Sky Girls

by Gene Nora Jessen

  Ruth Law and Katherine Stinson both learned to fly in 1912, Law touring with her own Ruth Law Flying Circus, the first woman to perform a loop. Law became famous for her death-defying wing-walking stunts. Stinson, along with her mother, formed the Stinson Aviation Company in Chicago, Illinois, to manufacture and sell airplanes. In 1913, she was purported to be the first woman to carry the mail. Both Law and Stinson petitioned the government to allow them to fly for their country during World War I, but they were denied.

  The flying circuses (or air shows) faded at about the time of the 1929 air derby, as the government put restrictions on the barnstormers’ wild antics. The barnstormers were airborne gypsies, prone to buzzing a town to lure the populace out to a nearby farmer’s field. They’d show off a few loops and spins, then sell rides. Jessie and Jimmie Woods produced one of the last and most successful operations with their Flying Aces Air Circus, with Jessie riding the top of the upper wing throughout a variety of aerobatic maneuvers. After having been retired from aviation for some sixty years, Jessie stood on the upper wing of a modern open-cockpit airplane to fly at an air show in 1991 at the age of eighty-two.

  Against staggering odds, Bessie Coleman gained renown in aviation. One of thirteen children, Coleman had picked cotton to earn money for school. Inevitably, as an African American and as a woman, she found the door locked at flying schools. Undaunted, in 1920 Coleman studied French and sailed for Paris where prejudice didn’t bar her from learning to fly. She returned to the States in 1921 as the world’s first licensed black pilot. “Brave Bessie,” as she became known, became a popular attraction on the air-show circuit.

  Prior to a 1926 air show, Bessie rode as a passenger without fastening her parachute so she could rise up high enough in her seat to take a look at the terrain for a planned parachute jump the next day. A loose wrench jammed the controls throwing the airplane into a spin and Bessie out to her death.

  There were many such tragedies. The early years exacted a horrendous toll on aviation’s pioneers. During 1910 alone, thirty-seven professional flyers were killed performing at air exhibitions. Today, we can hardly comprehend the rudimentary nature of machines they called airplanes and the often-flimsy construction that too often sent people to their deaths.

  Among the courageous firsts, each aviator could conceivably be called foolhardy, and certainly all were daredevils. Their bravery, however ill-advised, became our bounty. And because they breached the unknown, safer machines evolved as more eager aviators followed. The air knew no boundaries nor gender distinctions. If men could achieve benchmarks and set records, so too could women. And that, in 1929, became irrefutable.

  SKY GIRLS

  Flight is abiding peace.

  Absolute serenity.

  It is faith and compassion.

  Purest joy.

  It is a spirit totally free.

  Flight is yesterday’s yearning.

  The fulfillment of today’s dreams.

  Tomorrow’s promises.

  —LOUISE THADEN

  DECEMBER 7, 1928

  OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

  The tall, slender pilot outfitted in a fur-lined flying suit looked a little incongruous on the warm January afternoon at Oakland International Airport. Louise Thaden’s bright blue eyes betrayed a modicum of apprehension as she looked over her brand-new open-cockpit biwing Travel Air 3000 carefully before flight. Her test flights in preceding days had not been encouraging. She’d suffered three engine failures, calling for dead stick (or powerless) landings. Successful ones, fortunately, but that experience didn’t build confidence in her engine, a high-compression 180 horsepower Hispano-Suiza. The villain the first two times was a clogged fuel vent, the third time, shavings in the fuel tank stopped the flow of gasoline to the engine.

  Thaden was attempting to break the women’s altitude record, and the airplane had been modified, stripped of any unnecessary equipment whose weight would inhibit a maximum climb. Thaden would be reaching an altitude with insufficient oxygen for the pilot to remain functional. She had found a small oxygen cylinder at a local machine shop, then got an ether mask from a hospital. A rubber hose and a pair of pliers to turn the control valves on the tank completed her oxygen equipment for high-altitude flight. She inquired how to use oxygen, and she was told by an intern at the hospital that if she used too much she’d pass out, and if she didn’t use enough she’d pass out. So much for high-altitude orientation.

