Louis Charles Breguet (French pronunciation:[lwiʃaʁlbʁeɡɛ]; 2 January 1880 inParis – 4 May 1955 inSaint-Germain-en-Laye) was a Frenchaircraft designer and builder, one of the earlyaviation pioneers.
Louis Charles Breguet was the grandson ofLouis Clément François Breguet, and great-great-grandson of the famous horologistAbraham-Louis Breguet.
In 1902 Louis married Nelly Girardet, the daughter of painterEugène Girardet. They had five children together.
In 1903, he graduated fromÉcole supérieure d'électricité, which was the top electrical engineering school in France.
In 1905, with his brother Jacques, and under the guidance ofCharles Richet, he began work ona gyroplane (the forerunner of thehelicopter) with flexible wings. On 29 September 1907, at his workshop atLa Brayelle, it achieved the first ascent of a vertical-flight aircraft with a pilot, albeit only to a height of 0.6 metres (2.0 ft). It was also not a free flight, as four men were used to steady the structure.
He built his first fixed-wing aircraft, theBreguet Type I, in 1909, flying it successfully before crashing it at theGrande Semaine d'Aviation held at Reims. In 1911, he founded theSociété anonyme des ateliers d’aviation Louis Breguet. In 1912, Breguet constructed his firsthydroplane.
He is especially known for his development of reconnaissance aircraft used by the French inWorld War I and through the 1920s. One of the pioneers in the construction of metal aircraft, theBreguet 14 single-engined day bomber, perhaps one of the most widely used French warplanes of its time, had an airframe constructed almost entirely ofaluminium structural members. As well as the French, sixteen squadrons of the American Expeditionary Force also used it. A plane of this type has a major role in the plot of the 1927 thrillerSo Disdained byNevil Shute.
In 1919 he founded theCompagnie des messageries aériennes, which evolved intoAir France.
Over the years, his aircraft set several records. A Breguet plane made the first nonstop crossing of theSouth Atlantic in 1927. Another made a 4,500-mile (7,200 km) flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1933, the longest nonstop Atlantic flight up to that time.
He returned to his work on the gyroplane in 1935. Created with co-designer René Dorand, the craft, called theGyroplane Laboratoire, flew by a combination of blade flapping and feathering. On 22 December 1935 it established a speed record of 67 mph (108 km/h). It was the first to demonstrate speed as well as good control characteristics. The next year, it set an altitude record of 517 feet (158 m).
Breguet remained an important manufacturer of aircraft duringWorld War II and afterwards developed commercial transports.Breguet’s range equation, for determining aircraftrange, is also named after him.He died of a heart attack[citation needed] in 1955 atSaint-Germain-en-Laye.
In 1980, Breguet was inducted into theInternational Air & Space Hall of Fame at theSan Diego Air & Space Museum.[1]
Breguet, as helmsman of his 8-metre (26 ft) yachtNamousa, won a bronze medal in sailing during the1924 Summer Olympics.[2]
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