Adolphe Pégoud

Adolphe Célestin Pégoud was born 13 June 1889 in Montferrat, France.[1] Pégoud served in the French Army from 1907 to 1913. Discharged on 13 February 1913, he immediately began flying, and earned his pilot's certificate 1 March 1913. Using a sacrifice aircraft, Pégoud was the first pilot to make a parachute[2] jump from an airplane. During the first jump, observing the unexpected path of the plane and particularly a loop-like trajectory, he was convinced he could reproduce and control the same in flight. After landing, Pégoud addressed reporters: "I've seen him, alone, looping the loop. So you see that this is possible. Also, I will try!"

As a test pilot for Louis Blériot, he devoted himself to this goal with a Blériot model XI monoplane in a series of test flights exploring the limits of airplane maneuvers. Having modified his airplane, and after realistic "head down" ground training, he then flew the first inverted flight on 1 September 1913.

Then, on 21 September he flew a loop,[3] believing it to be the world's first. Pégoud's feat was consequently widely publicized and believed by many to be the first loop, although Pyotr Nesterov, a Russian army pilot, had already flown the first loop on 9 September 1913, 12 days earlier in a Nieuport IV monoplane at an army airfield near Kiev. Soon after his feat, Pégoud was invited by the Czar of Russia to perform in Moscow a series of demonstrations followed by student training.

Pégoud became a popular instructor of French and other European fledgling pilots.

German pre-war postcard depicting Pégoud's loop

At the start of World War I, Pégoud volunteered for flying duty and was immediately accepted as an observation pilot. On 5 February 1915, he and his gunner were credited with shooting down two German aircraft and forcing another to land.[3] Soon he was flying single-seat aircraft and in April claimed two further victories. His sixth success came in July.

Pégoud being awarded the Croix de Guerre

It is not known how many of Pégoud's victories involved destruction of enemy aircraft, as early air combat was rare enough to warrant credit for a forced landing. However, it is certain that Pégoud, rather than Roland Garros (four documented victories, and later), was the first pilot to achieve ace status of any sort.[4]

On 31 August 1915, Pégoud was shot down and killed by one of his pre-war German students,[1] Unteroffizier Otto Kandulski,[5] while intercepting a German reconnaissance aircraft. He was 26 years old. The same German crew later dropped a funeral wreath behind the French lines. Two weeks later Kandulski was shot down by the French pilot Roger Ronserail earning Roger the title "Le Vengeur de Pégoud".[6]

• Norman Franks & Frank Bailey - Over the Front: A Complete Record of the Fighter Aces and Units of the United States and French Air Services, 1914-1918. (1992).
• Annette Carson - Flight Fantastic: The Illustrated History of Aerobatics.(1986)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Adolphe Pégoud.

• Pegoud's listing at TheAerodrome.com
• "Remembering Adolphe Pégoud, the First Ace Pilot" at Atlas Obscura