Lyceum & Book Club - Week 34 - the history of women in aviation
- Aug 17, 2022
- 11 min read
Women have been flying powered aircraft since 1908; prior to 1970, however, most were restricted to working privately or in support roles in the aviation industry. - wiki
This has kept women out of the two avenues that ordinarily offer a man a path to advancement in aviation and the aerospace industry, both financially and accusing the status that leads to decision making roles and the power that goes with it - namely, the military and commercial aviation.
Although we are focusing on just one aspect - gender - being used to shut out a non-dominant sector of the population from being able to compete on an equal basis in the space program, let’s start out with a reminder that Black women faced a double gate keeper - gender and race - from being included in any program that would lead to any participation in the space program.
https://www.airlines.org/womens-history-month-a-salute-women-aviation-pioneers/
Born in 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, Bessie Coleman was the first African American and Native American woman to receive her pilot’s license. She became interested in aviation after her brother teased her that French women were allowed to fly airplanes while she could not. Coleman was spurred by this and applied to flight schools across the country but was rejected based on her race and gender.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/freightwaves-classicspioneers-women-made-their-marks-on-aviation-history-part-1-1880-1920
It appears that the public was delighted with women flying when it was an irregular event - the draw was much like that of watching a cat playing the piano. But once more cats start showing an interest in playing the piano and maybe supplanting dogs who play the piano, opposition arose, not only among male competitors, but the general public as well (which would not have happened if those males who made decisions in the aviation industry, media, etc. hadn’t started framing it as a negative, something they did not do with men when adverse events occurred with male pilots)
The death of Harriet Quimby in a flying accident in 1912 gave the excuse that women shouldn’t be piloting airplanes as anything other than an oddity.
Opposition to a rising inclusive movement builds in waves, each wave of opposition wearing down momentum until the threat of a rising movement to include the challenging non-dominant faction on a parity with the established dominant population is brought down to an acceptable level for the dominant status quo, providing security that a system is in place which prevents non-dominant competitors from achieving parity. The gate narrows so only a few can possibly make it through the gate to be admitted to the Club as individuals, not as a group.
On January 20, 1913 at Garden City, New York, Bernetta Miller attempted a women’s altitude record, but was forced to abandon the attempt when an oil gauge broke and oil obscured her vision. Because of financial difficulties and increasing disapproval of women flying after the death of Harriet Quimby, Miller stopped flying soon thereafter. - flightwaves.com
Collier’s Magazine - On May 13, 1913, at Madison, Wisconsin, Blanche Stuart “Betty” Scott was at 200 feet when she shoved forward on the throttle for more power and the wire snapped - it had been previously cut almost in two, subsequent investigation reveals, by someone still unknown to her. With no engine control and badly in need of power, she had to get down immediately and she plumped into a swamp. She was hauled out with a wide variety of broken bones and a cut throat from a rigging wire.
Recovered from this crash early in 1914, she flew occasionally until 1916 when she concluded there was no opportunity for a professional piloting career for women, and there was insufficient public interest for her to make a fight for it.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/freightwaves-classicspioneers-women-made-their-marks-on-aviation-history-part-2-the-roaring-20s
When paid careers within the aviation industry was shut to female pilots, they took the root of exhibitions and stunt flying to make a living. The 1929 ruling cut out a prominent pathway for many women in having any kind of sustainable career in aviation.
Boyer performed many daring stunts and achieved great public acclaim until 1929. Federal regulations went into effect at that time, impacting “low-flying and unsafe planes.” The new regulations forced her and many other barnstormers into retirement.
It’s not that the ruling was necessarily wrong, it was the fact all other avenues had been closed off to women pursuing flying as a career.
Instead they turned their endeavors to airplane racing.
It was during this period that you saw a high level of flying expertise among women pilots become the norm and saw interest rise with pilots like Elinor Smith, Amelia Earhart, Phoebe Omlie and Louise Thaden, Florence Pancho Barnes, Opal Kunz and Blanche Noyes.
In 1930, Thaden and Earhart were among the founders of an international organization for women pilots called the Ninety-Nines. Of the 117 licensed women pilots of the day, 99 became charter members of the organization and its name came from their number. - airfreight.com
In 1929, the first Women’s Air Derby race was held. As an inaugural event, the 20 women who entered the transcontinental race ran into all kinds of problems. None of which were insurmountable as they gained experience with continued air races, the same as happened in the history of flying that only included men. Disaster early in the learning curve, except the learning curve is not purposefully truncated so progress is blunted.
Wiki:
During the first two decades of heavier-than-air flying, the few women fliers in the United States became acquainted with one another during air meets and air rodeos. The bonds among the top women pilots were strengthened in the first real race for female pilots—the Women’s Air Derby during the 1929 National Air Races and Aeronautical Exposition. Air-race promoter Cliff Henderson was the founder of the first Women’s Air Derby, which he patterned after the men’s transcontinental air races. (Ironically, Henderson would ban women from competing in the 1934 Bendix Trophy and National Air Races after a crash which claimed the life of pilot Florence Klingensmith in 1933.)
