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Limoges (France), 8 March 1883 - † Paris, 20 April 1946
Aristide Paul Gustave Delage was an officer of the French Navy, an engineer and a French businessman.
Delage entered the Naval Academy in 1901 and was promoted to midshipman on 5 October 1904. Released from "Navale" with the title of engineer, he was assigned to the port of Toulon on 5 October 1906. On 13 November 1908, he embarked on the Mousqueton destroyer (1st torpedo fleet in the Mediterranean, Commander Gontran De Faramond de Fajole). Promoted Knight of the Légion d'Honneur and lieutenant on September 29, 1913, he was detached on unpaid leave on January 1, 1914.
Recalled by the Navy in August 1914, he was assigned to seaplane carrier La Foudre from September to November 1914. Promoted to Lieutenant Commander, he was appointed head of the Port Said Nieuport squadron from December 1914 to February 1915. Finally judged more useful in an engineering role, he left the front in March 1915 and put to reserve status on May 11, 1918.
In 1909, Gustave Delage is interested in aviation and naval applications. Despite his assignment to Toulon, he gets on August 29, 1910 in Vincennes, the pilot's license No. 219 of the Aero Club of France and the military wings No. 23. In September 1911, he led a squadron participating in military maneuvers in the Ardennes, and on December 14, 1912, he made his first flight in a Navy seaplane.
Placed off target by the Navy, he is appointed technical director of the Nieuport Company and general manager of the airplanes department in January 1914. Recalled under the colors in August 1914, he returned to Nieuport in February 1915. This is when he developed a new type of aircraft, the sesquiplane. The first one is an observation two-seater, the Nie-10, of which more than 1,000 copies will be built. More compact, the Nie-11BB quickly becomes the Nieuport Bébé (Baby) and will be produced to over 7,000 exemplars in France, but also in Britain, Italy and Russia. Will follow the single-seat fighters Nie-16 and Nie-17.
If Delage is less successful with its Type 14 and 15 bombers, and if the French and Britain Air Forces prefer SPAD fighters in the last two years of the war, the United States, Italy and Belgium Air Forces will order the Nie-24 and Nie-28 evolutions.
Beginning 1920, the French Air Force decided to replace all serving fighters from the First World War with Nieuport 29s. At that time, the Nieuport Company decides to name her French production "Nieuport-Delage" to distinguish it from its British subsidiary productions, of which she loses control. The Nieuport 29 then becomes the NiD-29.
Gustave Delage will be the brains behind the Nieuport-Astra company until 1932. But in 1930 Nieuwpoort-Astra joins with Henriot, CAMS or Amiot SECM, the SGA (Société Générale Aéronautique - General Aeronautical Firm), a kind of holding company whose Delage does not support management mode. He will therefore resign and look for something else.
In 1915, the Swiss watch company LeCoultre and Co. has engaged in manufacturing aviation tachometers and speed indicators developed by the French company Jaeger with the collaboration of Swiss pilot Edmond Audemars. Official Supplier of the French aerospace, LeCoultre produced 120,000 tachometers during the war, which were sold to the Allies by Edmond Jaeger. In October 1917, the two companies form an interest association for closer ties. Edmond Jaeger, who was then 67, still owns the patents on tachometers which LeCoultre needs to survive in wartime. Now this association needs capital. Curiously, these funds are contributed by private circles of French aviation: Léon Morane, Laurent Seguin, Gabriel Voisin... and Gustave Delage. Together they bring over 2.5 million francs in the Jaeger-LeCoultre Association and Gustave Delage monitors the finances of LeCoultre and Co. in Switzerland and Edmond Jaeger S.A. in Paris.
After leaving Nieuport, he becomes director of Jaeger in 1933. He is the architect of the merger of the two companies in 1937, and until his death, will occupy a key position in the watch company Jaeger-LeCoultre.
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