Latecoere 300

The Latecoere 300 is a French flying boat built by the Latecoere company, first flown in 1931 and developed to operate transatlantic airmail services for the French airline Aeropostale and later Air France Transatlantique, linking France with South America across the South Atlantic. One of the large four-engine flying boats of the pioneering era of transatlantic airmail, it helped establish scheduled long-distance ocean airmail routes years before regular transatlantic passenger flight became practical, and its lead aircraft was named Croix du Sud, Southern Cross, after the constellation visible on the South Atlantic crossing.