Roland Garros (aviator)
Eugène Adrien Roland Georges Garros (6 October 1888 – 5 October 1918) was a French pioneering aviator and fighter pilot. He achieved the first ever shooting-down of an aircraft by a fighter firing through a tractor propeller on 1 April 1915. He died in a plane crash in October 1918, but was survived by his wife and two children.
About Roland Garros (aviator) in brief
Eugène Adrien Roland Georges Garros (6 October 1888 – 5 October 1918) was a French pioneering aviator and fighter pilot during World War I and early days of aviation. In 1928, the Roland Garros tennis stadium was named in his memory; the French Open tennis tournament takes the name of Roland-Garros from the stadium in which it is held. He was a close friend of Ettore Bugatti and in 1913 became the first owner of Garros Bugatti Type 18, later christened Black Bess by its second owner, British racing driver Ivy Cummings. Garros achieved the first ever shooting-down of an aircraft by a fighter firing through a tractor propeller on 1 April 1915. On 18 April 1915, he came down in German territory where he failed to destroy his aircraft before being hit by ground fire.
He died in a plane crash in October 1918, but was survived by his wife and two children. He is buried at the Cimetière du Centre-Dieu-Drouot in Paris, next to his wife’s former home, where they had a son and two daughters. He also leaves behind a daughter and a son-in-law, both of whom died in the Second World War in the Battle of the Bulge. His son, Jean-Claude Garros, was the first French man to be awarded the Order of the Rising Sun. He went on to become one of the most successful pilots of the 20th century, flying more than 100,000 hours.
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