One of the qualifications was that the aircraft would have to have horsepower "appropriate for a woman." Opal Kunz's 300-horsepower Travel Air was deemed to be "too fast for a woman to fly" (even though she owned and flew it), so she had to find a less powerful aircraft to race.
Marvel Crosson crashed in the Gila River Valley and was killed, apparently the victim of carbon monoxide poisoning. There was a public outcry demanding the race be canceled, but the pilots got together and decided the most fitting tribute would be to finish the derby. Blanche Noyes had to put out a fire that erupted in mid-air over Pecos, but continued on. (In the 2010 documentary Breaking Through the Clouds: The First Women's National Air Derby, Noyes, a non-smoker, explained that she found a cigarette butt in her baggage compartment.) Margaret Perry caught typhoid fever. Pancho Barnes crashed into a car that drove onto the runway as she was trying to land, wrecking her airplane. Ruth Nichols also crashed. Claire Fahy's wing wires were eaten through, possibly sabotaged with acid; she withdrew from the race.
From ninety-nines.org:
The history of The Ninety-Nines is deeply rooted in air racing. The Women's Air Derby on August 13-20, 1929 gave women the opportunity to participate in an area of aviation that had been eluding them. Louise Thaden wrote:
"To us the successful completion of the Derby was of more import than life or death. Airplane and engine construction had advanced remarkably near the end of 1929. Scheduled air transportation was beginning to be a source of worry to the railroad. Nonetheless a pitiful minority were riding air lines. Commercial training schools needed more students. The public was skeptical of airplanes and air travel. We women of the Derby were out to prove that flying was safe; to sell aviation to the layman."
Louise Thaden and Blanche Noyes went on to win the prestigious Bendix Trophy Race on September 4, 1936, landing at Mines Field in Los Angeles in a bright blue Beechcraft Staggerwing C-17R. This was the first time that women had won the coveted Bendix Trophy. Laura Ingallas in her Lockheed Orion crossed the finish line 45 minutes later to win second place. Amelia Earhart and Helen Richey finished fifth. This was the second year that women were allowed to participate in the race that was started in 1931.
Prior to the Bendix Trophy Race, air racing officials just would not believe that women were skilled enough to compete against men. Women were encouraged to hold their own competitions. From this came competitions such as the Women's International Free-For-All. Occasionally, women were allowed to compete with the men, such as the National Air Race and Transcontinental Handicap Air Derby, but any accident gave race officials one more excuse to exclude women.
Such a situation occurred with Florence Klingensmith's fatal crash in a Gee Bee Y during the 1933 Frank Phillips Trophy Race in Chicago. That crash was the reason given for keeping women out of the 1934 Bendix Race. Protesting the decision, Amelia Earhart refused to fly actress Mary Pickford to Cleveland to open that year's races.
Although women were not allowed to compete in major races until the 1930s, many air races created separate divisions for the women. The women's divisions were mirror images of the men's divisions, and it was soon noted that the women's times and speeds were very close to the men's.
Freight waves.com:
Louise Thaden had rapidly become a key figure in the aviation world after setting a number of world performance records and winning multiple flying events.
However, due to sexism, women were barred from air racing from 1930 to 1935.
As one path to having a sustained career was closed off to women, they sought any other path that would still allow them access to an area they sought to participate in.
Ellen Church, a registered nurse and a pilot, served as the first female airline stewardess in the U.S. Although Church wanted to pilot commercial aircraft, those jobs were not open to women. Because she still wanted to fly, Church convinced Boeing Air Transport (BAT) that using nurses as stewardesses would increase safety and help convince passengers that flying was safe. - freightwaves.com
Once the ban was lifted, you again saw a renewed momentum to include women pilots.
Women had been barred from prestigious Bendix Race following the death of Florence Klingensmith, but were allowed to compete from 1935. In 1936, women not only took first place, but also second and fifth.The winners were Louise Thaden and Blanche Noyes. Laura Ingalls came second and Earhart was fifth. In 1938, the race was won by Jacqueline Cochran. - wiki
From freight waves.com:
Thaden won the Bendix Trophy Race in 1936, the first year women were allowed to compete against men. She flew a Beech C17R Staggerwing biplane and defeated twin-engine airplanes specifically designed for racing. Laura Ingalls, another aviator, finished second, trailing Thaden by 45 minutes. TIME magazine’s September 14, 1936 issue stated, “To pilots Thaden and Noyes the $7,000 prize money was far less gratifying than the pleasure of beating the men. Among the first 10 U.S. women to earn transport licenses, they have for years been front-line fighters in aviation’s ‘battle of the sexes.’ A fuzzy-haired blonde of 30, Mrs. Thaden has been flying since 1927, has held the women’s speed, altitude and endurance records, and is the mother of a 6-year-old son. She and Noyes both work regularly as air-marking pilots for the U.S. Department of Commerce. Short, brunette Mrs. Noyes is better known as the only pilot ever to fly John D. Rockefeller Sr.
