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Aero-club de France

Title: Aero-club de France
Artist: F.A. Rapid
Year of Publication: 1926
Publisher: Lapina Imp., Paris
Language: French
Size: 28 1/8" x 44 1/2"
Index Number: 00129

Description:

The Aéro-club de France had been running distance races for balloons almost as long as it had been in existence, going back to the turn of the twentieth century. This poster advertising the fifteenth grand prix for sphériques, or spherical balloons, presents the sport as the ultimate in ethereal bliss. Although flying had long overtaken ballooning as the exciting and cutting edge of aviation, many dedicated balloonists still raced, made distance records, performed scientific research, or took to the sky in their lighter-than-air craft for pleasure.

This particular race, in the early autumn of 1926, brought together the cream of French ballooning, as well as Belgian star, Ernest Demuyter, and his famous balloon, the Belgica. For the first time, the race, which usually was held in Paris, started in Reims, in the Champagne region of France, west of Paris. The grand day included a release of homing pigeons and a children’s contest with small balloons, both auxiliary events having also been part of previous Grand Prix de Spheriques races.

Almost all the balloonists present had participated in and won at least one other Grand Prix race held in previous years: Georges Blanchet, from Champagne’s own aero-club, flying the Aéro Club de Champagne, had four wins to his name; Gaston Deslandres, in the Pigonneau Normand, from the central Aéro-club de France, had three; Adrien Languedoc, who had only recently returned to the sport in 1926 after a lengthy hiatus, had won numerous races in the years before World War I broke out.

The other 1926 competitors were Raymond Heutte, who flew La Tulipe, and represented the Aéro-club de l’Atlantique (the region around the eastern French coastal city of Nantes); Georges Thomas, in L’Audonien, represented the Aérostat-Club de la Seine (a ballooning club); Pierre Pajot, from the Association Aéronautique Nord de la France (Aeronautical Association of the North of France), piloted a balloon aptly titled Nord Association; another grand ballooning celebrity, like Demuyter, Alexander Veenstra, from the central Aéro-club de France, flew the Prince Léopold; Charles Pommier who flew the Lieutenant Parisy, was also from the central club; flying the Anjou was Georges Cormier, a veteran balloon racer who flew for Champagne’s club; Alfred Auger piloted the Marie-Jeanne from the central club; and Charles Dollfus in the Sérénité, flew for the central club. These twelve men represented some of the very best balloonists in France, and Demuyter was considered to be one of the world’s premier balloonists.

The 1926 race began when the balloons lifted off between 5 and 6 PM Sunday, September 19. It proved to be a very eventful contest. Almost immediately two racers were out. Deslandres forfeited, with the official account of the race giving no reason. Pommier fell out of the race when his balloon burst. The remaining ten drifted out and over France. Their goal was to fly the furthest from the starting point—most likely ending up in Belgium or Holland—then return. Racers in 1913 and 1914 had managed to finish the race accordingly.

To the misfortune of the 1926 balloonists, however, weather interfered; strong winds and the falling night forced most of the racers down between the Aigue and Oise rivers, at points north and west of their starting point. Cormier actually reached Belgium during the night, with Languedoc and Pajot flying as far as the Pas-de-Calais region in Normandy. All of these distances, though, were far shorter than hoped. Except one.

The redoubtable and seemingly unstoppable Ernest Demuyter, along with two crew members, was the only competitor to find air currents that carried him all the way to Holland, to the region of La Haye on the Dutch coast, north and west of Amsterdam. When dawn broke Monday morning, at 6 AM, he set down the Belgica on the sand dunes of Ostvoorne, on the shores of the Atlantic. He and his crew then took off and piloted the balloon back on an arcing course across France, and with deft handling and careful use of ballast, returned successfully to Reims. His distance covered, from Champagne to Holland, was 295 kilometers. The next closest competitor logged 248 kilometers. Bringing up the rear was Dollfus, who only covered 16 kilometers.

None of the distances were as far as the racers had hoped, due to the weather conditions, leaving standing records of distance and duration unbroken. Still, as the prominent French aviation journal L’Aérophile noted, it was a “pretty victory,” and the race could hold its head high among its more successful brethren. It was noted in the closing paragraph of the journal’s description of the race that although there had been much upset at the moving of the race from the Tuileries, in Paris, and seemingly speculation that this would hurt the race’s popularity, such was not the case. Rather, hosting the race in a provincial region helped to popularize ballooning amongst people who might not otherwise have much experience witnessing the competitions first-hand. The balloonists loyalty to the “noble sport of the sphericals,” however, never seemed to fade.

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