Société Pour L ' Aviation et ses Dérivés SPAD ( " Société Pour L ' Aviation et ses Dérivés " ) was a French aircraft manufacturer active between 1911 and 1921 . Its SPAD S . XIII biplane was the most popular French fighter airplane in World War I . Deperdussin . The company was set up in 1911 as Aéroplanes Deperdussin , becoming the Société de Production des Aéroplanes Deperdussin in 1912 . Its founder Armand Deperdussin ( born 1867 ) had been a travelling salesman and a cabaret singer in Liège and Brussels , before making his fortune in the silk business . Deperdussin became fascinated by aviation in 1908 , and in 1909 he established an aircraft works at Laon . Deperdussin himself was not a designer , but he hired the talented engineer Louis Béchereau ( 1880 – 1970 ) as technical director . Béchereau would be responsible for Deperdussin and SPAD aircraft designs thereafter . The first Deperdussin aircraft was an unsuccessful canard , but their next aircraft , the Type A , was an immediate success , and led to a series of closely related monoplanes . Similar to Louis Blériot ' s Blériot XI , and the Nieuport 4 , this was a layout popular with both military and civilian clients in the period before the First World War . The Deperdussin TT was a considerable export success , and 63 were built by the Lebedev company in Russia . The model was purchased in small numbers by foreign clients , and Deperdussin aircraft were also built at Highgate in London by the British Deperdussin Company , run by D Lawrence Santoni and John Cyril Porte . From 1911 onward Deperdussin produced aircraft from their new factory at Grenelle , in the suburbs of Paris . They also established factories at Le Havre and Juvisy to build motor boats and waterplanes , as well as three flying schools . The company also produced a number of notable racing aircraft , including the groundbreaking Deperdussin Monocoque , which won the 1912 and 1913 Gordon Bennett Trophy races , set several world speed records and was the first airplane to exceed . The first Schneider Trophy competition , held on 16 April 1913 at Monaco , was won by a Deperdussin floatplane at an average speed of 45 . 75 mph ( about 73 km / h ) . In 1913 , Armand Deperdussin was arrested on charges of fraud . He had developed expensive tastes , and , in addition to funding competitions such as the Gordon Bennett Cup , he entertained lavishly . The trading arm of the Comptoir Industrial et Colonial bank claimed that he funded this by fraudulently borrowing from them using forged receipts from his silk business as security . He remained incarcerated until he was brought to trial in 1917 . Although it was claimed that he used much of the money to develop France ' s aviation expertise , he was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison , but as a concession for first offenders he was reprieved ( " sursis " ) and released immediately . Deperdussin never recovered from the incident and committed suicide in 1924 . SPAD . After Armand Deperdussin ' s bankruptcy in 1913 the company went into administration and the name was changed to Société Provisoire des Aéroplanes Deperdussin , the first name to use the SPAD acronym . With Deperdussin ' s disgrace the cash flow stopped and the future of the SPAD company was endangered . A consortium led by Louis Blériot bought up the company ' s assets in 1913 . The new company was renamed the Société Pour L ' Aviation et ses Dérivés which allowed the retention of the SPAD acronym . The first Béchereau - SPAD designs were unusual two - seat biplanes which attempted to provide a forward - firing machine gun in a tractor configuration aircraft . The pilot sat behind the airscrew , as in a tractor design , but the gunner was seated in a nacelle , or pulpit , in front of the propeller , attached to the landing gear . These designs , the SPAD A - series of models A . 1 , A . 2 A . 3 , and A . 4 , were built in very small numbers , around sixty each for French and Russian air forces , and were neither popular nor successful . The subsequent development of an effective machine gun synchronizer rendered this unusual configuration unnecessary . Other early Béchereau designs for SPAD were generally unsuccessful . The SE , a large twin - engine biplane bomber , performed well on trials , but it was not ordered due to the greater promise of Béchereau ' s next design . Béchereau ' s first real success was the SPAD S . VII , which superficially resembled a smaller , neater A . 2 , without the forward gunner ' s nacelle . Developed from the SPAD V , of which 268 were ordered but none certainly built as SPAD Vs , the SPAD S . VII was a single - seat tractor biplane fighter of simple and robust design powered by the new Hispano - Suiza water - cooled V - 8 engine . Compared to earlier fighters , when the SPAD VII appeared in 1916 it seemed a heavy and unmanoeuvrable aircraft , but pilots soon learned to take advantage of its speed and strength . Some 3 , 500 SPAD S . VIIs were built in France , 120 in Britain , and 100 in Russia during the First World War , although many more had been ordered from a new factory in Yaroslavl , which was not completed until after the Russian Civil War . Béchereau ' s subsequent wartime designs followed the basic outline of the SPAD S . VII . The two - seaters , the SPAD XI and SPAD XVI , were built in moderate numbers , around 1 , 000 of each type , but two - seater SPADs were much less successful than the rival Breguet 14 ( 5 , 500 built ) and Salmson 2 ( 3 , 200 built ) . Single - seat developments of the SPAD 7 were more successful . The SPAD XII was a minor variant , the first to use the geared Hispano - Suiza V - 8 engine , which allowed it to be armed with a 37 mm Hotchkiss cannon ( " moteur - canon " ) firing through the propeller hub . Tested successfully by ace Georges Guynemer , the general conclusion on the SPAD XII is that only very skillful pilots could exploit its powerful armament . Accordingly , although 300 were ordered , most were completed as normal SPAD fighters , with possibly one or two of the SPAD XII aircraft even serving with the US Air Service in France . The SPAD S . XIII was essentially the SPAD S . VII redesigned around a more powerful geared drive Hispano - Suiza engine , as used on the SPAD XII . This was produced in even greater numbers : the exact total is uncertain , with figures from 7 , 300 to 8 , 472 being quoted by different sources . Single - seat SPADs were flown by many ace pilots , including Italy ' s Count Francesco Baracca and the United States Army Air Service ' s Capt . Eddie Rickenbacker , with 34 and 26 victories respectively . Georges Guynemer was , as has already been noted , highly successful with the SPAD S . XII , as well as the SPAD S . VII and SPAD S . XIII . At the end of the First World War , all 1 , 152 single - seat fighters on the strength of French front line air units were SPAD 13s . It is reported that nearly 900 SPAD XIII fighters were eventually to end up in American service . Although SPAD had been successful , and had produced very large profits , the very high profits in aircraft manufacturing had led to increased competition during the war . In 1916 , for example , over 98 % of the SPAD fighters built had come from factories owned by SPAD and Blériot . By 1918 , with large industrial syndicates competing for contracts , this had fallen to 43 % . SPAD designs accounted for around 20 % of French aircraft produced during World War One . Louis Blériot ' s 1913 investment was a very profitable one . Blériot - SPAD . Post - war the company became Blériot - SPAD . The first of its designs to be known by this name was Bécherau ' s elegant monocoque SPAD 20 biplane . First flown in 1918 , the SPAD 20 was not delivered until 1920 . The return of peace meant orders were small ; only 93 were built . The return of peace also meant that the company had to face the problem of dealing with its liabilities under the excess profits tax of 1 July 1916 . As modified in 1917 , this imposed an 80 % tax rate on almost all " excess profits " . The calculation and collection of the tax was a controversial issue , and very large amounts were still outstanding as late as 1940 , when the German occupation rendered the whole question irrelevant . With the future uncertain , SPAD was fully incorporated into the Blériot organisation in 1921 , and the company effectively disappeared , although a number of Blériot types were marked as SPADs .