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French Aircraft Designer Marcel Dassault Dies

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Times Staff Writer

Marcel Dassault, who began designing wooden propellers for Spad biplanes in World War I and amassed one of Europe’s largest fortunes as father of the French aircraft industry, died Thursday night.

Dassault, 94, who survived Buchenwald, two government takeovers and the emergence of competitive supersonic fighters, entered the American Hospital of Paris April 2 and died there of respiratory complications.

A Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism, Dassault’s Mirage fighter was the weapon that enabled Israel to wipe out Egypt’s Soviet-supplied MIGs in the 1967 Six-Day War. The delta-wing fighter’s demonstrated superiority brought orders from more than 30 other countries.

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A Gaullist Deputy

He was one of France’s best-known figures, a Gaullist deputy in the National Assembly, where he squinted through thick glasses, wearing a customary black suit and matching bow tie with a muffler pulled round him.

He was an aviation pioneer who hated flying and took his only long-distance flight in 1944 when he was repatriated from the German concentration camp at Buchenwald. He was a proud Frenchman who credited American inventor Thomas A. Edison for inspiring him.

He also was a political philosopher who expounded his conservative views in a monthly magazine he founded shortly after his election to the National Assembly in 1958.

A measure of his political popularity was that even though he rarely attended Assembly sessions in recent years and was considered reclusive by all but his closest associates, he was reelected to his parliamentary seat March 15 without making one campaign appearance or speech. He did not even show up to vote for himself.

At his death his Avions Marcel Dassault-Breguet Aviation had sold 6,000 airplanes in 61 countries with sales last year of $2.3 billion.

A Personal Touch

He personally introduced his latest experimental craft, the Rafale, several months ago amid speculation that it might be the final product of an independent manufacturer in an age of conglomerates.

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He had conceived it as a primary combat tool for the European Economic Community.

Dassault was born Marcel Bloch, the son of a Paris doctor, and was considered sickly and withdrawn compared to his three brothers.

He was said to have been the first graduate of an aeronautical engineering school and the wooden propeller he designed for the Spad was credited with giving French fliers a distinct advantage over German aviators in World War I.

The Armistice effectively ended plane production in France and it was not until 1930 that Bloch returned to manufacturing. He changed his name to Dassault--after “d’assault” or “attack”--a name his brother used during the French Resistance of World War II.

Socialist Takeover

He built a three-motor mail plane and then a series of fighters. But in 1935 the Socialists took power and his company was nationalized even though he was permitted to stay at its head.

When World War II broke out the Nazis tried to enlist him for the Luftwaffe but he refused and was sent to Buchenwald where he credited his survival to Communist prisoners who found him enough to eat.

He came home weak but alive and resumed business in 1946, taking a new religion and founding a new firm--Avions Marcel Dassault Co.--under his new name.

Utilizing a minimum of engineers and capitalizing on his uncanny design sense, he provided the French their first jets--the Ouragan and the Mystere.

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In 1955 he built the Mirage III, capable of twice the speed of sound. “I called it Mirage because I thought of it like a vision in the desert. The enemy would see it but never reach it,” he said.

Used in 1982 Battles

Later he manufactured the Etendard for the French navy which evolved into the Super Etendard used by the Argentine air force against the British in the 1982 battle for the Falklands.

He also began building business jets, undercutting the prices of U.S. competitors, and in the late 1960s took over his only competitor, Breguet Aviation, builder of the Anglo-French Jaguar bomber.

His export business grew rapidly and accounted for more than 70% of total sales. But when the Socialists under Francois Mitterand again came to power in 1981 his firm once more was nationalized. This time he kept 49% of the stock and a position as general adviser.

In 1970 he had written “Le Talisman,” a thin paperback memoir on how to become a millionaire, which he said was to show young people “that it is not necessary to inherit to succeed . . . perseverance is enough.”

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