Women in Early Aviation

omen had been involved in aviation, I I in one way or another, since Elisabeth Thible of Lyons, France, went aloft in a hot air balloon in 1784. By 1834, some twenty-two women had piloted their own balloons on the continent of Europe. In 1886, Mary H. Myers set an altitude record of over 20,000 feet (without oxygen) in a balloon above the fields of rural Pennsylvania, and in 1903, Cuban born Aida de Acosta became the first woman to pilot a pow­ered machine in flight in a dirigible over Paris, France.

The first woman to earn a pilot’s certifi­cate anywhere in the world was Raymonde de Laroche, a French adventuress who also raced early motorcars. Granted a license by the Fed­eration Aeronautique Internacionale (F. A.I.) on March 8, 1910, she was seriously injured four months later when she crashed during an air race competing against the likes of Louis Bleriot. Both legs were broken, as was one arm, and she sustained head and internal injuries. Two years later she was again back to racing the primitive airplanes of the day. She was killed in an airplane crash in 1919 in which she was riding as a pas­senger.

Helene Dutrieu was licensed shortly after. She flew nonstop over the 28 mile stretch from Ostend to Brugges, in Belgium, only five months after her first flight. She entered an air race in

Florence, Italy, in May 1911 and, as the only woman in the field, triumphed over her 15 male competitors to win the Italian King’s Cup. She was also known for her avant-garde ways: she flew airplanes without wearing a corset.

The first American woman to make a solo flight was Blanche Stuart Scott on September 6, 1910, although without official observers to confirm, she would not receive official acknowledgment. She had previously gained some measure of notoriety by driving an Over­land motorcar from San Francisco to New York in 1910 as a publicity stunt for the Willys – Overland Company, the automobile manufac­turer. Driving through the country was so sim­ple and uncomplicated, she showed, even a woman could do it. At the time, Glenn Curtiss had founded an exhibition-flying troupe that performed around the country. Miss Scott was taught to fly at Hammondsport, N. Y. by Glenn Curtiss himself, and she became a daring and successful member of the troupe, making up to $5,000 a week at a time when the average weekly salary for men was $300 and for women was $1444

Official recognition for the first woman to solo an airplane in the United States was given to Bessica Raiche, who had earned a doctor of medicine degree at Tufts Medi­cal School in 1903. Along with her husband,
a New York City attorney, they built their own biplane in the living room of their Mine – ola, N. Y. summer home. When it was ready, they removed the front wall of the house and rolled it out into the street. Mineola Field was a center for early aviation activity and it was there in 1907 that they first tested their machine. Their airplanes went through several iterations, but by 1910 they had completed a Curtiss-type pusher biplane that was propelled by a 40 horsepower engine. Lateral control was achieved by a sort of wing flap connected to a harness worn by the pilot, which operated the wing flaps when the pilot leaned one way or the other. First trials on September 15, 1910, resulted in a crash with Bessica at the controls, but by September 26, repairs had been made and she completed the first official solo of the air­craft by an American woman. The Aeronautical Society of New York presented her with a medal in commemoration of the event with the words “the nation’s first intentional solo by a woman.”

Although the husband and wife airplane con­struction team built additional aircraft, and sold them, they each in time returned to their profes­sions of medicine and law, apparently content with their adventure.

Harriett Quimby is easily the most acknowl­edged of the early women aviators. (See Figure App 5-1.) She was a newspaper and periodical reporter in the early 1900s, living first in San Francisco and then in New York City. She was the first American woman to earn her license (number 37) from the F. A.I. on August 2, 1911. She gained international recognition as the first woman to fly the English Channel when she crossed from Dover to Hardelot, France, 25 miles south of Calais, in a borrowed Bleriot monoplane on April 16, 1912. Her brief but illustrious flying career came to an end on July 1, 1912, when she fell from her new Bleriot monoplane over Boston Harbor before 5,000 spectators. Seatbelts were not worn in those days.

