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Angie a écrit :De mémoire, je crois que la famille de Guynemer avait demandé la publication d'un récit sur lui ce qui a permit de faire croître rapidment sa renommée auprès du grand public.

fredem a écrit :http://www.checksix-forums.com/showthre ... ge=4&pp=10

Mais le récit de Bordeaux a été publié après guerre... Fonck était porte-drapeau de l'aviation au défilé de la victoire, preuve qu'il était connu.

On peut faire le paralelle entre Senna et Schumacher... Il y aura plus de livres sur Senna qu'il n'en y aura jamais sur schumi.

fredem a écrit :
Il a été très touché par cette affaire et sa mort prématurée en 1953 en est une des conséquences.

Angie a écrit :Je ne voulais pas dire que Fonck était un inconnu total.
Ce que je voulais dire, c'est qu'un héros de guerre + mort au combat + mort en pleine jeunesse + recit immédiat sur ses exploits ca a de quoi marqué durablement les esprits.

Merlin (FZG_Immel) a écrit :l'autre jour j'ai rencontré un petit-neveu de R.Fonck dans une armurerie et on a justement parlé de cette affaire.

lanef300 a écrit :Nungesser, mon héros...Coli...L'oiseau Blanc
Et si peu de gens les connaissent...

petit fils de son grand père

fredem a écrit :effet de style volontaire... sinon j'avais répétition de Lindbergh.

anglais1 > Didn't Rene Fonck collaborate with the Vichy Government?

TMor > He did, but it's a bit more complicated, as still was concerned by our defeat, and have helped the resistance.
Complicated story. Historians are still working on this case, to evaluate what he did for the Germans.

anglais1 > Yes that was a very simplistic thing of me to say. Didn't he also have some kind of relationship with Goering before 1940? Was it just professional?

TMor > I don't know... :?

anglais2 > He did.

He was also a boastful, arrogant man, full of empty claims....

"Never an especially modest man, Fonck personally claimed to have downed some 127 aircraft - at least - during his service."

"As his fame grew, so did his ego and Fonck never achieved the admiration and popularity of Georges Guynemer. Even French ace Claude Haegelen, one of Fonck's few friends, felt he boasted too much and too often, and said of him "He is not a truthful man. He is a tiresome braggart."

He admitted that ""I prefer to fly alone . . . when alone, I perform those little coups of audacity which amuse me . . ." and where they could not be scrupulously confirmed.

WWII. Hero or villain?
"Colonel Fonck led a fighter group until France fell, in 1942 disguised himself as a Trappist monk and helped organize an escape route through Belgium for downed Allied airmen. Arrested in 1944 on charges of Vichy collaboration, but never officially indicted."

"Similar things can be said for Fonck perhaps. There were many French men and
women who had roles under Vichy, and who used it to subvert the system or
who adopted a passive/aggressive resistance to the German/Vichy system.
Others acted as bureaucratic functionaries, others were open and active
collaborators. Fonck's role seems to have fallen in the latter category. He
actively attempted to recruit French Airforce personnel to fight for the
Germans. Many French military personnel did not choose this course, either
joining the Allies, the Resistance or adopting a more passive role. These
acts would have earned him the odium of the victors and of the French people
at large, and may well have influenced the common viewpoint on Fonck the man
and pilot."

"Fonck choose the wrong side during WW2 : After the debacle at Mers-el-Kabir, the Vichy Foreign Minister, Pierre Laval, declared on August 10, 1940, that the French WW1 air ace, Colonel René Fonck, had organized some 200 French pilots prepared to join Germany in the fight against Britain. Fonck then became qualified as a traitor and got in serious troubles that "cancelled" his remaining prestige."

"On September 24-25, 1940 the Vichy-controlled French Air Force attacked British military installations at Gibraltar, dropping 600 tons of bombs on the fortress but caused minimal damage. This was in reprisal for the British naval attack on French warships at Mers-el-Kabir on July 3, 1940 and for the attempted occupation of Dakar on September 23rd. After this attack, a total of 1,400 Gibraltarian women and children were evacuated to England. The Vichy Government of Pòtain broke off diplomatic relations with Britain because of the attack on Mers-el-Kabir and urged a declaration of war against Britain. The French World War I air ace, Colonel Rene Fonck, had organized some two hundred Vichy French pilots who were prepared to join Germany in the fight against Britain. Eventually the idea of war with Britain was rejected by Foreign Minister Paul Baudouin who said 'war with Britain would worsen France's already pitiful condition'."


But then Nazi Germany is still seen as being better than the hated English by some of the more insecure and inadequate Frenchmen.