Bessie Coleman soared across the sky as the first African American, and the first Native American woman pilot. Known for performing flying tricks, Coleman’s nicknames were; “Brave Bessie,” “Queen Bess,” and “The Only Race Aviatrix in the World.” Her goal was to encourage women and African Americans to reach their dreams. Unfortunately, her career ended with a tragic plane crash, but her life continues to inspire people around the world.
Alviine-Johanna “Elvy” Kalep was an Estonian aviator and the country’s first female pilot, as well as an artist, toy designer and children’s author.
Kalep grew up in Estonia and Russia, and later moved to China due to the Russian Civil War, before settling in Paris to study art. In 1931, she qualified as a pilot in Germany, becoming the first Estonian female pilot. Befriending American aviator Amelia Earhart, she joined the Ninety-Nines, an international organisation for women pilots, and took up the cause of encouraging other women to take up aviation. She wrote and illustrated a children’s book about flying, Air Babies, first published in 1936. The book’s 1938 reprint included a foreword from Earhart, who embarked on her last flight three days after writing the piece in 1937.
After moving to the United States, Kalep founded a toy manufacturing business in New York in 1939, where she produced a doll she had designed – when thrown into the air, Patsie Parachute would fall down slowly as a parachutist would. Although she had to close the business in 1946 due to her poor health, she made a living through the 1950s by selling patents to toy designs to larger companies. This included the successful Scribbles Dolls, which had blank faces that could be individually decorated by children, inspired by the 50,000 doll heads she had left over from the closure of the Patsie Parachute factory. In the 1960s and 1970s, she created three-dimensional paintings made out of small pieces of coloured leather, which she sold to support herself and exhibited across the United States.
Yekaterina “Katya” Vasilyevna Budanova was a fighter pilot in the Soviet Air Force during World War II. With five air victories, she was one of the world’s two female fighter aces, with Lydia Litvyak.
In 1931, aviator Maude ‘Lores’ Bonney broke the Australian record for the longest one-day flight by a woman. On Christmas Day, she flew from Brisbane to Wangaratta, Victoria, completing the longest one-day solo flight by an Australian female pilot.
The following year, Lores became the first woman to circumnavigate Australia by air. After a failed first attempt she successfully flew from Perth to Brisbane in August and September 1932, flying a totally of 13,000km and spending 95 hours and 27 minutes in the air.
Setting her sights internationally, Lores set out to become the first female to fly solo from Australia to England. Leaving Archerfield aerodrome on April 10 1933 on the dangerous journey, she crashed her beloved My Little Ship twice along the way. She landed in Croydon, England, on June 21 1933 having spent 157 hours and 15 minutes airborne.
Lores became the first person to fly solo from Australia to South Africa in 1937. The outbreak of World War II ended her flying career as she was planning her next flight – around the world, via Japan, Alaska and the United States. During the war, Bonney served on the executive of the Women’s Voluntary National Register in Queensland. She returned to flying after the war but retired in 1949 because her eyesight was failing. During the 1950s she was president of the Queensland branch of the Australian Women Pilots’ Association and in January 1991 she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) ‘in recognition of service to aviation’.
Touria Chaoui was Morocco’s first female pilot. When she was 14, her father enrolled her in the only available flying school, in Tit Mellil – the resistance was swift and significant. The school was reserved for the French forces occupying Morocco, making it inhospitable for any native Moroccan, particularly women. Although the school tried to refuse her entry, there was no legal grounds for them to do so. The school adminisrators reluctantly accepted her, hoping she would drop out. Instead, she obtained her pilots licence on 17 October 1951, at the age of 15. She became the first Moroccan and Maghrebi female pilot. Her career was short-lived, as she was murdered on March 1, 1956, at the age of 19, by Ahmed Touil, the leader of a secret organisation who assassinated several Moroccan political personalities.
Amy Johnson CBE was a pioneering English aviator, and the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia over 19.5 days in May 1930, doing so with little flying experience at the time (she had only received her license in 1929).
She set many long-distance records throughout the 1930s, across Europe and to Moscow and Tokyo. In 1931 she married fellow aviator James Mollison and quickly broke his record for flying from England to South Africa. In 1936, she broke the record again, flying 22,530 kilometers in 12 days. The couple flew the Atlantic together in July 1933, but crashed on landing at Bridgeport, Connecticut.. Johnson and Mollison made it as far as India during the 1934 MacRobertson Race from England to Australia, and divorced soon after. Johnson flew military missions during World War II as a part of the Air Transport Auxiliary and died during a ferry flight.
Pioneering aviator Freda Thompson was the first Australian woman to fly solo from the United Kingdom to Australia, completing the journey in a Gypsy Moth Major in 39 days of flying.
Constance Babington Smith MBE FRSL was a British journalist and writer. Having worked for The Aeroplane magazine before World War II, her knowledge of aircraft led her to the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. She served with the Central Interpretation Unit (CIU) at RAF Medmenham, Buckinghamshire, earning the rank of Flight Officer.
Working on interpretating aerial reconnaissance photographs, Constance was credited with the discovery of the V1 flying bomb at Peenemunde, Germany.
In 1945 she was awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). After VE-Day (Victory in Europe) on 8 May 1945, Constance was attached to U.S. Air Force Intelligence in Washington, D.C. to continue workingon photographic interpretation, this time for the Pacific theatre. In 1946, she was awarded her the U.S.’s Legion of Merit.