They took off again on November 27, 1929. The first two days went well, but on the third day, Bobbi noticed black smoke coming from the exhaust of the supply plane above them. Where there’s smoke, there’s often fire—and gasoline is highly flammable. Bobbi pulled the hose out quickly, while Elinor moved their plane away from the supply plane. The supply plane had to make a forced landing. There would be no more refueling.
Bobbi and Elinor remained in the air as long as their fuel lasted. They landed after 42 hours and 3.5 minutes. They were the first all-woman refueling endurance flight.
Bobbi went on to break that refueling record with actress and aviator Edna May Cooper on January 4, 1931. She even celebrated her 25th birthday in the air with birthday cake sent up by a friend. On day three of that flight, their engine began to cough and spit oil. When they were no longer able to maintain altitude, they landed. They had used 1,138 gallons (4,307 liters) of fuel. Their official time in the air was 122 hours and 50 minutes.
The refueling endurance flight brought Bobbi more acclaim, including the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Medallion from the FAI. She also became one of three aviators to receive the Aviation Cross from King Carol II of Romania. The other two recipients were Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh.
When the Great Depression arrived, Bobbi worked as a flight instructor for a while before joining fellow pilot Pancho Barnes in the Women’s Air Reserve, which would allow them to help in catastrophes. The organization flew in medical personnel and supplies to disaster sites. Bobbi received training in first aid, navigation, and military maneuvers.
World War II dried up many flying jobs, but Bobbi learned that aircraft manufacturers were just throwing away rivets because it was too expensive to pay people to sort them. Metal was even more precious during wartime, so Bobbi invented a machine to sort airplane rivets during manufacturing. The rivet-sorting machine saved unused rivets that fell to the ground during the manufacturing process. Her business, the Aero Reclaiming Company, was successful, and she sold it three years later. She then developed deburring equipment to smooth out the edges of machined metal. Because of her inventions, Bobbi was awarded a certificate of achievement from Inventors Workshop International.
Bobbi last piloted an airplane in 1984. She wore many different hats after her golden days of flying: commercial photographer, real estate broker, offset printer, and life insurance and mutual fund salesperson. When Bobbi Trout died at 97 on January 24, 2003, she was the last of the surviving participants of the 1929 Women’s Air Derby.
LEARN MORE
“Bobbi Evelyn Trout” on Ninety-Nines International Organization of Women Pilots website, www.ninety-nines.org/index.cfm/bobbi_trout.htm
Bobbi Trout website, www.bobbitrout.com
Powder Puff Derby of 1929: The True Story of the First Women’s Cross-Country Air Race by Gene Nora Jessen (Sourcebooks, 2002)
ELINOR SMITH
The Flying Flapper of Freeport
ON A BRIGHT, CLEAR OCTOBER Sunday, a 17-year-old girl with a two-month-old pilot’s license was getting ready to take a flight. But this particular endeavor was unique. It could result in her losing her license—or her life. The year was 1928, and she was about to fly under New York City’s four bridges, a feat never before tried.
As she was waiting to climb in her plane, she tensed when someone tapped her shoulder. Was it the police or perhaps the newsmen who had dared her to attempt this feat? She turned and saw a kind, handsome face, one known throughout the world: Charles Lindbergh.
“Good luck, kid. Remember to keep your nose down in the turns,” Lindbergh said, grinning.
Shaking her head in amazement, Elinor Smith watched one of her heroes walk off. Imagine. Charles Lindbergh, who had made his famous trip from New York to Paris around the time of her first solo, had come to see her make this historic flight.
She took off in her father’s Waco 9 biplane. The view of Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean was incredible. In her autobiography, she wrote, “And the clouds on that particular day had just broken open so there were these shafts of light coming down and lighting up this whole landscape in various greens and yellows.”
