The Chieftain's Hatch: Aviatrices

As anyone who has used the Internet today will be well aware, today would have been Amerlia Earhart's 115th birthday. The local airport for Wargaming NA's office is Oakland, and you can't really fly out of there and not have the Earhart link noticed by photographs on the wall, it became her home base and it was from there that she set off on her round-the-world attempt.

At the other end of the scale, Sally Ride, the first American woman in Space, lost her battle with pancreatic cancer today.  It's quite a distance from the JN-4 to the Space Shuttle, but women managed it.

Of course, that last line could be read as condascending to the fairer sex, but of course back in the Earhart days, it's because it was a man's world.  However, famous though Amelia may have been, one wonders how much of her fame is due to the mystery surrounding her death. Does this popular focus on Amelia take away credit for advances in female aviation from other women? This certainly isn't an Earhart article, there are plenty of other writers have done one of those today!

The first thing to note, of course, is that Earhart was not the first female to fly. Nor was she the first female American to fly, her own instructor was Neta Southern. Interestingly, her middle name was "Snook", so her nickname was "Snookie". Say "Snookie" to someone on the street today, and I doubt they'll imagine someone as impressive as Neta. But even Amelia's teacher wasn't the first, that distinction in the US officially belongs to Harriet Quimby, the USA's first female accredited pilot.

Harriet was so far ahead of Amelia in the aviatrix pioneer stakes that she had been killed in an airplane crash eight years before Amelia had even had her first airplane ride. This, of course, is not Miss Earhart's fault, but how many people have heard of Miss Quimby?

But if Harriet Quimby was the first American female to earn a piliot's license, who was the first woman at all? That distinction goes to Baroness Raymonde de Laroche of France. France's role in aviation history is probably understated, given that the US is the land of Boeing, Curtiss and the Wright Brothers, but though the French may not have invented the thing, they did take to the skies with abandon and became the world leaders in the field.

Not only were the French a little more progressive on the matter of gender in aviation, they also tended to be a little less picky about skin colour. As a result, when Bessie Coleman, who had the audacity to be both female and black decided to earn a pilot's license, she had to go to France to earn it. 

Now, if there were doubts about whether or not females had the capcity to fly airplanes at all, then Lady Mary Bailey of Ireland really made waves by  earning her IFR rating in 1926. (Back then it was called "blind-flying")

Moving to a more modern timepoint, COL Jeannie Leavitt is the US Air Force's first female fighter pilot, she's still in the service, just received a Wing command a couple of months ago. Her Naval counterpart was LT Kara Hultgreen, killed in a carrier landing accident in her F-14. Both were allowed behind the controls of the fighters after US regulations changed in 1993.

Over fifty years earlier, Lieutenant Lydia Vladimirovna Litvyak was an ace, garnering twelve victories in her Yak-1.

Russian female military aviation goes back far further than the Great Patriotic War: Eugenie Mikhailovna Shakhovskaya was a reconnaissance pilot in the Tsar's military in 1914 (Her later career was interesting). First female pilot to be wounded in combat: Nedeshda Degtereva flying a recon mission in Austria.

If you're North of the border, a name to note is Eileen Vollick, Canada's first female flyer. Earning her license in 1928, Canada was a bit behind on the gender gap for a while, but Canada's first female fighter pilot was flying Hornets in 1989, before Ms Leavitt was allowed in an F-15.

So there you go. A little bit of aviatrice history you may not have been aware of, some of these women every bit as important to aviation as Amelia Earhart.

I can't help you with the most critical question of all, however.... What do female pilots pick for nose art?