Dieudonné Costes, born November 4, 1892 in Septfonds (Tarn-et-Garonne) and died May 18, 1973 in Paris 7th, is a French aviator, famous in particular for the first non-stop crossing of the South Atlantic in 1927, then for the first non-stop crossing of the North Atlantic in the east-west direction, with Maurice Bellonte, in 1930.

It was as an airline pilot first at Latécoère on the Toulouse-Casablanca route, then at Air Union on the Paris-London route that Dieudonné Costes began his career, before becoming a test pilot at Breguet and putting to his credit numerous raids and records2.

Dieudonné Costes rests in the Parisian cemetery of Passy, ​​not far from other celebrities from the world of aviation: Henri Farman, Maurice Bellonte and the aircraft manufacturer Marcel Dassault.
Biography
Youth

Born into a provincial bourgeoisie family (his parents owned a small straw hat factory) established in Septfonds, then in Caussade, Dieudonné Costes showed himself to be “more intelligent than studious” at school3. The young man attended high school in Toulouse, then the school of arts and crafts in Aix-en-Provence, which he left at the age of 17 and a half, without obtaining the diploma. He entered working life as a mechanic. Passionate about emerging aviation, he got his parents to finance flying lessons and obtained his civil license (no. 1046) at the Blériot school in Étampes in September 1912, then tried his luck as a traveling pilot by buying with three associates a Blériot XI in the hope of earning a living in air shows. The company fizzled out after a few meetings when their device gave up the ghost. Costes then decided to join the army in the 2nd group of Aeronautical Troops3 in October 1913 with the aim of becoming a military pilot. A simple soldier, he suffered disappointments by being transferred to general service despite his civilian pilot's license and found himself assigned as a corporal mechanic to the Sissonne camp. He was finally selected to take the military pilot's certificate tests, but the First World War broke out and the certificate tests were canceled.
The ace of aces of the Eastern Front
Photo taken in 1919 representing the pilot Dieudonné Costes (seated), surrounded by his teammates Maurice Lashermes (left) and Paul Andrillon (right)

Dieudonné Costes then served as a mechanic in the V 24 squadron and made his first war flights as a machine gunner. Slightly injured in the hand on December 22, 1914 by a fragment of DCA which became infected and caused him to be hospitalized, he was reassigned on April 3, 1915 to the MF 44 squadron, from where he could take the military pilot tests ( no 1185) on Maurice Farman on July 10, 1915 at the Chartres military aviation school (future air base 122 Chartres-Champhol). He was assigned there as a monitor, before finally returning to a squadron at the front, MF 55, in October 1915.

A month later, he left for the Army of the Orient recruited by one of his former student pilots, Captain Victor Denain, who locally directed the aviation there. Costes will reveal himself as the best pilot, being assigned to several squadrons and ending up in the fighter where he becomes with the rank of second lieutenant an "ace", with six aerial victories, several of which won in collaboration with his Maurice teammates. Lashermes and Paul Andrillon. He is decorated with the Croix de Guerre with 7 palms and 2 silver-gilt stars, the military medal and the Knight's Cross of the Legion of Honor4.
First steps in civil aviation

Demobilized in September 1919, Dieudonné Costes lived in Toulouse and was immediately hired as a pilot for the Latécoère lines company, operating air connections between Toulouse and Morocco. He was expelled by Pierre-Georges Latécoère in November 1920 for trafficking cocaine from Spain to Toulouse, which earned him a suspended prison sentence by the Toulouse criminal court in May. 19215. Hired by the company Aéro Transport Ernoul where he met his friend the pilot Paul Codos, he was again unemployed when it went bankrupt in Mars 1922.

