Manufacturer: Avions Cappe

Model: C.101

Name: none

Type: Transport

Date:

Status: Operational

Country: France

Service: Armée de l'air

Designation: Cappe C.101

In 1938, a Frenchman by the name of Augustin Cappe, who had started as an ironmonger in the northern town of Douvrin (Pas-de-Calais) and had then spent his whole life designing and building experimental motorbikes, bikes and all manners of machines, set up the Avions Cappe company and started work on his first aircraft, the C.100. This was a small elegant twin-engine two-seater that appealed so much to the king of nearby Belgium, Albert 1er, that the latter offered to purchase the prototype for his personal use.

Cappe's next design was a medium-sized 10-passenger twin-engine transport which he destined to commercial use, being approached by Belgian airline SABENA over a possible order for 10 aircraft. The Cappe C.101 was a sleek and beautiful design for its time that represented a major leap forward compared to most of its French equivalents.

However, the outbreak of the Second World War put an end to Cappe's efforts, and the only two airframes he had built were taken over by the French Armée de l'Air as staff transports. Confiscated by the Germans but apparently never used, they were found in a hangar after the war and drafted briefly at the Amiens base after being refitted with radial engines.

Unfortunately, Augustin Cappe had died in prison in 1942 and had no male offspring to take over his activities. With no spares or company documents left to service them, the aircraft decayed rapidly, being both scrapped in 1950.

The Cappe C.101 was drawn from bits and pieces. The elements that compose it are from various French aircraft of the time but I couldn't say exactly which is which.

Augustin Cappe's story is of course entirely fictitious, but his name was inspired by my great-grand-mother's, Augustine Cappe!

• wonderful and imaginative (Brian da Basher)