Potez-540

The Potez-540 is the aircraft aboard which Romain Gary served as a bombing and navigation instructor at Bordeaux-Mérignac Airfield, and one of the machines that gives physical form to the collapse unfolding there in June 1940. Its appearances connect the apparently settled routines of training to an airfield crowded with people seeking a way out of France.

Training and Service

After his training squadron transferred to Bordeaux-Mérignac Airfield, Gary spent five or six hours in the air each day as a bombing and navigation instructor aboard a Potez-540. He was soon promoted to sergeant. The work, regular pay, and hours in the air belonged to a period when he and many of his companions still believed the war would not last forever; his account places the aircraft within a military routine that seemed, for the moment, secure enough to enjoy.

That routine also included training flights to familiarize members of the Polish Armed Forces with French equipment. Since Gary spoke Polish fluently, he interpreted between the French instructor and Polish pilots, conveying orders during the flights. The memoir presents this work against a climate of suspicion and contempt toward the Poles, whom the French blamed for their defeat. The Potez-540’s instructional role thus sits within a wider effort to operate across a strained alliance, even as mistrust shadowed the cooperation.

An Aircraft in the Flight from France

On June 15, 16, and 17, 1940, Bordeaux-Mérignac Airfield became a gathering place for aircraft and passengers fleeing the unfolding disaster. Gary recalls a 540 Potez whose pilot was asked by a respectable-looking family—husband, wife, and two young girls—how much it would cost to take them to Spain. The father wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. In this scene, the aircraft is no longer simply part of the work of instruction: it is a possible means of civilian escape, approached as a service that might be bought amid the confusion.

The contrast with Gary’s earlier account is stark. The Potez-540 had belonged to long training days and a confidence that the war would eventually end; at the airfield, its familiar type appears among the improvised routes by which people tried to leave. Gary does not identify the pilot as himself or say that the aircraft departed for Spain. Its significance lies instead in the change of setting and purpose surrounding it: a military machine becomes part of the improvised landscape of flight as France’s position collapses.