Jean Boulet
Jean Boulet ( born November 16, 1920 in Brunoy, † February 14, 2011 in Aix -en- Provence) was a French test pilot.
Life
Boulet graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in 1940 and from 1942 to 1944 the SUPAERO. He then entered the service of the French Air Force. In 1947, he became a test pilot at SNCASE. The head of the local flight testing, Jacques Lecarme encouraged him to train on helicopters. The training for this he graduated from the United States and received his license on 23 February 1948. During the flight testing of a Sud -Est SE 535 Mistral on 23 January 1953, he came with his machine into a tailspin and had to get rid of the ejection seat and was thus the first Frenchman who used an ejection seat.
On June 6, 1955, he reached the world record with a 3130 SE " Alouette II" with 8209 m height. Then he reached with a modified Alouette II ( SE.3150 ) on June 13, 1958, the record height of 10,984 meters. The first flight of the Aerospatiale SA 321 he completed on 10 June 1959. Four years later, on July 23, 1963, he and Roland Coiffignon achieved the world speed record of 350.5 km / h on this helicopter. On June 21, 1972 Jean Boulet reached an Aerospatiale SA -315 has a height of 12,442 m, setting a absolute altitude record for helicopters on, which was only broken on 23 March 2002 by Fred North with a Eurocopter AS 350 in 12,954 m. This attempt, however, was not recognized until today (2012 ) by the FAI, so their database still Boulets record is run as a date.
Jean Boulet retired in 1975 to retire back and died on 14 February 2011 nonagenarian in Aix -en- Provence.