Le commandant de Rose

Résumé Fr En

Le commandant Charles de Rose est mort au moment où ses idées, enfin admises par tous, l’avaient fait reconnaître à sa juste valeur. Grâce au rétablissement de la situation à Verdun, il avait apporté la preuve du caractère incontournable de l’aviation de chasse. Sa mort prématurée ne lui a pas permis de développer davantage ses idées en matière d’aviation de chasse ni de laisser beaucoup de traces écrites de ses réalisations. Autant qu’un théoricien, Charles de Rose a été un homme de terrain dont l’action persévérante et décisive a permis la création de l’aviation de chasse. D’autres après lui reprendront le flambeau et développeront, avec d’ailleurs beaucoup de justesse et de succès, les idées qu’il était parvenu à imposer.

The squadron leader de Rose, forerunner of the fighter aircraft. The cavalry officer Major Charles de Rose can be regarded as the father of French fighter aviation. Down to the outbreak of World War One he strove to unlock the potentialities of aeroplanes, notably taking part in exercises involving reconnaissance and aerial spotting for the artillery. In 1911 he was posted to the Vincennes military establishment. There he experimented with arming aeroplanes with machine-guns, collaborating at the start of the war with Roland Garros. The pair perfected a system of bullet deflectors by means of steel plates fitted to the aero-engine’s propellor, enabling the fitting of machine-guns firing in the same direction as the aeroplane was flying. From February 1916 he was assigned by General Joffre to command the aeronautical services at Verdun. In order to regain air superiority - French fighters at this time being at the mercy of the German Fokkers - he established the first doctrine for the employment of fighter aviation: combat groups, flights made together with fixed timings, resolutely offensive tactics. Charles de Rose was killed in May 1916 whilst making a flying demonstration in his Nieuport. As much a practical man as a theoretician, it was his perseverance and decisions that permitted the creation of a French fighter arm. Others coming after him would take up the torch and develop, with much success, the ideas for which he had managed to win acceptance.