| Birth Date: | May 22, 1906 |
| Birth Place: | Saint-Saëns, Seine-Maritime |
| Death Place: | La Ferrière-Bochard, Orne |
| Serviceyears: | 1929 – 1946 |
| Rank: | Colonel |
| Battles: | World War II |
Paul Badré (May 22, 1906 – August 10, 2000) was a French aviator and aeronautical engineer. He was a member of the Resistance and the Intelligence service of the French Air Force during World War II.
Paul Badré was the elder brother of Jean Badré, bishop of the Catholic Church. After graduating from Polytechnique in 1928,[1] he joined the French Air Force and obtained his pilot's license the following year.[2] In 1935, he became a test pilot at the Villacoublay Air Base.
After the French defeat in June 1940, he flew to Algeria. He returned to France in August and was assigned to the armistice commission until January 1941. He then moved with his family to Bellerive-sur-Allier (a village near Vichy), where he worked for an underground intelligence service set up by Colonel Ronin.[3]
A link with England was established through Wilfred Dunderdale and F. W. Winterbotham. Badré passed on information by radio. He was known by the pseudonym Beard (an anagram of his name). Between 1941 and 1942, he collected and transmitted information from Paris, where engineer Robert Keller was able to spy on telephone communications of Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Gestapo high-ranking officials. Beard sent information about Operation Barbarossa to the Allies. Threatened by the Gestapo, he flew to Algeria after Operation Torch. Robert Keller was arrested in December 1942, being denounced to the Nazis by French police chief René Bousquet.[4]
Badré was sent to London in February 1943, where he worked for six months with MI6 and colonel Passy's BCRA. He returned to Algeria in July and commanded a French air force bombing squadron in the Mediterranean until the summer of 1944.[5] On August 1, 1945, after the Liberation, he was the first Frenchman to fly a jet aircraft (a german Messerschmitt Me 262) on national territory, during the inauguration of the Brétigny-sur-Orge flight test center.[6]
He left the army in 1946 and became an executive for the aeronautics industry (as director of production at Sud-Ouest in the 1950s and technical advisor to the president of Sud Aviation in the 1960s). He was an honorary member of the French Air and Space Academy.[7]