders M.S.472/475 S.I.P.A.II S.U.C. 10 Courlis Nene turbojet Research and develop- ment, TG.A I Bis and TGAR 1008 jet units Development of light- weight and other gas turbines Small piston-engines Small piston-engines An amphibian a I'Americaine—the S.C.A.N. 30. * Certain mass-production parts of the M.D.3I5 are made in the national factories. D 1 A:.'-v-;r A long-range naval fighter-bomber the S.O.8000. ment and for production. The total number of 23,000 workpeople occupied in the national airframe production plants will drop to between 16,000 and 17,000. After the Argenteuil works, which are already mainly occupied with reconversion work, are returned to the civil sector the number of employees of S.N.E.C.M.A. will be reduced to about 7,500. To the three nationalized plants should be added the privately owned factories, corresponding approximately to one-quarter of the volume of the nationalized section of the industry, at least in airframe production. Table III gives brief details of the factories in private ownership. The aircraft equipment industry is almost entirely privately owned. As the companies received orders only for the supply of limited numbers of their products they were obliged to turn their attention to the manufacture of other more lucrative articles and showed reluctance to invest the large sums necessary for making high-class aircraft equipment. Therefore a State company for manu- facture of this equipment has been created with the object of carrying out design and production of the equipment indispensable for the aircraft now in production. With regard to undercarriages, the old-established firm of Messier resumed its activities on the cessation of hostilities and supplies the equipment for more than 70 per cent of the aircraft built in France. In addition to the different production plants every com- pany naturally has its own test department and there are also central research and test establishments. After the flight tests carried out by the manufacturers, for the most part from their own airfields, new models are moved to the Centre d'Essais en Vol at Bretigny-sur-Orge, where they are handled by State test-pilots and technicians and possible modifications are studied The Air Force,
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
