Potes 84, Le Dernier Avion d'Henry Potez

In 1959, Henry Potez launched a project for a short-range, four-turboprop civilian aircraft, intended to restore his company to its former position among pre-war French aircraft manufacturers. His goal: to replace the hundreds of DC-3s still flying around the world. But the P.840 found neither customers nor government support.
Pierre Parvaud immerses us in the French political and industrial landscape of the 1960s, with all the twists and turns of the program. Alongside Potez's engineers, he takes us through the day-to-day design, testing, and development of the P.84 and its derivatives, the P.840, P.841, and P.842. He unflinchingly describes Henry Potez's unwavering determination to see his program through and his subsequent miscalculations in industrial strategy.
Supported by detailed technical reports and enhanced with a wealth of illustrations, this book sheds light on a program about which very little has been published to date. A program that ultimately led Air Fouga and Morane-Saulnier to their downfall rather than saving them. And which, despite itself, became one of the instruments in the reshaping of the French aeronautical landscape of the 1970s.