230 - MERMOZ, Jean

MERMOZ, Jean L.A.S. “Jean Gilberte” and “Mermoz, Chief Pilot,” Marseille, December 9, 1930, to his grandparents, the GILLETs; 6 pages, in-8 format, with the Hôtel de Noailles letterhead. Test flights in Marignane of his seaplane prior to the Atlantic crossing. He has a lot of work “and plenty to keep him busy in the future.” Every day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., I am in Marignane—which is twenty-five kilometers from Marseille—to fine-tune my seaplane and its engine, with which I plan to make another commercial crossing of the South Atlantic in early January. At the same time, the Aviation Bernard factories have just produced a superb long-range aircraft that resembles Le Brix’s *Trait d’Union*. It has been purchased by the government and will be entrusted to me—after a closed-circuit test flight conducted alongside the company’s acceptance pilot—to attempt the world distance record on the Marseille–Buenos Aires route, which I hope to complete nonstop, given that, with 7,500 liters of fuel on board, giving me a range of 12,000 km. I received confirmation of my official appointment today, and I’m very pleased about it.” He fully intends to visit his grandparents for the Christmas holidays; he’ll drive them to Paris. “I’ll pick up my citation as an Officer of the Legion of Honor in Paris, but Grandma, I won’t give it to you until we’re in Paris!! So you have to come. I had my pilot’s medical exam a few days ago. I hadn’t had one since I left for South America. They found me to be in excellent shape. So everything is going as well as it possibly could!!”… He adds that Mlle de la Vaulx, cousin of the Count de la Vaulx [who died in a plane crash near Jersey City on April 18, 1930], “sent him the Count’s wallet as a memento… it’s a very precious keepsake for me.” Provenance: - Jean Mermoz (1901–1936); - Gabrielle Gillet-Mermoz (1880–1955); - Then passed down through the family