To celebrate the proud history of French aviation, the Microsoft Flight Simulator team is also releasing today Local Legend 09: the Latécoère Model 631, an all-metal, high-wing, six-engine flying boat designed and manufactured by France’s Latécoère Corporation. This aircraft represents a great source of French national pride. The large, elegantly shaped Model 631 first took to the sky on November 4, 1942.
The Model 631 was the largest flying boat in the world for several years. Only the American Hughes H-4 Hercules “Spruce Goose,” which flew just once on November 2, 1947, and the British Saunders-Roe Princess, which took its maiden flight on August 22, 1952, were larger. As the last of the great trans-oceanic flying boat airliners, the Model 631 flew until the mid-1950s.
