Léon Lemartin

Théodore Clovis Edmond Lemartin, known as Léon Lemartin (20 October 1883 Dunes, Tarn-et-Garonne – 18 June 1911, Vincennes), passengers in a Blériot XIII Aerobus. He then took eight, eleven and thirteen passengers aloft the following month. He is also known as the world's first professional test pilot.

Early life Lemartin was born in the commune of Dunes in the Department of Tarn-et-Garonne in south west France.

In December 1902 Lemartin met aviation enthusiast Louise Soriano, who had divorced the Comte Charles de Lambert and married Ricardo Soriano von Hermansdorff Sholtz, Marquis de Ivanrey. Lemartin and Louise worked together during their joint airship project and subsequently married, upon which he adopted her daughter Jane (or Jeanne ) de Lambert from her first marriage.

One of the notable events of the Grande Semaine d'Aviation held at Reims in August 1909 was the public debut of the Gnome rotary engine, and Gnome-engined aircraft won first and third places in the distance prize. Henri Farman's winning flight of was made with a Gnome engine which had been installed immediately before the flight, his previous engine having proved unreliable. He used the same aircraft to win the passenger carrying prize.

Blériot years On 20 August 1910, Lemartin signed a contract to join Louis Bleriot's flying school to train as a pilot and work as an engineer. By this contract, he becomes the first ever official Test Pilot in the world ), and Paul Wyss, a Swiss pilot who was training at the Bleriot school in Pau at the time.

On 24 May 1911, three weeks before his death, he reportedly surpassed the world speed record, although it was never officially authorised. He achieved between Etampes and Toury in a Blériot using "his own" enhanced model of the Gnome motor. (about €1,200,000 in 2006), made up of a number of separate prizes for the various stages of the race.

Death and commemoration

Lemartin died in a crash on 18 June 1911 during the first leg of Le Circuit Européen (Tour of Europe) air race. He was still within sight of the reportedly 'up to 1 million' spectators at the take-off in Vincennes.

The Circuit Européen (Tour of Europe) was his first competition. The night before his departure from Vincennes, he was working on the machines of his teammates Gustav Hamel and Lieutenant Jean Louis Conneau (flying under the name André Beaumont) who went on to win both Le Circuit Européen and Paris-Rome. Thus the next morning, 18 June, Lemartin was tired.

Lemartin is buried at Dunes (Tarn-et-Garonne), where both a street and the airport (Piste Théodore Léon Lemartin) bear his name.

His widow Madeleine, who received an insurance allocation of 32,500 francs, continued to raise his three children, Louise, Simone and Léone, plus Jane de Lambert. Madeleine subsequently married Léon's brother Albert and they had two more children, Maurice and Roger.

Lemartin's only grandson, Jacques Dalmon, wrote his grandfather's biography in 1994 (Lemartin, pilote-aviateur). He also published a new revision in 2009 in co-operation with Lemartin's great grandson, Olivier Dalmon (Léon Lemartin, Chef-Pilote de la Maison Blériot).