The Latham 47 was designed to meet a French Navy requirement for a long-range flying boat with a transatlantic capability.

The Type 47 was a large biplane powered by two Farman 12We engines mounted in tandem below the upper wing.

On 6 June 1928 the Latham 47.02 was tasked to help search for the airship Italia which earlier on 25 May 1928 had crashed on pack ice in the Arctic Ocean just north of Spitsbergen.

The aircraft, piloted by Norwegian Leif Dietrichson and Frenchman René Guilbaud, picked up the explorer Roald Amundsen and a colleague at Bergen.

On 18 June the aircraft left Tromsø, Norway to fly across the Barents Sea; it disappeared without a trace until, on 31 August the same year, the torn-off port float was found off the coast of Troms and, in October, a large gasoline tank was found on Haltenbanken.