Marcel Dassault

Marcel Bloch in 1914

Marcel Dassault, born Marcel Bloch (22 January 1892 - 17 April 1986) was a French aircraft industrialist.

Biography

Dassault was born in Paris. After graduating from the lycée Condorcet, Breguet School and Supaero, he invented a type of aircraft propeller used by the French army during World War I and founded the Société des Avions Marcel Bloch aircraft company. Following the nationalization of his company in 1936, under the Front Populaire, he stayed as a director. In 1919, he married Madeline Minckes, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family of furniture dealers. They had two sons: Claude and Serge.

Being of Jewish heritage and after refusing collaboration with the German aviation industry, he was deported to Buchenwald during World War II while his wife was interned near Paris. He changed his name from Bloch to Bloch-Dassaut then Dassault in 1949. Dassault was the pseudonym of his brother, General Darius Paul Bloch, in the French resistance and means "for assault", originally from char d'assaut, French for tank. Marcel Dassault converted to Roman Catholicism in 1950. After the war, Dassault built the foremost military aircraft manufacturer in France, Avions Marcel Dassault. He was succeeded by his son Serge as head of the group.

Marcel Dassault died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1986 and was buried in the Passy Cemetery in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.

See also

• Societé des Avions Marcel Bloch
• Dassault Group
• Dassault Aviation
• The Talisman; the Autobiography of Marcel Dassault, Creator of the Mirage jet. translated by Patricia High Painton. New Rochelle, N.Y., Arlington House (1971) ISBN 0-87000-149-3

External links

• Marcel Dassault - Dassault Aviation site