The Morane-Saulnier MS.230 aircraft was the main elementary trainer for the French Armée de l’Air throughout the 1930s. Almost all French pilots flying for the Armée de l’Air at the outbreak of World War II had had their earliest flight training in this machine. Equivalent to the Stearman trainer in the United States Air Services and the de Havilland Tiger Moth in the British Royal Air Force.

It was a parasol wing monoplane with a metal structure covered with fabric except for the forward fuselage, which was metal covered. The instructor and pupil occupied tandem cockpits. The plane had a wide-track fixed landing gear that made it very stable in takeoff and landing. MS.230’s differed from other trainers of the time, which were mostly biplanes. It first flew in February 1929 and proved to be an excellent and stable machine which was very easy to fly. Numbers of MS.230s survived for many years after the war and became civilian trainers and civilian flying club aircraft. An MS.230 was used at the end of the movie The Blue Max as the “new monoplane” in which Lt. Stachel is killed during a test flight.