Daydreamer at Work

As a child in Paris half a century ago, Marcel Dassault read science fiction and daydreamed that he would some day be a great inventor, turning his ideas into mechanical marvels that would bring glory to France. Unlike most daydreamers, Dassault was equipped with the talent and drive to turn fantasy into reality. At 23, only two years out of aeronautical school, he designed the propeller for the famed Spad fighter of World War I. At 60 he designed and built France's first topflight jet fighter, the sweptwing, transonic Mystere. Last week Dassault, now 64, showed off his latest marvel, the Mirage, a lightweight, 1,000-m.p.h. interceptor.

The delta-wing Mirage is powered by two 2, 300-lb.-thrust Viper engines, designed by Armstrong Siddeley and made by Dassault. The plane carries a rocket with 3,500-lb. thrust for extra bursts of speed, can take off or land in less than 1,000 yards. It weighs less than five tons (v. eight tons for the Mystere), but it is sturdy enough to operate out of rough fields. The Mirage has a price tag of $300,000, about two-thirds the cost of the Mystere.

Paris to Buchenwald. Dassault, the son of a Paris physician, studied at France's top technical schools. He sold his first propeller design to the War Ministry, and set up a small aircraft factory. Even after France nationalized its aviation industry in 1936, he was permitted to keep a small plant at Saint-Cloud, where he turned out variable-pitch propellers until France fell in World War II. Because he was a Jew and refused to make aircraft parts for the Nazis, he was arrested and eventually taken to Buchenwald.

Broken in health by 1945, Dassault nevertheless returned to Saint-Cloud to rebuild his factory (the aviation industry was then partially denationalized). With Marshall Plan aid he set up a modern plant. In two years he turned out 300 twin-engine Flamant passenger planes for the French air force and navy. Next he turned out the Ouragan (hurricane) jet fighter, landed a French air force order for 350, and began building the first of five new factories. When he brought out the Mystere (TIME, March 17, 1952), U.S. Air Force officers classed it with the F-84 and Russia's MIG-15, and from France, NATO, Israel and India came orders for more than 600 of the Mystere series. With 4,500 aircraft workers on his own payroll, and an additional 30,000 working in the plants of his subcontractors, Dassault now provides employment for more than one-half of all France's aircraft workers.

Politics & Housing. Being boss and sole owner of the nation's biggest privately owned aircraft company did not satisfy Planemaker Dassault. He turned to politics and was elected as a Gaullist Deputy from the Alpes-Maritimes department, served until he was defeated by a Socialist in last January's elections. As a Deputy, Dassault proposed to the National Assembly that he solve France's critical housing shortage by mass-producing prefabricated, low-cost ($5,000) homes, to be financed with 80% mortgage loans from the government. Though "Maisons Dassault" settlements sprang up in his own constituency, French bureaucracy soon blocked his project.

But Dassault had a hatful of other new ideas. To help his subcontractors modernize their plants, he set up the Banque Commerciale de Paris with $2,000,000 in capital, made such a success of it that he soon attracted $21 million in deposits. To help plug his ideas, he bought control of Paris-Presse, the city's second biggest afternoon paper, poured millions into a new and well-edited picture weekly, Jours de France. In his magazine Dassault propounds his belief that France is no dying nation, but is in desperate need of statesmanlike leadership. His newest dream: to irrigate the Sahara Desert, mine its uranium, oil and gold, thus create a "France Nouvelle stretching from the Channel coast down to the Congo."

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