Patriarch of French aircraft empire dies

Serge Dassault, the billionaire businessman and politician who inherited an aviation empire from his World War I aircraft-designer father, has died. He was 93.

He succumbed Monday to heart failure in his company office just off the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, said a spokeswoman for Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault. He was chairman.

One of two sons born to aviation legend Marcel Dassault and his wife, Madeleine Minckes, Serge forged a name as a fierce guardian of the family’s businesses and an outspoken conservative politician.

Though Dassault expanded the family’s business interests into real estate, auction houses and media, he had to contend with critical comparisons to his powerful father. Marcel founded the family’s main company, Paris-based aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation, maker of the Rafale military plane and the Falcon corporate jet.

“France has lost a man who dedicated his life to developing a jewel of French industry,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement.

The Dassaults successfully rebuffed attempts by French President Francois Mitterrand to nationalize the company in the 1980s. Similarly, Serge had to battle restructuring attempts by then-President Jacques Chirac in the mid-1990s.

Dassault was born Serge Bloch in Paris on April 4, 1925. His father invented a type of propeller used by the French army during World War I. After starting his own eponymous aircraft manufacturer in 1936, Marcel was well-positioned to supply aircraft to the military after the outbreak of World War II.

After his release, he changed the family name to Dassault. Derived from the word for “assault” in French, it was also the alias used by Marcel’s brother, Gen. Paul Bloch, who fought in the French resistance. In 1950, Marcel converted to Catholicism.