  Climbing through fifteen thousand feet on the historic flight, Thaden donned her makeshift oxygen mask and opened the valve of her tank a fraction of an inch with the pliers. She climbed for an hour, carefully hoarding airspeed, and at twenty thousand feet, she gave the control valve another quarter turn. Her ether mask was collecting moisture which dripped down her chin, and her breathing made a strange bubbling sound. Still mushing upward, she last remembered seeing one altimeter read twenty-seven thousand feet above sea level, and the other twenty-nine thousand. The temperature was twenty-four below.

  Too soon, her oxygen tank was empty. With her ears ringing and her brain oxygen-deprived, Thaden’s consciousness had faded, and certainly her judgment was impaired. The airplane spiraled down of its own accord. As the fog slowly lifted from Thaden’s brain at around sixteen thousand feet, she thankfully pulled off her frozen mask to breathe real air again. Thaden took back control of the pilotless aircraft and landed safely, to the relief and pride of her factory support team. After calibration, the official barograph reading showed a disappointing 20,260 feet above the earth. Nevertheless, it was higher than any woman had ever flown.

  No one would pick quiet and thoughtful Louise Thaden out of a crowd for an aviator. She wasn’t the flamboyant type like colorful Roscoe Turner, complete with waxed mustache, snappy uniform, and jodhpurs, who flew with his live lion, Gilmore. Nor was she like Wiley Post, who exuded glamour and mystery behind a black eye patch, proclaiming his macho roustabout credentials from the Oklahoma oil fields. Gentle Louise sported none of the outlandish, attention-grabbing glitz of many aviators of the day. She was just a pretty, unassuming young woman who simply adored flying airplanes. She had enough competitive spirit to go after flying records, but she did so without undue flash.

  Only a couple years before, young Thaden’s introduction to flying came serendipitously. She landed a job in Wichita, Kansas, selling coal for the J. H. Turner Coal Company. That her boss, Mr. Turner, also happened to be a large stockholder in and director of Walter Beech’s Travel Air Company tantalized her. Thaden revived her long-secret yearning to fly, while simultaneously learning a thing or two about the airplane business.

  The day she heard that the Travel Air cabin monoplane was set for its first flight, the coal salesgirl was compelled to sneak off to watch. Though she was embarrassed to run into her boss there, he appreciated her fascination with the airplanes and promised to speak to the boss, Walter Beech, on her behalf. The two men arranged a sales job with their Pacific Coast distributor for Thaden. It was a life-changing opportunity; she would get to learn to fly…and in the same way other pilots of the epoch did—by defying the odds.

  Engine failures, lost bearings, cross-country fatigue, and heart-stopping aerobatics—it all added up to experience. Though the pilots could trade their whoppers, share exaggerated flying tales called “hangar flying,” and boast their macho understated responses to real danger, Thaden succinctly summarized the largely self-schooled process of learning to fly: “A pilot who says he has never been frightened in an airplane is, I’m afraid, lying.”

  After five hours and fifteen minutes in the air, in February 1928, Thaden earned Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Private Pilot Certificate #6850, signed by Orville Wright. Her twenty-minute check-ride by E. E. Mouton was flown in a Travel Air with an OX-5 engine. Though flown in February, by the time the paperwork was completed, Thaden’s pilot certificate read May 16. No matter. When the eager pilot’s log book totaled two hundred hours in the air, she was eligible for a transport pilot’s li
cense. At the time, she was told there were only three transport pilots who had come before her. She passed the lengthy written exam and prepared for a flight test. The flight examiner, like so many others, intensified the ordeal so he wouldn’t be accused of going easy on “the girls.” In April 1929, twenty-three-year-old Louise Thaden became a certificated transport pilot.

  In the meantime, Herb Thaden, her reserved young engineer beau, had proposed marriage. They eloped to Reno, Nevada. Instead of a honeymoon, Louise hurried east with a stop in Wichita, Kansas, to persuade Walter Beech to build her a racing airplane for the first women’s transcontinental air race.

