René Guilbaud (8 October 1890 – disappeared 18 June 1928) was an early 20th-century French military aviator.

Long-distance flights

Guilbaud was celebrated mainly for long-range flights, by

flying boat A flying boat is a type of seaplane with a hull, allowing it to land on water. It differs from a floatplane in having a fuselage that is purpose-designed for flotation, while floatplanes rely on fuselage-mounted floats for buoyancy. Though ...

across Africa in 1926 and 1927, first in a Lioré et Olivier LeO H-190 and then in a CAMS 37.

Disappearance

Guilbaud disappeared in the

Barents Sea The Barents Sea ( , also ; , ; ) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters.World Wildlife Fund, 2008. It was known earlier among Russi ...

in June 1928, while piloting a

Latham 47 The Latham 47, or Latham R3B4 in Naval service was a French twin-engine flying boat designed and built by Société Latham, Société Latham & Cie for the French Navy. The aircraft achieved notoriety in 1928 when aircraft number 47.02 disappeare ...

flying boat in which

Roald Amundsen Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (, ; ; 16 July 1872 – ) was a Norwegians, Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He was a key figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Born in Borge, Østfold, Norway, Am ...

was travelling to join the search for survivors of the crash of the airship ''Italia''. While debris from his aircraft was subsequently located by late August, no trace has ever been found of the occupants.

Legacy

The mountain Guilbaudtoppen in

Sørkapp Land Sørkapp Land is the land area south of Hornsund, at the southern part of Spitsbergen, Svalbard. Two glaciers, Hornbreen and Hambergbreen, divide Sørkapp Land from Torell Land. Sørkapp Land is included in the Sør-Spitsbergen National Par ...

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian language, Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipel ...

(

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norway, Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of continental Europe, mainland Europe, it lies about midway be ...

), is named after him.

Books

* ''La vie héroïque de René Guilbaud 1890-1928'' - Coindreau (Roger), 1958

References

External links