You can help expand this article with text translated from
the corresponding article in French. (April 2012) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the French article.
Machine translation, like
DeepL or
Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide
copyright attribution in the
edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an
interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Jean Boulet]]; see its history for attribution.
You should also add the template {{Translated|fr|Jean Boulet}} to the
talk page.
He was born on 16 November 1920 in Brunoy, near Paris, Jean Boulet was a graduate of the
Ecole Polytechnique he entered in 1940 and was first hired in 1947 by the
SNCASE, which would become
Sud Aviation and then later the helicopter division of
Aérospatiale.
Career
Having been trained in the United States earlier in his life to become a military pilot with the
French Air Force, he was one of the first foreign pilots to fly a helicopter in the
United States Air Force. Over the years he would fast become one of the greatest pioneers in the history of rotorcraft flight testing.[1]
Aviation records
Boulet set several rotorcraft records[2][3] for distance,[4] altitude[5][6][7] and speed.[8]
On 21 June 1972, Boulet set the world record (still valid as of 2020[update][7]) for the highest altitude reached by a
helicopter, when he piloted an
Aérospatiale SA 315B Lama to an altitude of 12,442 metres (40,820 ft).[9] When he reduced power and began to descend, because of the extreme cold, the engine
flamed out, and Boulet performed the highest ever, power off, full touch down
autorotation, landing with absolutely no power.[10] This high altitude autorotation also set a new world record.[9] Because of his unpowered flight back to the ground, he is also credited with the largest altitude flown with an
autogyro.
Publications
L'Histoire de L'hélicoptère, Racontée Par Ses Pionniers, 1907-1956 (Editions France-Empire, 1982)
OCLC256047560
History Of The Helicopter: As Told By Its Pioneers, 1907-1956, Claude Dawson (translator) (Editions France-Empire, 1984)
OCLC13284968
^
abRuffin, Steven A (2005). Aviation's Most Wanted: The Top 10 book of Winged Wonders, Lucky Landings and Other Aerial Oddities. Washington D.C.: Potomac Books. p. 320.
ISBN1-57488-674-6.
^Swopes, Bryan R.
"21 June 1972". thisdayinaviation.com. Retrieved 26 June 2014.