Max Holste

Max Holste left Nice in 1925 (aged 12) to join Courbevoie. His father had died and his godfather - a volunteer in the First World War, assigned to the REP and C27 squadrons - recognized in his godson the symptoms of the "piloting virus". The Great War pilot passed on all his knowledge to Max who, at the age of eighteen, joined the Naval Aviation, at the Rochefort school. At Orly, where he would then spend five years, Max Holste developed a passion for equipment. In 1934, he studied and designed his first aircraft - a low-wing, two-seater tandem monoplane, powered by a 40 hp Salmson - the production of which was interrupted following the bankruptcy of the carpentry workshop in which he built it[1].

After his military service, he worked successively at the design offices of Farman in Boulogne-Billancourt and Amiot in Colombes where he participated in the development of the Amiot 354. He built a certain number of aircraft privately, notably, for the Deutsch de la Meurthe Cup, the MH 20, an aircraft which made its first flight on July 25, 1941[2].

Shortly after the Liberation of France, Max Holste established his design office in Laval, and began the construction of the MH-52 with Vincent André from 12 January 1945[3]. As soon as the war was over, Max Holste began the study and construction of the MH 52 for the Borel Establishments under the Borand brand, a two-seater training aircraft which was to be ordered by the State.

In September 1946, the young engineer created the Société anonyme des avion Max Holste, a company which he established in Reims at the very beginning of the 1950s.
MH.1521M Broussard

In 1951, the time came for the MH 152, an observation aircraft. It was with another aircraft that the Reims-based firm found success: the MH 1521 Broussard[4], produced until 1961. Then Max Holste launched into the development of a final aircraft, the MH 250 Super-Broussard, an aircraft whose prototype took flight on May 20, 1959 and whose construction program was taken over by Nord-Aviation, which made it the Nord 260 and then the Nord 262.

Dismissed from the company of which he was president by the American Cessna, which had become the majority shareholder, Max Holste went into exile in Brazil where he built the prototype of a commercial aircraft, the Bandeirante, a twin-engine aircraft of which some five hundred were produced by the company which has since become Embraer[5].

Max Holste returned to France to finish his life. An officer of the Legion of Honor and recipient of the Aeronautics Medal, he died there in anonymity in 1998. Max Holste is buried in the Hyères cemetery (Var).

Interesting information on: https://www.mh-1521.fr/