  In 1929, for the very first time, the National Exchange Club, a men’s service club, had elected to sponsor an all-women’s air derby from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland, Ohio, a distance of about twenty-seven hundred miles, as their national publicity project for the year. Air race promoter Cliff Henderson organized the first Women’s Air Derby, patterning it after the men’s transcontinental air races. Elizabeth L. McQueen, founder of the Women’s International Association of Aeronautics, recruited the contestants from across the nation, and, indeed, word even spread to Europe. Never a pilot herself, McQueen always supported any women pilots’ activities. The small group of women licensed to fly airplanes in 1929 received the plan with huge excitement. It was a toss-up whether the Exchange Club or the women pilots were more determined to make a good showing. It was a momentous occasion—for women and for aeronautics.

  Race officials anticipated enormous crowds at the Cleveland Air Races, the derby’s finish line. People would come from all over the country, and some even from abroad, expecting state-of-the-art entertainment—roaring airplanes racing around pylons, a breathtaking air show, military demonstrations, and the chance to look over the newest airplane models. And in 1929, for the first time, women would be racing airplanes from the far western edge of the country, adding to the excitement in Ohio where the cross-country race would end.

  Just before the festivities commenced in Cleveland, transcontinental air races would start from both ends of the country—the women from the west and two men’s races from west and east, culminating in front of Cleveland’s huge throngs. Timers organized to clock each racer in and out of the designated stops. Though there would be great glory for arriving at the finish line first, the shortest total elapsed time would win. At stake was $8,000 in prize monies, plus generous prizes for each leg of the trip.

  The women competitors certainly wanted the prize money, but they were ecstatic simply to be competing. Most were able to find aircraft company sponsorships to help shoulder expenses. Either Thaden was a super salesgirl or Walter Beech knew a champion pilot when he saw one. Soon after her own request, five new Travel Airs were coming down the production line for women racers, one with the name “Thaden” on it. All were built specifically for the Derby with speed wings (a thinner cross section) and Wright engines, though some older Travel Airs already out in the field were entered also. Thaden’s airplane came off the assembly line last, she supposed because she wasn’t buying hers. The factory would be her sponsor. The Travel Air was the racing airplane of choice, mostly because Walter Beech himself was committed to racing activities at the terminus in Cleveland, and he thought interest generated by the ladies’ racing would sell airplanes.

  Walter Beech and Louise Thaden

  Though Beech would one day manufacture airplanes flown worldwide under his own name, the Travel Air Manufacturing Company, located on the east side of Wichita, Kansas, was already making a name for strong, fast, and reliable airplanes. It had been building and selling an astonishing one airplane per day the previous year. Travel Air’s location was, in part, responsible for Wichita’s legitimate claim to its immodest title, “Aviation Capital of the World,” though the town’s location in the middle of tornado alley, with its springtime thunderstorms and hail, did not engender a sense of comfort.

  Travel Air had a close affiliation with the Curtiss-Wright Corporation through the Wright interests, and it kept a winning record due to constant modifications to its products. In fact, the rumor was out that the Travel Air factory had a new “mystery ship,” which Beech would introduce in Cleveland. Thaden would have given her right arm to fly this as-yet-unseen aircraft in the women’s race. The Mystery Ship Model R was radically new—low wing with lots of power and rumored to be up to a hundred miles per hour faster than the earlier design. One wag remarked that “it was so fast it takes three men lined up to see it!” Walter Beech had covered the windows in the area of the factory where the Model R was being developed, whether on purpose or by happenstance, creating great interest in and conversation about the mystery airplane. As a result, the Model R was forever known as the Mystery Ship because of its mysterious birth.

  The Travel Airs flown by the women were a well-proven and popular current design: biwing (one wing above the other), open cockpit, and a choice of engines of varying horsepowers. It was not a small airplane, though derby participant Marvel Crosson’s racing model was more diminutive, and it took either a running leap, a small stepladder, or an agile pilot to climb up into the high cockpit. As office space, the Travel Air cockpit left a lot to be desired. It was noisy, dirty, too cold or hot, and not comfortable. On the other hand, it was the magic carpet right out of One Thousand and One Nights. The airplane provided a view of the earth—the neat farms and geometric row crops; herds of exquisite wild horses running in total freedom; deep, dark canyons swallowing meandering rivers looking for the ocean; and miniature people burdened with their daily lives and troubles.

