Avions Amiot

The Minister of Defence granted a contract to SECM (French: Société d’emboutissage et de constructions mécaniques), owned by the Wertheimer brothers, Paul and Pierre, together with Félix Amiot.

In 1934, controversially, the Lorraine company, then known as SGA, was sold to Amiot-SECM and Marcel Bloch for a fraction of the price the government had paid five years earlier.

As well as SGA, and the original SECM-Amiot works at Le Bourget, Amiot controlled the CAN (French: Chantiers aéronautiques de Normandie) at Cherbourg.

With the fall of Paris in June 1940, Amiot and 3000 of his workers headed south, to the unoccupied zone, where he established a new factory at Marseilles.

During the war, Amiot co-operated with the German occupiers to protect his interests, and those of the exiled Wertheimers, then working in the United States.