Félix Amiot

He became famous for designing and producing Missile Boat (fast attack craft) type "Combattante" which he sold worldwide.

The aircraft industry was very interested in the development of this technology; it attracted the attention of Louis Loucheur, who was, at the time, Secretary of Armaments.

Pierre Wertheimer, owner of Chanel and Bourjois, financed Amiot's first company: "La Société d'Emboutissage et de Constructions Mécaniques" (SECM), based on the Avenue des Ternes, in Paris.

In 1919, the SECM left the workshop at avenue des Ternes to settle down in a brand new factory in Colombes, in the close suburbs of Paris.

To avoid bankruptcy, the French State authorized Amiot and Marcel Bloch to buy back the bankrupt company.

– August 1938: the prototype Amiot 340 was chosen by General Vuillemin, Chief of Air Force Staff, on a diplomatic visit to Berlin.

However, the planes mass production was affected by Amiot's bad relations with the Air Ministry, and the constant technical changes required by the Service Technique de l'Aéronautique.

They asked Amiot to take care of their assets and business based in France and handed over to him all their SECM shares and a majority stake in Chanel and Bourjois Perfumes.

On June 13, 1940, the French army, in violation of free city status, ordered the destruction by fire of the Colombes workshops.

Secondly, to enroll everyone who would ask for work at the factory without any discrimination: STO objectors, resistants, Communists, or French Jews who were in hiding such as Marie-Claire Servan-Schreiber.

[4] Amiot reconstituted a factory in Marseille and employed numerous workers who wanted to escape the STO (forced labor in Germany).

Unfortunately, the network was dismantled in May 1943, leading to the arrest by the Gestapo of Yves Maurice, head of design and close collaborator to Amiot, in Perpignan.

Amiot had held back the management of the Wertheimer's factories, in spite of Coco Chanel's attempts to take control of the perfumes bearing her name, helped by the relations she had with the Occupation German authorities.

After WWII Amiot dedicated himself to the reconstruction of his factory in Cherbourg, which became the "Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie" (CMN) developing into shipbuilding.

In 1948, the CMN launched their first ship: the trawler "Annie" for the "Chalutiers Cherbourgeois" ' fleet, taken back by Félix Amiot in 1946.

He was also interested in the sailing market, which started booming and produced the Maïca's series, long-distance yachts using glued laminated timber technology, which had been designed by English naval architects John Illingworth and Angus Primrose, it became famous during the Fastnet race.

A skillful businessman, Amiot conceived La Combattante-class, a missile-boat which was exported all over the world thanks to good market analysis.

At his death on 21 December 1974, Félix Amiot left a worldwide recognized company employing more than 1,400 workers with booking orders for the 4 years to come.