Saint-Martin-d'Août air accident of 15 December 1939

On 15 December 1939 a Bloch MB 210 bomber of the IV Escadrille of GBA II/51 crashed at Saint-Martin-d'Août during a transfer flight from Briare to Istres, killing two of the six crew members.

The accident

On 15 December 1939, a few months after the start of the Second World War, six Bloch MB 210 bombers of the IV Escadrille of GBA II/51 took off at 11:00 from Briare for a transfer flight to Istres, divided into two patrols of three aircraft each.

One of these formations encountered bad weather around the Lyon area and then ran into a snowstorm. Bloch 210 bomber n.183, whose radio had failed at the start of the flight, lost sight of the other aircraft in the storm and shortly afterwards the aircraft commander, Lieutenant Bonnardel, ordered the pilot, Sergeant Daniel Dugourd, to descend to find ground suitable for landing. The pilot reported that the wings were covered with ice and at this point Bonnardel ordered the crew to bail out, judging it too risky to make an emergency landing. Only the pilot remained in the front part of the Bloch, while the other five crew members gathered in the rear part to jump with their parachutes. Dugourd was unable to keep the bomber in the air for long and, unaware of what had happened in the rear of the aircraft, bailed out with his parachute.

In the rear, two crew members, Sergeant Porcher and Sergeant André Bozon, saved themselves with difficulty, jumping out of the aircraft with their parachutes. The third man, Jean Etienne Désoré Lucas, hesitated and became entangled in the lines of his parachute. In the end Bonnardel pushed him out, along with the fourth man, Chief Warrant Officer Henri Joseph Bouvet, but by then they were too low to jump; Bonnardel remained on board the aircraft, which crashed at 12:58 near the village of Saint-Martin-d'Août, in the Drôme, 30 km north of Valence. Bonnardel was seriously injured, but survived the accident. Shortly before the crash he had time to check the wings and saw snow on them rather than ice. His conclusion was that the pilot was so overly worried about the risk of ice forming on the wings that he lost his nerve.

The last two men to jump out of the aircraft were killed. Lucas probably struck the Bloch's tail unit, while Bouvet did not have time to open his parachute. The bodies of both were found 600 m from the crash site.