New York City is a city surrounded by water—not only the Atlantic Ocean, but also the Hudson and East Rivers. Manhattan, one of the city’s five boroughs, is actually an island. Four bridges provide a way across the East River into Manhattan. The Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges connect Brooklyn and Manhattan. The Queensboro Bridge, also known as the 59th Street Bridge, connects Manhattan to Queens. During her flight, Elinor had to dodge a few ocean liners, but she was successful.
Eight days later, she was summoned to the mayor’s office. Elinor couldn’t stop shaking. What if mayor Jimmy Walker took away her license? Never let her fly again? She just wouldn’t be able to stand it.
The mayor looked at the girl standing in front of him and sighed. Who would have thought that this five-foot, three-inch girl could raise so much havoc in his city?
He began, “You’re suspended …” and then paused as he heard her gasp. In a gentle voice, he continued, “You’re suspended from flying for ten days, retroactive to the day of your flight. I believe that means two more days of not flying.”
“Oh, thank you, Mayor Walker,” Elinor said. She left the New York City mayor’s office. She still had her pilot’s license, and she had done something no other pilot had done. What would the Flying Flapper of Freeport, as the media called her, have thought if she had known that her record would still stand 85 years later?
Born on August 17, 1911, Elinor Smith grew up in Freeport, Long Island, New York. As the daughter of vaudeville performer Tom Smith, she grew up with supportive parents who encouraged her to challenge herself. She was taught that her gender shouldn’t interfere with what she wanted to do.
One day when she was six years old, the family was driving along Merrick Road. The children screamed for Tom to stop when they saw a sign that read, AIRPLANE RIDES—$5 AND $10. Elinor’s father talked to the pilot and then returned to get the children. After tying Elinor’s blond braids together to keep them out of her face, he lifted her and her brother, Joe, into the second seat, strapping them in together in the Farman pusher biplane.
The ride marked the beginning of Elinor’s love of flying. She was taking lessons by age 10 and soloing at 15. Soon after her first solo flight, she set an unofficial women’s altitude record of 11,874 feet (3,619 meters).
When she earned her pilot’s license, signed by Orville Wright, she was the youngest pilot the FAI had seen yet. At 18, she was granted a transport pilot’s license, the first person in the United States to receive one. “I had been brought up to think that anyone could do anything he or she put his or her mind to, so I was shocked to learn that the world had stereotypes it didn’t want tampered with.”
From 1929 to 1930, Elinor joined a cross-country tour as a demonstration pilot for an airplane manufacturer, Bellanca. She also flew for a group of parachutists to promote the Irvin Air Chute Company. Women pilots were often limited to the lighter planes, but Elinor knew the size of the plane didn’t matter. She flew the big six-passenger Bellanca, astounding the press that a 17-year-old female could do such a thing.
“Becoming a professional pilot was for me the most desirable goal in the world, and I was not going to allow age or sex to bar me from it,” she recalled about that time.
Records were being set almost daily. Elinor decided she would set the first women’s endurance records. Viola Gentry beat her to it by flying for more than eight hours. Less than two weeks later, Bobbi Trout pushed that to 12 hours.
Elinor didn’t let it bother her. She just beat them both with a flight time of 13 hours, 16 minutes, and 45 seconds. It was her first world record, set on January 31, 1929. She flew in an open-cockpit Bird biplane. Strong winds and fog surrounded her, and the temperature dropped. She had dressed warmly, but the temperature was below freezing. She was ready to land by 3:00 AM but had never land
ed at night—plus the visibility was poor. Nevertheless, she did it. And almost three months later, she nearly doubled her endurance time. Elinor, Bobbi, Viola, and Louise Thaden continued to take turns holding the women’s endurance record for the next few years.
Elinor went on to set more records for endurance, altitude, and speed than anyone. Sometimes, she beat her own records. Together, she and Bobbi Trout became the first women pilots to refuel in the air successfully.
In 1930, Elinor was chosen by other pilots as the woman pilot of the year. Still a teenager, she was honored by the recognition. No doubt her women’s altitude record of 27,418 feet (8,357 meters) earlier in the year had a lot to do with the award. A year later, at Roosevelt Field on Long Island, she added more than 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) to her altitude record.
