He was born in Bordeaux to Suzanne Meriochaud and Max Chassin, a notary. He studied at the
Collège de Blaye and the
Lycée de Bordeaux. He joined the
École navale [Naval School] in France in 1919, taking part in naval operations during the
Rif War and obtaining an engineering diploma in 1921. He graduated first from the
Aeronautics School at
Rochefort (Charente-Maritime) and entered the
Aeronavale [Naval Air Force] in 1926, also teaching a higher course in air navigation from 1927 as a young lieutenant and becoming a director there two years later. He was a keen rugby player and an excellent shot with a rifle. In 1935, he joined the
Air Force at the time of its creation and was one of the first to qualify from the Avignon-Puault parachuting school in 1936, where he became a captain. He became president of the Air Force shooting society and of the National Military Sports Council. Chassin piloted admiral
François Darlan's plane to Algiers on 5 November 1942, three days before the
Allied invasion. He actively participated in negotiations during the American landing and went to Morocco and
Dakar to rally French forces to the
Allies' effort. Made lieutenant-colonel in 1943, he was appointed director of military personnel of the air force. At the end of his term with SHAPE he benefited from permanent aircrew leave in April 1958. He was a leader - nicknamed
le grande B - of militant nationalist
Henri Martin's
Grande O plot (Martin was
le grande V) along with general Paul Cherrière (
le grande A) which ran from 1954 to 1958. The aim of the plot, after an uprising in Algeria and France - in which Chassin would seize the Saint-Étienne arms factory and take control of Lyon - was a Catholic, corporatist right-wing state inspired by Portugal's existing
Estado Novo. In January 1957, he succeeded general
Raoul Salan as head of the patronage committee of the
Association des combattants de l’union française (ACUF) [Association of French Union Combatants]. Because of his involvement in he counter-revolutionary
Opération Résurrection, his arrest was ordered under
Pierre Pflimlin's brief prime ministership and he went underground. He tried to mobilise French-Algerian partisans in opposition to the
Fourth Republic. In June 1958, he founded the
Mouvement populaire du 13-Mai party, which initially supported the return of
Charles de Gaulle; with anger and embarrassment at party differences, including ACUF members leaving, he resigned in September, passing control to
Robert Martel. He became interested in Georges Sauge's anti-communist ''Centre d'études supérieures de psychologie sociale
(CESPS) [Centre for Advanced Studies in Social Psychology], which advocated defence of the "Christian West", attending and speaking at meetings in 1959. In January 1960, having tried to reach Algeria during the right-wing insurrection known as La semaine des barricades'', he was arrested by the police but released shortly after. From 1961, his activism was cut short by serious illness but he continued as ACUF president until the beginning of 1966. That year, he co-signed an anti-communist declaration denouncing
Viet Cong guerrilla aggression in
South Vietnam.
Interest in ufology Chassin was passionate about the subject of
UFOs. In 1957, his dismissive opinions on the perceived threat to the West after the success of the
Soviet Union's
Sputnik satellite were widely reported. The following year, he provided the preface to
Aimé Michel's work
A propos des soucoupes volantes - about
flying saucers - in which he wrote: "We can therefore affirm that there really are, in the sky around us, mysterious objects" adding that their identification as distinct from enemy missiles was essential given the US reaction to Sputnik. From 1964 to 1970, he chaired the
:fr:Groupe d'étude des phénomènes aériens (GEPA) [Study Group of Aerial Phenomena], a private ufological association of five hundred members. - and Claude. After Marcelle Chassin died, he remarried to Micheline Poggi-Chalais in 1961. Chassin died on 18 August 1970 in Marseille after a long illness. ==Published works==