On March 8, 1910, Elise felt she was ready to test for her pilot’s license. She flew for the officials at the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), and her performance left no question about whether she was equipped to fly an airplane. Elise was granted pilot’s license number 36, becoming the first licensed woman pilot in the world. Earning this achievement meant she was allowed to enter any aviation contest. The newspapers called her “la femme oiseau” (the bird woman).
Elise left acting behind as she traveled, earning money with flying exhibitions and races. She arrived in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg, where the chimneys spit out so much smoke that air currents became unstable and pilots had a hard time seeing. But Elise went up anyway and circled the small airfield. She later told Collier’s magazine, “I mounted to a height of 150 meters, being enveloped by the smoke from the factory chimney which surrounded the ground. I flew over houses, then above forests, and turned three times.”
Turning off her engine, she glided to a perfect landing in front of Tsar Nicholas II. He was so impressed that he bestowed the title of baroness upon the lovely pilot. Elise, who enjoyed being the center of attention, began to use the title.
Baroness de Laroche encountered smoking chimneys again in Budapest, where she was to race a 68-mile (109 kilometers) course against other pilots. The other pilots—men—refused to fly under such circumstances. The baroness completed the course and came away with first place.
On July 8, just four months after earning her pilot’s license, Elise returned to Reims to compete against a field of all men. She was doing well in the competition until the sixth day, when she crashed and broke her arm and both legs. When she regained consciousness in the hospital, she said that another plane had come too close and forced her crash. The pilot of the other plane wasn’t disciplined. In fact, some people pointed to the incident as proof that women shouldn’t be pilots, stating that women just weren’t as capable of flying as men.
Elise’s injuries took two years to heal. Many thought her flying days were over, but she began training for the Coup Femina, a competition for women who flew the longest distance solo. But Elise had to pull out of the race when an auto accident left her with severe wounds. Her companion, Charles Voisin, was also in the vehicle, and he died as a result of the incident.
Elise was devastated by the loss of her teacher and romantic interest. As she recovered from the accident, she became more determined than ever to get back into the air. In 1913, she experimented with other airplanes. The Sommer was similar to the Voisin she had been flying, but she liked the Farman. All were biplanes, but the Farman had more power.
On November 25, when she participated in the second Femina competition, she flew 200 miles (322 kilometers) in four hours. She stopped to land only when the plane developed a problem in its gas line. Still, her efforts were enough to win the contest.
Fédération Aéronautique Internationale
When aviation took off in popularity, people realized that an organization was needed to monitor the industry’s activity. Three European men joined together to recommend a new institution, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, which would regulate the sport of flying. An international aviation conference met in Paris in October 1905 to hammer out the rules.
Founded on October 14, 1905, the FAI awarded pilot’s licenses and tracked the world’s aviation records. Since the formation of the organization, it has expanded to include all aeronautical activities, and it continues to track aviation records.
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 put Elise’s flying career on hold. All airplanes and military pilots were needed for the war. Civilian flying was strictly prohibited. Although Baroness de Laroche volunteered her piloting skills, she was turned down. Instead, she became a chauffeur for the French military, moving items and people from place to place.
As soon as the war ended, the baroness jumped back into flying. She set a woman’s altitude record of 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) on June 7, 1919. Three days later, American pilot Ruth Law reached 14,700 feet (4,484 meters). But Baroness de Laroche hadn’t gotten to where she was by giving up. Five days later, she reclaimed her record by flying to 15,689 feet (4,785 meters).
More airplanes were filling the skies, and new planes were being unveiled every day. People needed to test these airplanes. As an experienced 33-year-old pilot, Elise believed she would be an ideal candidate for the first female test pilot. On July 18, she had the chance to ride as a passenger in an experimental Caudron, which was located at the airfield in the coastal town of Le Crotoy. She hoped to learn more about being a test pilot.
However, tragedy struck. The airplane went into a spin that sent it plummeting to the ground. The pilot died on his way to the hospital. Elise Deroche, the world’s first licensed woman pilot, died instantly.
LEARN MORE
“Baroness de Laroche” on Early Aviators website, http://earlyaviators.com/edelaroc.htm
“Raymonde De La Roche” on Women in Aviation and Space History website, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, http://airandspace.si.edu/explore-and-learn/topics/women/roche.cfm
Women Aviators by Bernard Marck (Flammarion, 2009)
HARRIET QUIMBY
First Woman to Fly Across the English Channel
HARRIET QUIMBY WAVED GOOD-BYE to friends and officials at the Dover Airfield in England at 5:30 AM on April 16, 1912. Dressed in her usual hooded, plum-colored, satin flying suit, she climbed into a Blériot monoplane, an airplane with one set of wings. Harriet had never piloted the 50-horsepower, single-seat aircraft; she had borrowed it from Louis Blériot, who was famous for being the first aviator to cross the English Channel.
After days of waiting for the bad weather to clear, Harriet was excited to finally be in the air again. A bit of anxiety stayed with her as she navigated through the foggy skies at an altitude between 1,000 and 2,000 feet (300 to 600 meters). This flight had already sent many pilots to their deaths. Harriet tried to think of the flight as a cross-country flight, not “flying in the fog with an untried compass, in a new untried machine knowing that the treacherous North Sea stood ready to receive me if I drifted only five miles too far out of my course.”