Elinor made her mark on aviation in other ways as well. In addition to writing aviation articles for magazines and commentating for NBC radio, she was an advisor to the New York State Aviation Committee. She continued performing at air shows and as a movie stunt pilot.
Elinor met a New York politician and attorney, Patrick Sullivan, and in 1933, they married. When she became pregnant with her third child, she decided to quit flying to raise her family. She had four children in all.
Twenty-five years later, after her husband’s death, Elinor returned to flying, now as a member of the Air Force Association. She thrilled at flying the T-33 jet trainer and the C-119 for paratrooper maneuvers. In 2000, Elinor was invited to fly the NASA Vertical Motion Simulator. She was successful, which came as no surprise to anyone who knew her. She became the oldest pilot to land a simulated shuttle and was delighted to have an all-female support crew.
LEARN MORE
Aviatrix by Elinor Smith (Thorndike Press, reprinted 1982)
“Elinor Smith” on Cradle of Aviation Museum website, www.cradleofaviation.org/history/people/smith.html
“Elinor Smith: Born to Fly” on NASA website, www.nasa.gov/topics/people/features/elinor-smith.html
EDNA GARDNER WHYTE
Nothing Could Stop Her from Flying
MANY EARLY WOMEN PILOTS had to fight to pursue their passion to fly. For some, the battle against discrimination and society’s expectations was just too much to overcome. Others did fight it, every step of the way. Edna Gardner Whyte was one of those women. She was an exhibition flyer, a flight instructor, and a businesswoman in aviation.
Born on November 3, 1902, Edna had wanted to fly since she was a little girl. Unlike many early women pilots, Edna didn’t have a privileged childhood. She spent her youth on a Minnesota farm, where the only speed she experienced came from riding horses. Later, she would drive a Model T and see firsthand how fast it could go—and she even ended up rolling it over.
When Edna was seven, her family moved to Seattle, where her father got a job with the railroad. He was killed in a head-on collision within the year. Then her mother became ill from tuberculosis and was sent to a sanitarium. Edna and her brother and sister were split up and sent to live with different relatives. The rest of her childhood was spent moving from home to home.
When Edna grew up, she became a nurse. While in nurse’s training, she had devoured articles about Katherine and Marjorie Stinson. The sisters were pilots who had been asked by president Woodrow Wilson to train pilots to fly in World War I. One of Edna’s patients offered to take her up in his airplane. She wrote of the experience, “He showed me how to use the stick—nose up, nose down, nose sideways. We were following the roads, dirt and gravel back then, and I thought it was wonderful.”
Edna found someone who agreed to teach her. She paid $35 per hour, half her monthly salary. When Edna went to test for her license in 1928, she received the highest grade on the written portion of the exam. But when it came time for her flight test, the government inspector refused to test her.
“But why?” she asked.
He said, “I’ve never tested a woman, and I don’t know that I want to start now. Women don’t belong in airplanes. That’s a man’s job.”
Edna told the inspector how hard she had worked. She even cried. He relented, and she earned her license. The next year, when she joined the Navy Nurse Corps, she was stationed at Newport’s naval hospital. In her free time, she flew, winning her first race in 1933. She also began teaching flying to others.
The Flying Stinsons
The Stinsons were a flying family of brothers and sisters. Eldest sister Katherine sold her family’s piano to pay for flying lessons and became the fourth American woman to earn a license in 1912. Ironically, she wanted the flying lessons so that she could earn money for a music career. Katherine was very small in size and looked younger than her 21 years when she began performing in air exhibitions in the United States and Europe. She was nicknamed “the Flying Schoolgirl.” Katherine later became the first woman authorized to be an airmail pilot.
Marjorie Stinson followed in her older sister’s footsteps, becoming the ninth American woman pilot to receive her license two years later. She soon became the only woman in the US Aviation Reserve Corps. Although she also was certified as an airmail carrier, her talents seemed to lie in flight instruction.