It is not generally appreciated that early women aviators taught men to fly. A German, Melli Beese, started a flying school in 1912 in Berlin, and the Englishwoman Hilda Hewlett taught World War I British pilots in fighter air­craft. In the United States, Marjorie Stinson instructed Canadian airmen slated for service in Britain, having taught over 100 before she had reached the age of 22. Marjorie Stinson was the youngest licensed female pilot in the United States at age 20, and her sister, Katherine, was the fourth woman in this country to be licensed by F. A.I. Katherine also became the first woman to fly the U. S. Mail (in Montana), and became known as one of the most daring aerobatic, or stunt pilots as they were then known, in the coun­try. She made a flying tour of Japan and China in 1916, performing aerobatic maneuvers previ­ously unseen in those countries, for crowds that numbered in excess of 25,000 people. In the process she became an icon for the women of those countries, whose prevailing customs were even more restrictive for women than those in the West.

Victor Carlstrom set the American non­stop distance record on November 2, 1916 by flying 452 miles on a course between Chicago and New York. Less than three weeks later, Ruth Law, who had earned her license in 1912, broke that record over the same course by flying 590 miles from Chicago to Hornell, New York. It should be remembered that this was the route over the Allegheny Mountains that would claim the lives of many airmail pilots in the years to come. Upon reaching New York City the next day, she was acclaimed in newspapers the country over, and was feted in a series of ban­quets attended by President Woodrow Wilson, Admiral Robert E. Peary, the first man to set foot at the North Pole (April 6, 1909), and Cap­tain Roald Amundsen, first to the South Pole (December 14, 1911).

During the 1920s, women continued to enter the field of aviation, and to continue to expand the limits of their participation. Adri­enne Bolland, a Frenchwoman who was licensed in 1920, set an aerobatic record by performing 212 consecutive loops that year. She then had her airplane shipped to Argentina and flew it from Mendoza to Chile, becoming the first woman to cross the Andes by airplane on April 1, 1921.

Facing both gender and race barriers to her aspirations, Bessie Coleman became the first black female pilot licensed by F. A.I. on June 15, 1921. She was taught to fly at Ecole d’Aviation des Freres in Le Crotoy, France, and was the only woman in her 62-person class. Bessie Coleman had arrived in France by way of Atlanta, Texas, her birthplace, and from Chi­cago, where she had lived after leaving Texas. Her two older brothers had been in the U. S. Army in France during World War I, and had returned with stories of life there, and especially about women aviators. Bessie was befriended by the publisher of The Chicago Defender, Robert Abbott, who assisted her in her aspira­tions to travel to France for flying lessons. On her return to the United States, he sponsored flying exhibitions, which featured her as “the world’s greatest woman flyer.” She attained countrywide recognition on her own merit, and became an advocate for equal rights for all people. She was killed when she fell from the open cockpit of her biplane on April 30, 1926 while preparing for an exhibition in Jackson­ville, Florida.

Sophie Mary Pierce (later Lady Mary Heath), was an Irishwoman who emigrated to England and became known for her athletic prowess as a member of the Great Britain Ath­letics Olympic Team in the early 1920s. She wrote Athletics for Women and Girls: How to Be an Athlete and Why in 1925, which followed her presentations to the International Olympic Committee that same year. She shared the world record for the women’s high jump and became British javelin champion. In 1926 she was granted a commercial airplane license by the International Commission for Air Naviga­tion after successfully contesting the Commis­sion’s ban on awarding commercial licenses to women. She held several altitude records for light planes. In 1927-28, less than a year after Lindbergh’s solo flight over the Atlantic, she made the first solo flight from Capetown, South Africa to Cairo in an Avro Avian monoplane, and then extended that with a flight on to Lon­don. She then began a tour of England and the United States, being received by President and Mrs. Coolidge in 1928. The Jacksonville Jour­nal recorded her visit to that Florida city on January 4, 1929:

She made the wings fast in flying posi­tion, climbing around the plane like a great cat. . . She was clad in a colorful cre­tonne smock and wore high, soft leather boots . . . She spun the propeller and started the engine herself while a score of men and boys stood open-mouthed in a semi-circle.

These were some of the women who pre­ceded Amelia Earhart.

Endnote

1. <Camps, Enriqueta, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, April 2001, http://www. clarku. edu/faculty/brown/papers/campl. pdf>.