He then experienced a difficult period and received financial support from his family, until September 1923 when he was hired by the Air Union company in Paris. It will carry out Paris-Brussels air connections on Blériot-SPAD S.33, then Paris-London on twin-engine Farman GOLIATH . It was on this occasion that he met Maurice Bellonte, who became his flying mechanic.
Chief Pilot of the Breguet company
Photo representing aviator Dieudonné Costes on the right and his navigator Captain Georges Rignot on the left, in 1927, in front of their Breguet 19 "Bidon" no. 1685 grand Raid aircraft.

During the summer of 1925, Dieudonné Costes was hired among the receiving pilots of the Breguet company, led by the

Double spy of the Allies during the Second World War

Little by little withdrew from piloting after this exploit, Costes leveraged his worldwide fame for advertising purposes and made a fortune, which he invested in creating the Mont-Dore ski resort which opened its doors in 1936. Alongside his life as a businessman, since 1936 he has also been a director of the Hispano-Suiza engine manufacturing company, responsible for commercial matters. This position allowed him to travel to Germany where he could observe the aeronautical potential, which he informed the French government of, which earned him a letter of congratulations from the vice-president of the council Édouard Daladier4.

When war was declared, then a lieutenant colonel in the reserve, he was left on special assignment at Hispano-Suiza which then produced the engines equipping the Morane-Saulnier MS.406 and Dewoitine D.520 fighter planes. He is charged by Prince Stanislas Poniatowski, director of the company, with the creation of a new underground production unit planned in a former quarry in Jonzac, in Charente-Maritime. He set about the task in February 1940 but the German offensive of May 10 and the debacle of the French army did not give him the opportunity to carry it out10.

Refugee in the free zone at the armistice, he was charged by his company with supervising the question of the liquidation of war stocks from factories in the Paris region for the benefit of the occupying German troops. This function earned Costes the granting of a permanent Ausweiss (pass) allowing him to cross the demarcation line. At the end of 1940, Costes was approached by the Abwehr (German army intelligence service) who sought to recruit him as an informant in aeronautics circles because his worldwide celebrity opened many doors for him.

Costes declined the offer but reconsidered it in the spring of 1941 when he was convinced of Germany's imminent entry into war against the USSR, of which he was warned by a Lithuanian friend who informed him of the military preparations for the border. He is convinced that the war will soon become global with US involvement expected to follow. Having no doubt about American military power, he is convinced that the war can only be lost by Germany. He will therefore seek to work for the allies and will accept the offer from the Abwehr, to which he will deliver unimportant information on French aviation in North Africa to gain the trust of his interlocutors. They will decide to send Costes to the United States where he will have to inform them of the progress of the American aeronautical industry.

The trip took place in September 1942 when Costes and his wife left for Spain, a neutral country, where they were to embark for Argentina and from there reach the United States. Upon his arrival in Madrid, Costes contacted the military attaché of the American embassy, ​​Colonel Charles Stevens, and put himself at the service of the allies. Following passport problems, he actually reached Argentina in February 1943 then reached the United States the following June, where he was immediately welcomed by agents of John Edgar Hoover's FBI in charge at the time. counter-espionage10.

The collaboration with the FBI was stormy from the outset, Hoover not trusting Costes, who settled in New York and was finally entrusted with the mission of transmitting unimportant false information to the Germans, via letters that he sends to mailboxes in Spain. Frustrated by the lack of attention paid to his services, in September 1943 Costes asked the French authorities to leave for North Africa to serve in the air force, but the American authorities blocked the request because his position is finally being taken seriously. At this point in the war, a new organization centralizing American counter-espionage, the Joint Security Control (JSC), realized the value of the contact offered by Costes which would then be used for a poisoning operation, called COCASE. From February 1944, Costes will be one of the sources used to distil "true-false" information of greater interest to the Germans, and particularly for a poisoning operation to deceive the Germans about the location of the landing in France – known as “Operation Bodyguard”.

This time the information was of great interest to the Abwehr, which decided to send a radio operator to Costes, a Frenchman named Maurice Cavaillez who, like him, reached the United States via Spain in April 1944. However, Cavalez has no desire