At the end of World War II the French aircraft industry was in disarray, having been commandeered by the German government to produce mostly German designed aircraft and aero-engines. To develop an indigenous gas turbine aero-engine the French government acquired the services of a large contingent of German design engineers and technicians. Some of these engineers formed the Atelier Technique Aéronautique de Rickenbach, led by Dr.
Hermann Östrich who had been developing gas turbine engines at BMW. By September the team was housed at the Dornier factory at Rickenbach near
Lindau on
Lake Constance and had largely completed design of the ATAR 101 by October 1945. A contract for development of the engine was awarded in December 1945, a stipulation being that all manufacturing was to be carried out in France. Communications between the ATAR group and SNECMA, the newly formed nationalised engine manufacturer, proved to be difficult and the design team soon moved to
Decize on the river
Loire, to improve communications with SNECMA and was renamed ''Aeroplanes G.Voisin, Groupe 'O' ''. Manufacture of components for the ATAR 101 V1 commenced at SNECMA plants in May 1946 and the first run was carried out on 26 March 1948. The early engines were constructed from ordinary commercial steels and suffered from very short running lives, not achieving a 150-hour endurance test until 1951. As more exotic materials were introduced the durability and reliability of test engines improved dramatically and on 10 November 1950 the first flight-ready ATAR 101A flew in the fuselage of a
Martin B-26G Marauder (F-WBXM). Steady progress was made by Groupe O, but they were soon absorbed into SNECMA during a massive re-organisation of the nationalised company in June 1950. Other aircraft joined the flight test program, including two
SNCASE S.E.161 Languedoc airliners, a
SNCASO S.O.30P Bretagne (F-WAYD),
SNCASE S.E.2060 Armagnac and a
Gloster Meteor F.4 (RA491). The ATAR 101 was steadily developed with improvements to materials, aerodynamic design, compressors, combustion chambers and turbines resulting in the first commercially viable engine, the ATAR 101B, which, along with later marques, powered the
SNCASO S.O.4050 Vautour interceptor/bomber/reconnaissance aircraft. Improved models continued to be developed throughout the 1950s culminating in the 101G with after-burning, which laid the ground work for the later ATAR 8 and ATAR 9. ==Variants==