Harriet’s goal was the small coastal town of Calais, France. Although Calais was only 22 miles (29 kilometers) away, she could not see it through the mist, and she landed 25 miles (40 kilometers) south instead, on the beach at Hardelot, France. She was greeted by smiling fishermen who came running when they saw an airplane land. Friends soon arrived, and they carried Harriet on their shoulders after toasting her with champagne.
English Channel
The English Channel is a famous stretch of water separating Great Britain from mainland Europe. The 350-mile-long (560 kilometers) waterway connects the North Atlantic Ocean to the North Sea. The Channel, as it is commonly known by the British, was historically used as a trade route. Later, Great Britain’s strong defense was in part due to the Royal Navy patrolling its coastline during times of war.
The Channel is now used primarily to travel from England to Europe, either across the water or through the Channel Tunnel below it. The Channel has long been a source of contests, which can involve people swimming across or flying over it by balloon or airplane. Most crossings take place at the narrowest point between Dover, England, and Calais, France.
The trip had taken 59 minutes. Before many people had opened their eyes that day, America’s first female pilot, Harriet Quimby, had become the world’s first woman to fly across the English Channel.
When Harriet began making a name for herself, first as a journalist and then as a pilot, she was reported to be the daughter of rich landowners who had sent her to private schools in the United States and Europe. Perhaps Harriet or her mother had wanted to create a new image for Harriet, because the truth was that she came from a struggling farm family and had been educated in public schools.
Born in Michigan in May 1875 to William and Ursula Quimby, Harriet spent her early childhood nea
r Coldwater, Michigan. Although several children were born to the Quimbys, only Harriet and her older sister, Kittie, survived childhood.
William fought for the Union in the Civil War until he became ill. His wife, Ursula, healed him with herbal remedies she was known for creating. When the farm failed in the late 1880s, the family moved to California along with Kittie and her new husband. Harriet and her parents eventually settled in the Oakland-San Francisco area. William worked at different jobs, but the Quimbys continued to struggle financially until William began selling Ursula’s herbal remedies.
With her dark hair and engaging personality, Harriet considered being an actress. She spent a little time on the stage in San Francisco before turning to writing. She wrote feature articles for publications such as the San Francisco Bulletin. After some success, she moved across the country to New York City.
Succeeding as a journalist, particularly as a female journalist in New York City in 1903, was almost impossible. But Harriet brought strong writing skills, intelligence, and determination with her. After showing her published work, which included theatrical reviews and articles about life in Chinatown, she convinced the editors of Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly to try her as a contributing writer.
Harriet’s first article for the popular newspaper was titled “Curious Chinese Customs.” She wrote drama critiques, household tips, and political articles. She profiled everyone from actresses to acrobats. As a friend of noted filmmaker D. W. Griffith, she wrote screenplays as well, seven of which were turned into movies.
Traveling as a photojournalist to Egypt, Mexico, Cuba, Europe, and Iceland broadened Harriet’s world even more. Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly hired Harriet as a staff writer, and she wrote more than 250 articles for the paper during her career. Her talent and success led to assignments full of the excitement she craved. On a visit to the Vanderbilt racetrack, Harriet was taken for a ride at 100 miles per hour in a 120-horsepower Vanderbilt Cup Racer. She bought her own car, which she learned to drive and repair herself.
Speed gave Harriet a thrill, and a few years later she attended the International Aviation Tournament in Belmont Park, New York, to see what airplanes had to offer. She watched one pilot, John Moisant, wreck his plane before getting off the ground. Moisant immediately bought a monoplane from another pilot and won the race. Harriet introduced herself to John, who, with his brother Alfred, ran an aviation school in Long Island, New York. She also met Matilde Moisant, their sister. Harriet and Matilde hit it off and became close friends.
Two months later, John Moisant died at an aviation exhibition in New Orleans when his plane went into a dive. Accidents were common in early aviation, with more than a hundred deaths from aviation by the spring of 1911. But Harriet didn’t let that stop her. In May 1911, Harriet and Matilde began classes at the Moisant Aviation School. Most flight schools, including the Wright Brothers Flying School, refused to accept women as students. As soon as the papers learned that two women were learning to fly, it became big news. Harriet focused her writing on aviation and convinced Leslie’s to let her do a series. Audiences loved her feature articles about learning to fly. In “How a Woman Learns to Fly,” Harriet wrote, “It feels like riding in a high powered automobile, minus bumping over the rough roads, continually signaling to clear the way and keeping a watchful eye on the speedometer to see that you do not exceed the limit and provoke the wrath of the bicycle policeman.”
On August 1, 1911, Harriet became the first woman in the United States to earn a pilot’s license. When her FAI license arrived, she saw that she was Pilot Number 37. A few weeks later, Matilde became the second US woman to earn a license. They were among about ten women in the world who were licensed to fly an airplane.
