First French "appontage"

On 20 October 2020, 100 years ago, the French military conducted the first landing of an aircraft (French "Appontage") on a vessel.

The aircraft involved, a British made Sopwith 1½ Strutter, landed on the relatively small improvised deck of the aircraft carrier Béarn in Toulon (France).

The pilot, Lieutenant Paul Teste, was a French Navy officer aviator, notable for the first aeronaval landing of the French Navy. After the first trials, using multiple Sopwith 1½ Strutters, further trials were conducted in 1921 with the Hanriot HD2.

The Béarn was an aircraft carrier converted from an incomplete Normandie-class battleship for the Marine Nationale (French Navy). A 45-by-9-meter (148 by 30 ft) wooden platform was built on the lower deck with an improvised arresting gear system that was weighted down with sandbags.

The French military could not decide on whether to complete the ship as either a battleship or an aircraft carrier. On 18 April the Marine Nationale decided that the Béarn , rather than any of her sister ships, would be converted into an aircraft carrier because her construction was the least advanced and would thus be the cheapest to convert. On 4 August 1923, a contract for the conversion was signed for 66.33 million French Francs.

For more information on the career of the aircraft carrier please have a look at wikipedia.

To celebrate the event, the Marine Nationale, decorated one of their Rafale M fighter aircraft with special tail markings.

Photos: Bastien Otelli and @frenchshiplover