“Flying is the best possible thing for women.”
Baroness Raymonde de Laroche

Elise Deroche of France was a plumber’s daughter, but she gave herself the title of Baroness and the surname of de Laroche. It sounded so much better. A flamboyant character, she claimed to be a painter, a sculptor, an actress, a race car driver and a balloonist. After riding in an airplane, she decided to add “pilot” to her list of accomplishments and jumped at French aviator Charles Voisin’s offer to teach her to fly. On October 29, 1909, just after her twenty-third birthday, the Baroness met Voisin at the Chalons airfield where he and his brother, Gabriel, built and flew their own planes.

The Voisin was a one-seater with no room for both student and instructor. The pupil had to sit in the plane and listen to the instructor shout orders from the ground. The Baroness was told to make herself comfortable in the open cockpit and drive the plane down the open field. She was not, under any circumstances, to lift off. This baroness, however, had a mind of her own. After her first taxi around the field, she knew she was ready for take-off. Against her instructor’s orders, she opened up the throttle, raced down the airstrip and rose about fifteen feet in the air. British reporter Harry Harper witnessed the event: “…[the plane] skimmed through the air for a few hundred yards, and then settled gently and came taxiing back.”

The following year on March 8, 1910, Baroness Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman in the world to receive a pilot’s license. Four months later, as she competed with a group of male pilots at Rheims, France, de Laroche crashed. With multiple internal injuries, a broken arm and two broken legs, her recovery was uncertain, but two years later she was flying once more. The Baroness even set a women’s altitude record when she ascended 15,300 feet in June, 1919. Shortly after, de Laroche met her untimely fate when she flew not as a pilot, but as a passenger in an experimental plane that crashed.

“…they didn’t take you up in the air to teach you. They gave you a bit of preliminary ground training. They told you this and that. You got in. They kissed you good-bye, and trusted to luck you’d get back.”
Blanche Stewart Scott

Blanche Stewart Scott got into the flying business because she could drive an automobile. To prove that long distance driving was easy, in May, 1910 she and a girlfriend drove an Overland from New York to San Francisco on mostly unpaved roads. As such, she was the first woman to motor across the country. Her success and gumption so impressed the manager of the Curtiss barnstormers that he offered her a chance to join their ranks. He even persuaded head fly-guy Glenn Curtiss, to give Scott flying lessons at the Curtiss Company flying field in Hammondsport, New York. Curtiss was a reluctant teacher who didn’t believe that women should fly. Nonetheless, he agreed to give Scott a chance.

After three days of theory training, Scott was finally allowed to taxi in a 35 horsepower Curtiss pusher. Legend has it that Curtiss wedged a wooden block into the throttle preventing her from picking up enough speed to fly. Finally, on September 2, 1910, Scott caught on and removed the wooden block. To her instructor’s horror, she left the ground climbing to about forty feet before making a perfect landing. Within the month, she was an official barnstormer and billed as ‘The Tomboy of the Air’. As for Curtiss, he made sure that Scott was the first and last woman he ever taught to fly.

Scott flew with several exhibition teams for the next six years. Known for her spectacular Death Dive, she thrilled the crowds by nose-diving from 4,000 feet down to 200 before finally leveling off. She also mastered the art of flying upside down underneath bridges, earning an unheard of $5,000 each week for her death-defying high jinks until 1916, when she promptly retired. It seemed she resented being treated as ‘a woman freak pilot’ instead of the ‘skilled flier’ that she really was. Credited with being the first female pilot to solo, Scott outlived most of her contemporaries. Married three times, she led a full life becoming an actress, screenwriter, a radio commentator, and a special consultant for one of the Air Force museums. She died in 1970 at eighty-one years of age.

“The aeroplane should open a fruitful occupation for women. I see no reason they cannot realize handsome incomes by carrying passengers between adjacent towns, from parcel delivery, taking photographs or conducting schools of flying.”
Harriet Quimby

Harriet Quimby didn’t start out to be a pilot. First, she was a journalist. While reporting for the popular New York paper, Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, the attractive brunette with the blue-green eyes went to Long Island looking for a story. Covering the Statue of Liberty Race, Quimby watched as pilot John Moisant flew from Belmont Park to the Statue of Liberty and back, traveling thirty-six miles in thirty-four minutes and winning the race.

Quimby got more than headlines that day. The thirty-five-year-old reporter discovered a whole new career when she convinced John Moisant and his brother, Alfred, to give her flying lessons. When word leaked out that one of their own (and a female at that) was manning a plane, the press had a field day nicknaming the vibrant Quimby, the ‘Dresden China Aviatrix’.

On August 1, 1911, after thirty-three lessons and a scant four and half hours of airtime, Harriet Quimby became the first American woman (and the second woman in the world) to obtain a pilot’s license . She then joined the Moisant International Aviators and became a popular stunt flyer. Wearing her trademark specially designed purple satin flightsuit, she thrilled spectators. Her most daring feat took place on April 14, 1912 when she became the first woman to fly a plane across the English Channel. The sinking of the mighty Titanic just two days before, however, overshadowed her accomplishment.

