Jacques Santi (Tanguy), Christian Marin (Laverdure) et José Luis de Villalonga.
We also see the young Marlène Jobert at the start of her career, in season 1.
Broadcasting :
Broadcast in France from September 16, 1967, until March 3, 1970, first on ORTF, then on the second channel in color.
The series was later released in DVD form with the complete episodes of all three seasons.
Titles :
This very famous series of the ORTF (at the time when there was only one channel in France) deeply marked the opinion and without any doubt was at the origin of many vocations. The story itself is very classic, taken from the comics of Jean-Michel Charlier and Albert Uderzo. Nice pilots, the serious Tanguy and the zany Laverdure, villains in shambles who seek only to seize the last fruits of French technology, supported by spies to whom Laverdure cannot avoid succumbing to their charm.
But this series made it possible to see for the first time many aircraft in service or very new at the time, such as the prototype of the Breguet 941, star of one of the episodes. The Air Force and the Navy provided generous support. The entire inventory is present in the series, including the Tahiti-based Neptunes. During several episodes, we also travel to Polynesia, South America, Belgium, Spain or the Algerian desert.
You can also see number of helicopters: Bell 47s, Sikorsky H-34s and also a few Alouette IIs and Alouette IIIs, the ones that interest us here!
At the very end of episode 9 appears the Alouette II F-MJAP (MSN 1717) of the Gendarmerie with a beautiful shot of takeoff. We then find her at the start of the next episode, where she occupies a good ten minutes of the 25 in this episode. And she reappears again in episode 12. Curiously, she turns into an Air Force machine (green) with a yellow code (343-ME? or MF? , MSN 1743) while we follow her in flight, then she becomes Gendarmerie blue again! Probably a thoughtlessness of the mixing team who mixed the sequences...
SEASON 2 - EPISODE 9
Tanguy is lost in the Algerian desert, and it is an Alouette II (unidentified, but from the Air Force), with no apparent code, which allows him to be found. She wears sand filters on the air inlets. The scenes were filmed from the base of Bou-Sfer, the last French base in Algeria preserved a few years after the independence of the country in 1962. The base closed shortly after this filming.
SEASON 3 - EPISODE 5
We can see a scene of a few minutes with the Alouette II 166-RU (MSB 1308) wearing the insignia of the CIEH Maurienne which takes away Tanguy in an episode which takes place in Salon-de-Provence within the Patrouille de France display team.
SEASON 3 - EPISODES 6 and 7
We can see several sequences with “29”-serialed Alouette III Marine (MSN 1029) on the aircraft carrier Foch. Tanguy and Laverdure are winched out of the sea by the Alouette after an ejection. We find the Alouette even longer in episode 7, which is the continuation of the adventure on the Foch, during which the Alouette drops our heroes on the coast where they are captured in front of their helicopter by spies.
SEASON 3 - EPISODE 8
We are in the Alps this time. Our friends embark in Air Force's 68-RZ Alouette II. We can note some beautiful scenes in flight. Then, at the end, two Alouette IIs precede a group of several Sikorsky H-34s bringing troops to arrest bad guys… We can make out an Alouette II of the Gendarmerie, which seems to be F-MJAW.