Thaden said women were “innately better pilots than men.”
In the National Air Races, male contestants have always patronized women, in 1934 they ousted them altogether.”
In 1934 Helen Richey won the first National Air Meet for women in Dayton, Ohio. Central Airlines, a Greensburg, Pennsylvania-based carrier that eventually became part of United Airlines, hired Richey as a pilot in 1934. She made her first regular flight for the airline on December 31,1934, piloting a Ford Trimotor from Washington to Detroit. Unfortunately, Richey was forced to leave the cockpit due to pressure from the all-male pilots union.
And again a barrier was put in place. Over and over.
Later the All-Women’s Air Derby was renamed the Powder Puff Derby.
Wiki:
The Powder Puff Derby was the name given to an annual transcontinental air race for women pilots inaugurated in 1947. For the next two years it was named the "Jacqueline Cochran All-Woman Transcontinental Air Race" (AWTAR). It was dubbed the "Powder Puff Derby" in reference to the 1929 Women's Air Derby by humorist and aviation advocate Will Rogers.
In 1977, rising costs, insurance premiums, and diminished corporate sponsorship saw the competition come to an end after thirty years. After the commemorative final flight, the Air Race Classic continued the tradition for women pilots.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/freightwaves-classicspioneers-women-made-their-marks-on-aviation-history-part-3-the-1930s-1940s
Wiki
As World War II began, women became involved in combat. In the United States, prior to the war, pilots typically flew only in good weather, so that they could judge ground position. Flying in combat required pilots to fly in varying conditions, and a push for instrument training began. By 1944, around 6,000 women had been trained as Link Trainer operators and were teaching male pilots how to read instruments. WAVES like Patricia W. Malone transitioned after the war to commercial flight simulation instruction, where women dominated the industry of flight training operators.
The WASPs never gained full military benefits, the organization was disbanded in December 1944. WASPs finally earned veteran status retroactively in 1979
Just as a reminder, there is always a hierarchy of who is not allowed in the Club. Blacks were barred as well as women because of race. Black women faced a double gatekeeping system - by gender and race.
During World War II, Dorthy McIntyre taught aircraft mechanics at the War Production Training School in Baltimore. Although she applied to become a WASP, she was turned down because of her race.
Rose Rolls (Cousin) graduated from high school at 16 and began attending West Virginia State College, majoring in business administration. The college began a Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) in 1939. The college was one of only six historically Black institutions in the nation to establish one of the programs, which were federally funded. Rolls was the only woman to join.
In the beginning, the program’s director sought to deny her entry into the CPTP due to her gender. However, Rolls was permitted to join, provided she could pass the same mental and physical exams as her male counterparts. Reportedly she told the instructor, “I’ll just put my hair up and you can pretend I’m a man.”
She received her pilot’s license upon graduating in 1941, becoming the first African American woman licensed under the CPTP. In 1941, the 11 graduates from the college’s CPTP pilot training program tried out for the U.S. Army’s training program for African American combat pilots in Tuskegee, Alabama.
However, Rolls was denied entry into the Tuskegee Airmen because of her gender. Like McIntyre (above) she then tried to join the WASPs, but was rejected due to her race.
—————
wiki:
The formation of the Ninety-Nines in 1929 was the first organization for women pilots. Their members have included almost every female pilot of noting accomplishments. Formed after the first official women-only air race in the United States during the 1929 National Air Races. 99 women out of the 117 holding pilot licenses became Founding members of the Ninety-Nines, named after the number of members. Within the United States, during 1930, there were around 200 women pilots but in five years there were more than 700.
Until the 1970s, aviation had been a traditionally male occupation in the United States. Commerce Department regulations virtually required pilots to have flown in the military to acquire sufficient flight hours, and until the 1970s, the U.S. Air Force and Navy barred women from flying and they were routinely denied work in commercial piloting.The US military did not open fighter jet flights to women until 1993.Women eventually began to enter U.S. major commercial aviation in the 1970s and 1980s, with 1973 seeing the first female pilot at a major U.S. airline, American Airlines. American also promoted the first female captain of a major U.S. airline in 1986 and the following year had the first all-woman flight crew.
Women of Aviation Worldwide Week has reported that after 1980, the increase in gender parity for women pilots in the United States has been stagnant.Women flying commercial airlines in India make up 20.6% of all pilots. The global number of women airline pilots is 3%. While the overall number of female pilots in aviation has increased, the percentage remains the same.
Comments