Aviation Photography - Château de Villemoleix

Château de Villemoleix
Barbeyrat, Chambon-sur-Voueize
France August 2025

Hurel-Dubois HD.321 (n°01) beside Château de Villemolei.

Hurel-Dubois produced a family of aircraft, each having a thin wing and high aspect ratio. This original concept enables the aircraft to fly for extended periods with great stability, as well as having short take-off and landing characteristics. After the HD.10 was a single-engine, single-seater prototype and was followed by the twin-engine HD.31, HD.32, HD.321 and HD.34.

In 1955, Air France ordered 23 HD.321s, a stretched version of the HD.32 equipped with more powerful engines. Air France unfortunately cancelled its order to purchase the Vickers Viscount. The two experimental prototype HD.321s already built were assigned to the Armee de l Air (French Air Force) ET1/61 transport squadron until 1957.

In October 1956, HD.32 (F-WHHA, later F-BHHA n°02) was upgraded to HD.321 standard. The Brazilian Air Force evaluated the aircraft. While testing the HD.321s manoeuvrability with only the left engine running and flaps extended the pilot lost control. It crashed into Guanabara Bay, near Rio de Janeiro.

The Hurel-Dubois HD.321 (n°01) prototype was test flown at the Hurel-Dubois factory in Villacoublay. Assigned to the French Counter-Espionage Service (Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage - SDECE) it was damaged in 1959 during a night landing. It was soon repaired and made ready to continue its development testing.
Groupe Aérien Mixte 56 (GAM.56) named "Vaucluse", was, and still is, an Armee de l Air unit tasked air support for French special operations forces and intelligence, now operating from Base Aérienne 105 Évreux-Fauville. In 1960 the GAM.56 aircrew were flying from Base Aérienne 103 Châteauroux-Déols, and continuing practising night-landings when on May 10, 1960 they contacted the owners of the Château de Villemoleix near Chambon-sur-Voueize in central France saying they wanted to land on their private grass landing strip. The château owner’s family despite it being four in the morning were outside to see the event. They expected the HD.321 to demonstrate its impressive short-landing capabilities without mis-hap. What they actually saw were just three lights in the dark marking the landing strip when the large aircraft attempted to land. Régis Alajouanine was only nine years old when he saw it touch down, brake but then slide across the wet grass runway and overrun off the end, hitting a power-line pole and coming to rest nose down in a pond. Fortunately there were no injuries apart from the aircrew’s pride. Later, the aircraft was deemed irreparable, the engines and other valuable equipment was removed. The owner of Château de Villemoleix was then able to buy (at a discount its assumed) the remains of the aircraft. This he did, as he thought his children would happily use it as a den. With furniture added, it was used for parties with their friends. The wings were removed to reside in a barn. Remarkably 65 years later it is still in the field used by their horses to where it was dragged after the accident.

Hurel-Dubois HD.321 (n°01) Armee de l Air.

Over the last 60 years there has been a lot of deterioration, with some parts being removed for other purposes.

Personal Note:
Around 1976 I read an article in Aviation News about the 1960 HD.321 landing accident. Their intrepid journalists had apparently found the aircraft where it is now, beside the Château de Villemoleix. What intrigued me was they wrote it was found after their research and they would not reveal where the aircraft had been discovered. A mystery to me which lasted many decades. It was after the advent of the Internet and Google Earth that enabled me to do my research and visit the location.