Jean Gardner Batten
One of the great international aviators of the 1930s
Category Archives: Aviation
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Amelia Earhart
She never reached her fortieth birthday, but in her brief life, Amelia Earhart became a record-breaking female aviator whose international fame improved public acceptance of aviation and paved the way for other women in commercial flight.
Bessie Coleman
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.
Elvy Kalep
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 Budanova
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.
Maude Bonney
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
Touria Chaoui was Morocco’s first female pilot.
Amy Johnson
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.
Freda Thompson
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
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.