After hearing about Florence Klingensmith doing 68 consecutive loops, Edna decided to try aerobatics. She asked some male pilots how to do a loop.
“When you’re up, drive toward the ground and build up speed. Then put your plane back over the top.”
Edna’s first attempt was memorable. Her engine stalled, plus everything that could come out of the plane did—and landed right on Edna. Thankfully, she had goggles on, as a lot of dirt and even a couple of dead mice rained upon her face. But Edna didn’t quit. She kept trying and worked up to 38 loops.
In 1915, the Stinson family opened the Stinson School for Aviation at San Antonio’s Kelly Field. They trained pilots for the US Army and Canada’s Royal Flying Corps. Perhaps as a nod to Katherine’s nickname, people began calling Marjorie “the Flying Schoolmarm” until 1918, when the school closed.
During World War I, Katherine participated in fund-raising tours for the Red Cross and drove an ambulance in Europe. A bad case of influenza weakened her health and ended her aviation career. Marjorie changed careers in 1928 and became a draftsman for the Aeronautical Division of the US Navy.
Katherine Stinson. Courtesy of Chicago Daily News negatives collection, Chicago History Museum
After transferring to the US Naval Hospital in Washington, DC, Edna entered an air race that offered $300 to the winner. Although she won the otherwise all-male race, she noticed the group of male officials huddled together. She figured they were trying to find a way to disqualify her. Two other pilots stepped up and told the judges that she had won fair and square. The race was advertised the next year with a sign that said, MEN ONLY.
Edna’s mother, now recuperated from her bout with tuberculosis, saw an article in the newspaper about her daughter, “the Flying Nurse.” She sent for Edna and promised to put her through medical school (another ambition of Edna’s) if she would quit flying. Edna tried, but she just couldn’t stay away from flying. Knowing she wouldn’t be happy unless she was flying fulltime, Edna lost her mother’s financial support and resigned from the navy in 1935. Years later, her mother enjoyed taking flights with her daughter and even served as copilot for about five races while in her 80s.
Edna approached commercial airlines, such as Chicago and Southern Air Lines and Braniff International Airways, for a job as a pilot. They were hiring her students, so why not hire her when she had ten times as many hours? One airline refused her for being too short, even though she was half an inch taller than a student of hers whom it did hire.
Finally, the man at Braniff asked, “Do you think people will get on an airplane if they see a woman as the pilot?”
“I don’t know why not,” she answered. “People get on my planes all the time.”
“Well, I’m sure it hurt business. The interview is over.”
Moving to New Orleans, Edn
a started a flight school, Air College Inc., and taught students how to fly for the airlines. When World War II arrived, she sold her school to the US Navy and went to Fort Worth, Texas, to get instrument ratings. At the end of her career, she had eight pilot ratings. She volunteered to fly for her country. Not surprisingly, she was turned down. However, the government did ask her to train male fighter pilots at Meacham Field in Texas. Her knowledge of aerobatics came in handy, because military pilots needed to know how to evade the enemy with tricky maneuvers.
When military pilot training was discontinued in February 1944, Edna fell back on her nursing skills and left the United States to work in an army hospital in the Philippines. Again, she looked for any opportunity to fly. She was recognized for flying injured soldiers out in B-25s.
After the war, Edna started another flight school, Aero Enterprises, in Fort Worth. It began as a flight training school for veterans coming back from the war. One of the flight instructors she hired was George Whyte. They fell in love and married when Edna was 43. When not teaching, she continued to enter the occasional contest. She won the Women’s International Air Race in 1953. The Whytes continued to run Aero Enterprises but often talked about building their own airport.
George died before they could fulfill that dream, but Edna persevered and opened Aero Valley Airport in Roanoke, Texas. Still active in flying and teaching well into her 80s, she taught nearly 5,000 students in her lifetime, including her daughter. At the age of 83, she said, “When I grew older, I knew I could go to an old peoples’ home, but I wanted one with a runway at the door. I already have that. Why should I move?”
Women Aviators Page 6