  Thaden’s arrival at the factory invariably lent a happy tone to the place. The combination of her modest air and taking the time to speak to each of the workmen who put together her airplane made them want to make a special effort for the girl with the slight southern cadence. Dark curls slipping out of her cloth flying helmet framed a rather square face, which was dominated by her light blue luminous eyes. A subtle sense of humor complemented her barely contained wonder that God had seen fit to give her the gift of flight. Her unusually calm demeanor distinguished her among the sometimes-volatile women who chose to fly airplanes in 1929. The guys on the assembly line approved of the boss’s unexpected decision to follow Thaden as far as Fort Worth, Texas, to make sure everything was working perfectly on his “baby,” the Travel Air. As it turned out, this decision made all the difference for Thaden and for the race.

  Thaden had said goodbye to her parents and her sister Alice, who came over from Arkansas on a hot mid-August day in 1929 to see her off from the Travel Air factory in Wichita. Thaden prepared to trail the others already on the way to the race start in Santa Monica. She still had sufficient time to get there. However, she didn’t want to dillydally. The two airplanes landed in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for fuel en route to Fort Worth, navigating in reverse the course she’d be flying in just a few days. Walter Beech’s enthusiasm was high, and as they prepared to depart southbound, the great aviation legend saluted Thaden, “Good luck, fella.” Then, looking at her with concern, he added, “Do you feel all right?”

  On that late summer day, Walter Beech’s warmth was an unbiased acknowledgement of a fellow aviator. And her faint reply, “Sure, swell,” spoke volumes about the persistence and enthusiasm that led Louise Thaden and nineteen other daring women to broach a new aviation frontier for women and for pilots.

  When Thaden had said she felt “swell” to Beech in Tulsa, it was a lie. Thaden felt awful. She was dizzy and nauseated. Must be the heat and excitement of the race, she reflected. She had thought a cold drink would settle her down as the airplane was being refueled during the quick Oklahoma stop, but it had not. Oh, for some cool rain, she hoped. She was distracted, and she laughed just thinking about it. Student pilots learning about weather never seemed to forget Thaden’s explanation of rain: “Fill a heavy paper bag half full of water, hold it suspended, and watch while the bottom slowly sags, gradually giving way until finally a hole appears and water flows
in a steady stream, and you will have seen a rain storm as it looks from the air.”

  Pulling herself up into the high cockpit, leg over the edge, then dropping down on the low seat, Thaden departed Tulsa, as did Beech, in their separate airplanes. Beech pulled ahead in an enclosed cabin Model 6000 as Thaden throttled back to a cruise setting, breaking in her new engine. She leaned her head out of the open cockpit into the slipstream, hoping to feel better by finding some fresh air and clearing her head. But the only air rushing by was scorching hot and not refreshing at all.

  In March, just a few months before the derby, a “Hisso” Travel Air (Hisso engine), which incorporated the newly designed speed wing airfoil, had been trucked to Oakland, California, for an endurance trial. A letter was attached to the wing that read, “We believe the wings to be sufficiently strong, but since they are a new development, we do not want you to take any unnecessary risks or chances.” It was signed by Walter Beech. Sure, Thaden had thought, nothing “unnecessary.” “Okay, I’ll be a test pilot,” she decided. Thaden knew that flying airplanes carried some risk, but she was a cautious risk taker. The risk had to be worth taking, with positive odds for success.

  First, Thaden set an endurance record of more than twenty-two hours aloft in the Travel Air. She described the challenge of staying awake as “torture.” Then in April, diving for speed across the course, she had drawn on all the speed the airplane had, and set the new 156-miles-per-hour record. (Speeds were usually noted in statute miles per hour rather than nautical miles per hour, simply so the airplane would seem faster in advertising. Since a knot, or nautical mile, equals 1.15 statute miles, Thaden’s record of 156 miles per hour was really only 136 nautical miles.) No one woman had ever held three flight records simultaneously. That made Louise Thaden the pilot of the hour. This quiet, unassuming, and talented pilot was deeply embarrassed to read about herself in the press: “Louise Thaden with her classic features and slim, light-footed figure might be a sister to Icarus, god of flight.”