On 7th December 1936, at the age of 34, Jean Mermoz died doing the job that had made him a legend: flying the mail. “Coupons moteur arrière droite” (We’re cutting the rear starboard engine) was the last burst of Morse from the Croix-du-Sud, the ponderous Latécoère 300 seaplane that had already been giving mechanical trouble earlier in the day. It was four hours into a transatlantic crossing from Dakar to Natal when the final message was sent; five men were aboard. There was an intensive search by air and by sea, but no wreckage or bodies were ever found.
Nearly 90 years after his death, the celebrated French aviator remains an interesting character, as much for the idolatry that swirled around him as for the man himself. He was a newspaper’s perfect idea of a peacetime hero, blessed with matinee idol looks, the broad chest and shoulders of an Olympian and the rakish grin of a man who caroused with the stars; to an adoring press corps he was l’Archange (the archangel), a star in his own right.
The lionising didn’t stop with the fatal flight; if anything, it surged. The French air ministry organised a lavish memorial service at the Invalides, putting Mermoz on a par with the nation’s illustrious men of arms. A Paris street was renamed in his honour on 4th February 1937, not two months after the Croix-du-Sud went down, and later that year the French postal service paid its own tribute with two commemorative stamps. It was a fitting turnabout: Mermoz had carried the mail, and now the mail carried him.
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Both commemorative stamps have their points of interest. The 30 centimes denomination, by the prolific designer of stamps and banknotes Henri-Lucien Cheffer, presents Mermoz in a stylised cockpit, his larger-than-lifeness conveyed by the top of his head pushing through the inner border; the collar and tie are factual, not fanciful. Through the window is a world map with a dotted line that shows the airmail route between France and Chile, including the fateful Atlantic crossing between Senegal and Brazil. The three francs denomination is the work of Gabriel Antoine Barlangue, and adopts a vaguely fascist aesthetic: not inappropriate, as Mermoz was a vocal supporter of the Croix-de-Feu, one of several far-right groups active in France in the early 1930s.