After getting her license, Harriet designed her own flight suit, what she called a knickerbocker uniform. A month later, she became the first woman to fly at night when she flew over Staten Island, New York. Air exhibitions were very popular, and everyone wanted to see the woman pilot they had read about in Leslie’s. Harriet flew at meets throughout the United States and Mexico. While she was in Mexico, an idea began to form in her mind.
Since Louis Blériot had first crossed the English Channel in 1909, a few other pilots had followed, including John Moisant. Even more had failed at it. One woman had flown over the English Channel as a passenger, but no woman had flown solo over the channel. Harriet decided she wanted to be first.
What Happened to Matilde Moisant?
The second American woman to earn her pilot’s license, Matilde Moisant, received hers sixteen days after her friend Harriet Quimby. Together the two women participated in exhibition flights as part of a group of performing pilots called the Moisant International Aviators.
Matilde’s first exhibition came about a month after receiving her license. She won a trophy for flying at an altitude of 1,200 feet (366 meters) at the Nassau Boulevard Aviation Meet, beating Harriet. High-altitude flying seemed to be Matilde’s specialty, as she demonstrated at meets for the next seven months.
Her family, still grieving over the death of her brother John in an aviation accident, begged her to quit flying. Matilde finally gave in, saying she would quit after one more exhibition flight in Wichita Falls, Texas, on April 14, 1912. As she started to land, her airplane burst into flames because of a fuel-tank leak. The plane crashed. Matilde was pulled out with her clothing on fire, but her heavy wool flying suit saved her from serious burns.
That flight was Matilde’s last. Two and a half months later, her good friend Harriet Quimby died when her plane crashed.
She traveled to England on an ocean liner. Unlike Blériot, who flew from France to England, she would fly from England to France. She kept quiet about her plans because she didn’t want another woman to beat her. The people who knew about her quest tried to talk her out of it; this group included Gustav Hamel, an aviator who offered to pretend to be her by wearing the purple flight suit. She refused but agreed to use a compass for the trip.
Harriet’s nighttime flight had been big news, but that wouldn’t be the case for the bigger challenge of crossing the English Channel. The Titanic, a passenger ship that had left England via the English Channel, hit an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean and sank. Thus, few noticed the stories about the first woman’s solo flight over the 22-mile stretch of water separating Great Britain from the European mainland. The news of the Titantic disaster overshadowed everything else.
Three months later, Harriet arrived at the third annual Boston Aero Meet, an event that promised the highest fee yet. When she met with the organizer, William Willard, and his son, the two men tossed a coin to see who would have the honor of a flight with Harriet. The elder Willard won the toss. Harriet took off in her new 70-horsepower, two-seater Blériot plane and took her passenger around the lighthouse. Five thousand people watched the plane approach over Dorchester Bay before it suddenly went into a nosedive. Willard fell out of the plane to his death. Harriet looked like she might regain control of the airplane, but she too fell into the shallow waters of Dorchester Bay and died instantly.
Boston Aero Meet, 1910. Library of Congress
An Inspiration
Harriet Quimby was a woman who inspired others. One of those she inspired was Amelia Earhart, who had this to say about Harriet: “To cross the Channel in 1912 required more bravery and skill than to cross the Atlantic today…. We must remember that, in thinking of America’s first great woman flier’s accomplishment.”
What exactly happened continues to be a mystery to this day, although there are theories. Willard, a heavy man, might have stood up or leaned forward, throwing the balance of the airplane off. (There were no seatbelts in Harriet’s plane.) A meet official mentioned another possibility: that the plane’s cables were caught in the steering.
Harriet Quimby was only 37 years old when she died, but she had achieved so much in her life. In a time when women had few rights—they weren’t even allowed to vote—Harriet had two successful careers and supported
herself. The first American woman pilot and the first woman to cross the English Channel was truly an aviation pioneer, so in 1991, eighty years after receiving her license, the US government honored her with a stamp in the Pioneers of Aviation series. The 50-cent US airmail stamp depicts a beautiful woman, adorned in purple, smiling as a Blériot monoplane flies in the background.
LEARN MORE
“Harriet Quimby” in Chasing the Sun, PBS, www.pbs.org/kcet/chasingthesun/innovators/hquimby.html
Harriet Quimby: America’s First Lady of the Air (Aviation History Series) by Anita P. Davis and Ed Y. Hall (Honoribus Press, 1993)
“Harriet Quimby” on Women in Aviation and Space History website, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, http://airandspace.si.edu/explore-and-learn/topics/women/Quimby.cfm
BESSIE COLEMAN
Queen Bess
BESSIE COLEMAN KNEW WHAT she wanted: she wanted to learn how to fly an airplane. How hard could it be? She was a successful 27-year-old woman in Chicago who had pulled herself, mother, and three younger sisters out of poverty. Knocking on the doors of flight schools, the attractive woman with copper skin asked what it would cost to take flying lessons. Everyone turned her down as a student. Some refused her because she was a woman, others because she was African American. Most flight schools refused her for both reasons. So Bessie saved up money by opening up a chili parlor and, in her spare time, learned to speak French. Her friend, Chicago Defender editor Robert Abbott, had told her that the French were more accepting of race and gender.
Women Aviators Page 2
