After the invention of the first flight, Women Aviators gradually became involved with airspace. Women in Germany, America and Italy were licensed to fly in the next few years. Below are some notable women who helped in achieving this feat.
1. Elise Deroche:
Elise Deroche was a French woman who often called herself a baroness. She became the world’s first licensed female pilot in 1910.
2. Blanche Scott:
Blanche Scott was the first American woman to fly solo and also the second woman to drive across the United States. The Curtiss Airplane company hired her to display the safety of their plane. Over the next few years, Scott flew performing stunts before the excited crowds.
3. Bessie Coleman:
Bessie Coleman, a notable female pilot, broke the attacked barriers of racial and gender discrimination. Since she was not allowed to attend an American flight school because of her race, she went to France and earned her pilot’s license making her the first black woman in the world to attain such.
She, however, returned to the U.S. after this achievement and opened a flight school in 1921.
4. Hélène Duties:
Hélène Dutrieu, a Belgian aviator, was also a cycling champion, stunt motorcyclist, car race driver, stunt driver and war ambulance driver. In 1914, She was nicknamed “The Human Arrow.”
6. Winifred Spooner:
In 1930, an English aviator, Winifred Spooner, set off on a nonstop flight with co-pilot Captain Edwards to prove Cape Town could be reached in five days. While Edwards was at the controls, the flight lost height and ditched into the sea off the coast of Italy. Since Edwards could not swim, Spooner had to swim 2miles to land to find help. She died three years later after battling pneumonia.
6. Ruth Nicols:
Ruth Nicols, nicknamed ”The flying Debutante”, once held the world record for a female pilot in speed, distance and altitude.
Other notable women pilots include; Ruth Law and Katherine Stinson set a non-stop distance. Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel and the first American woman to get a pilot’s license.
