Note from Mr. Clément (Super Control) to Mr. Cadiou regarding Mr. Mahoudeau's accident

In this document

This short internal note, dated 3 July 1963 (typed date confirmed by the handwritten mention "3-07-63"), is addressed by Mr. Clément, from Citroën's Super Control department, to Mr. Cadiou, from the B.E.A. (Automotive Design Office) p. 13.

Clément transmits two attachments to Cadiou:

• the photocopy of the report from the "Control Service" of S.N.E.C.M.A. concerning the accident of Mr. Mahoudeau;
• the photocopy of the holding response already sent by Citroën.

He concludes by asking Cadiou for "the elements for a more explicit response" p. 13, a sign that Citroën had not yet responded definitively to SNECMA regarding the causes of the incident.

The document also bears handwritten annotations whose precise meaning remains uncertain: a number "24.75" written diagonally, and a marginal note "E.C. Mr Crauche" followed by illegible elements. These indications do not allow for any usable information to be drawn from them.

Finally, a previous or subsequent page shows through the paper in negative, revealing fragments evoking Villaroche, a "Director", and Mr. P. Bertrand — but this text, visible only by transparency, belongs to another document and cannot be considered as part of the content of this page.

Context

S.N.E.C.M.A. (National Company for the Study and Construction of Aviation Engines) was then operating a test centre in Villaroche, in Seine-et-Marne. In the summer of 1963, an incident involving a DS 19 belonging to a SNECMA employee, Mr. Mahoudeau, had triggered an exchange of correspondence between the two companies regarding a possible steering defect.

This note is part of this exchange: it attests that Citroën, via its Super Control department, was seeking to obtain additional internal expertise before officially responding to SNECMA.

At this date, Paul Magès, who joined Citroën in August 1925, had been working there for nearly twenty years as deputy head of Super Control — the very department from which this note originates (Draft letter from Paul Magès to Mr. Sarre and interview plan of 11 May 1969); he was then, since the presentation of the DS on 6 October 1955, the engineer in charge of the hydropneumatic suspension and steering of this model.

Archivist's perspective

This document is a liaison piece rather than a technical report: it contains no analysis of the incident itself, but it documents the administrative circuit followed by the case at Citroën p. 13.

It allows the Mahoudeau file to be chronologically situated between the first alert from SNECMA, at the end of June 1963, as in the Letter from P. Mahoudeau (SNECMA) to Mr. Clément, and subsequent technical analyses, such as the Handwritten notes criticizing a SNECMA report.

It seems that Mr. Cadiou, from the B.E.A., was solicited as a technical liaison capable of providing a reasoned response to an important client — SNECMA — whose incident potentially touched on the reliability of the DS 19 steering, a subject to which Paul Magès, then deputy head of the Super Control department from which this note originates, was likely no stranger, even if his name does not appear explicitly in this document.