Always a media darling, Quimby basked in the limelight. She often wrote about her escapades in the air hoping to encourage other women to fly. By the time she arrived at the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet near Quincy, Massachusetts on July 1, 1912, the public couldn’t get enough of her. That afternoon, Quimby intended to break the ‘over-water speed’ record of fifty-eight miles per hour with her new two-seater, 70-horsepower monoplane. Taking William P. Willard, the event manager, along for the ride, she climbed 5,000 feet. As the plane took a sharp turn, Willard was thrown out. Unable to regain the plane’s delicate balance, Quimby tumbled out after him. Thousands of horrified onlookers watched helplessly as their bodies plummeted into Dorchester Bay. Despite her untimely death, the superstitious aviatrix who never flew on Sundays and never left the ground without her lucky jewelry, inspired her contemporaries to follow their dreams.

"There is a world-old controversy that crops up whenever women attempt to enter a new field. Is a woman fit for that work? It would seem that a woman’s success in any particular field would prove her fitness for that work, without regard to theories to the contrary."
Ruth Law

Ruth Law witnessed Harriet Quimby’s terrible death at the Boston Air Meet, but that didn’t kill her own love of flying. Exactly one month later, she made her first solo flight, and on November 12, 1912, earned her pilot’s license. The twenty-one year old aviatrix bought her first plane from the Wright Brothers and accepted a job as a commercial pilot in Florida flying guests to and from the Sea Breeze Hotel. In 1915, she purchased a 100 horsepower Curtiss pusher and became an acrobatic flyer at Daytona Beach where she was the first woman to perform a loop-the-loop.

The following year, Law made aviation history when she attempted a cross-country flight. Outfitting her Curtiss pusher with a windshield and extra gas tanks, she took off from Chicago at 8:25 a.m. on November 19th. Along with her maps, she carried a clock, a compass and a barograph. Six hours and 590 miles later, she landed in Hornell, New York setting two new records: the American nonstop cross-country record for men and women, as well as the world record for nonstop cross-country flying for women. Despite being honored by President Woodrow Wilson for her heroic feat, Law was turned down by the United States Army when she volunteered to fly in combat during World War I. Instead, she found herself selling Liberty Bonds and making exhibition flights to raise money for the Red Cross. While she was at it, she set a new women’s record for altitude: 14,700 feet.

After the war, Law took her plane and toured China, Japan and the Philippines, as well as Europe. In 1920, she and her husband, Charles Oliver, formed Ruth Law’s Flying Circus. At the peak of her career in 1921, she earned $9,000 a week, but her stunts became increasingly dangerous. They often involved her climbing out of the cockpit and standing on a wing as another pilot manned the controls. Finally, Oliver could take no more. Without Law knowing, he ‘leaked’ a story to the press: Ruth Law was retiring from aviation. Law was furious with him, but Oliver won her over and she consented to leave the friendly skies. She died peacefully at the age of eighty-three on December 1, 1970 in San Francisco, still proud of her early accomplishments.

"The air is the only place free from prejudices."
Bessie Coleman

Bessie Coleman was one of thirteen children. Her mother was a black woman while her father was of mixed heritage—both black and Native American. Coleman grew up in rural Texas where she graduated from high school and became fascinated with flying. Few flying schools accepted women and none accepted blacks, but Coleman was determined to touch the sky. While living with two of her brothers in Chicago, she took the advice of Robert S. Abbott, founder and editor of the Chicago Weekly Defender. Abbott told her to learn French and travel to Europe where her race and sexual gender would be less troublesome. It took two trips, but Coleman eventually learned to fly, earning her pilot’s license from France’s Federation Aeronautique Internationale in June, 1921. That made her the first black, man or woman, to have a pilot’s license.

Upon her return to the United States, ‘Brave Bessie’ took on the role of exhibition pilot. Dressing in a military-style uniform, she commanded respect as she took to the air and at the same time fought for equality by refusing to fly unless blacks were permitted to enter her air shows through the same gates as whites. A daring barnstormer and popular public figure, Coleman had her share of accidents and broken bones. Nevertheless, she kept going with one single purpose in mind—to open her own aviation school where she could teach other blacks to fly. Trying to earn extra money, the eloquent Coleman also lectured, worked briefly as an actress and opened a beauty salon in Orlando.

She almost reached her goal, but on April 30, 1926, as she was flying with her mechanic, William Wills, in a May Day exhibition in Orlando, something went wrong. Flying at 5,000 feet, she put the plane into a dive—something she had done countless times before. This time, however, the plane unexpectedly flipped over throwing Coleman from the open cockpit. Wills remained trapped in the plane and died when it crashed. Afterward, an investigation turned up a wrench that was mysteriously jammed into the controls.

Bessie’s dream didn’t die with her that day, however; it took another ten years, but female pilot Willa B. Brown, inspired by Coleman, opened the first black-owned flying school. Known as the Coffey School of Aeronautics, many of the heroic black pilots who fought in World War II were trained there.