Latécoère 631 accident at Atlantic Ocean, World, 1 Aug 1948 (F-BDRC)

Accident narrative

The crew was performing a flight from Fort-de-France, Martinique, to Paris, with an intermediate stop in Port-Etienne, Mauritania. While cruising by night over the Atlantic Ocean, about 1,920 km from Port-Etienne (now Nouadhibou), the aircraft crashed into the ocean in unknown circumstances at 2355LT. No message was sent by the crew. SAR operations were jointly conducted by several countries and few debris were found by the crew of USS Campbell three days later, on August 4. Unfortunately, none of the 52 occupants survived the crash of this six-engine aircraft christened 'Henri Guillaumet'. Crew: Corentin Kersual, pilot, Jean Goutay, copilot, Henri Gloux, radio navigator, Gontran Ronat, radio navigator, Henri Cabanes, navigator, Gaston Le Morvan, mechanic, Jean Coustaline, mechanic, Alfred Jaggi, mechanic, Mr. Arbelot, mechanic, Mr. Sgourdeos, steward, Mr. Meunier, steward.

Probable cause (official findings): Due to lack of concrete evidence, it was not possible to determine the exact cause of this tragedy. However, experts did not exclude the hypothesis of a serious technical issue sustained during flight.