1876-1956 (French pilot's licence No. 11)
Henri Louis Marie Rougier was born in Marseille on October
28th, 1876. As a young man he raced bicycles and then turned to
automobiles. He became a dealer of Turcat-Méry cars, which were built
in his native town, and raced them and de Dietrich cars in several
Grands Prix during the 1902-1908 period. His best results were third
places in the 1906 Gordon Bennett Cup and in the 1906 Circuit des
Ardennes, where he also set the fastest lap.
He became interested in aviation in 1908 and bought a Voisin. He made
his first flights during the spring of 1909. He was very active at
meetings during 1909 and early 1910, setting a world altitude record at
190 m in Brescia in September 1909 and improving it to 270 m in Antwerp
two months later.
In May 1910, perhaps as a consequence of his accidents at the Florence
and Nice meetings, he announced that he would retire from flying in
order to concentrate on his car business. His last performance was at
the June 1910 Budapest meeting, where he only made a couple of short
flights. He set up a company together with Turcat-Méry for building
airplanes and engines. They cooperated with the Odier-Vendôme airplane
company, which built a series of mainly unsuccessful designs between
1909 and 1914.
He also returned to auto racing. His biggest claim to fame as auto
racer is winning the first-ever Monte Carlo Rally in 1911 in a
Turcat-Méry, but he continued to race cars until 1923. His last races
were the 1923 French and Italian Grands Prix, where he raced Gabriel
Voisin's streamlined cars. After WW1 he briefly built a small
number of Rougier cars, based on improved Turcat-Méry chassis.
He continued as a car dealer through the 1930s. After retiring he lived
in La Valette-du-Var near Toulon, still active in the food business. He
died from heart failure in Marseille in July 1956.
When the first French "Brevets de Pilote" where granted in
1910, Rougier received No. 11, based on the alphabetic order between
the first fourteen holders.
Henri Rougier participated in the following air race
meetings:
- Port-Aviation 23 May 1909
- Port-Aviation 30 May - 3 June 1909
- Reims 1909
- Brescia 1909
- Berlin 1909
- Frankfurt 1909
- Blackpool 1909
- Antwerp 1909
- Heliopolis 1910
- Nice 1910
- Budapest 1910