Women Aviators
How Female Pilots Broke Aviation's Barriers
Women have been flying almost as long as airplanes have existed. But being able to fly and being accepted as a pilot were two very different things.
From aviation's earliest years, female pilots had to overcome assumptions about whether women were physically capable of controlling aircraft, whether they should be trained at all, whether passengers would trust them, and eventually whether they could be entrusted with the same powerful military aircraft flown by men.
Each generation pushed that boundary a little further.
By World War II, women who had once struggled simply to get flying lessons were climbing into fighters and bombers.
How did that happen?
When Did Women First Learn to Fly?
The first powered flight by the Wright brothers took place in 1903. Women were piloting aircraft within a few years.
French aviator Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman in the world to receive a pilot's licence in 1910. In the United States, journalist Harriet Quimby became the first American woman to earn a pilot's licence in 1911. The following year she became the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel.
Even accomplishing that attracted skepticism. Before Quimby's Channel flight, aviator Gustav Hamel reportedly offered to disguise himself as her and make the flight in her place because he doubted she could accomplish it herself.
Quimby refused. She flew from England to France on April 16, 1912.
Why Were Women Pilots Once Considered Unusual?
Early aviation was dangerous for everyone.
Aircraft were primitive, navigation was rudimentary and accidents were common. But female pilots faced an additional obstacle: the widespread assumption that flying was inherently a man's occupation. Flight schools could simply refuse to train them.
Bessie Coleman encountered an even greater barrier. As a Black woman in the United States, she was unable to find an American flying school willing to teach her.
So she went to France.
In 1921, Coleman earned an international pilot's licence from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, becoming the first African American woman to do so. She returned to the United States and became a barnstorming pilot, performing loops, dives and other aerial manoeuvres before crowds.
Coleman also refused to perform at airshows that required Black and white spectators to be segregated. Her career demonstrated that the barriers confronting women in aviation weren't only technological. They could be cultural, institutional and racial as well.
What Aviation Records Did Women Pilots Break?
By the 1920s and 1930s, female aviators were no longer simply proving that women could operate an airplane. They were competing.
They raced aircraft, attempted long-distance flights and pursued the same kinds of speed, altitude and endurance records that made male aviators international celebrities.
The most famous was Amelia Earhart.
In 1932, Earhart became the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. She subsequently completed the first solo nonstop transcontinental flight across the United States by a woman and continued setting aviation records before disappearing during her attempted flight around the world in 1937.
But Earhart was far from alone.
Women pilots competed against one another in air races and formed professional networks. In 1929, ninety-nine licensed female pilots established an organisation that took its name from the number of its founding members: the Ninety-Nines. Earhart was its first president.
Women aviators were gradually changing the question.
It was no longer simply: Can a woman fly an airplane?
It was becoming: How far, how fast and how high can she fly it?
Then World War II presented aviation with a very different question.
Did Women Fly Military Aircraft During WWII?
Yes.
The enormous demands of World War II created a need for pilots on a scale civilian aviation had never experienced.
Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union all turned to women pilots, although they used them in different ways.
In Britain, women joined the civilian Air Transport Auxiliary, or ATA, which ferried aircraft between factories, maintenance facilities and operational RAF units.
In the United States, more than 1,000 women served as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP. They ferried aircraft, tested planes, transported equipment and personnel and even towed targets used for live anti-aircraft and gunnery practice.
The Soviet Union went further, deploying women in combat aviation.
What Aircraft Did Women Pilots Fly During WWII?
The answer may surprise anyone who imagines female wartime pilots confined to light trainers and transport planes.
They flew fighters. They flew bombers. They flew many of the same aircraft that male military pilots flew.
Britain's ATA initially placed restrictions on female pilots, but those barriers gradually fell. On July 19, 1941, an ATA woman delivered a Hawker Hurricane to Hatfield, marking the point at which women were permitted to ferry operational fighter aircraft. From there, the range expanded dramatically, including Spitfires and Lancaster bombers. Pilots could find themselves assigned multiple aircraft types they had never previously flown in the same day. Rather than undergoing lengthy conversion training for every model, ATA pilots relied on compact ferry pilot notes containing the essential information needed to operate unfamiliar aircraft.
American WASP pilots likewise handled a remarkable range of military aircraft. They flew types ranging from the P-51 Mustang fighter to the B-17 Flying Fortress. Women were even used to demonstrate the B-29 Superfortress when some male pilots were reluctant to fly the new bomber.
The progression from the earliest female aviators was extraordinary.
Only three decades separated Harriet Quimby's struggle to be taken seriously as a pilot from women climbing into some of the most sophisticated military aircraft in the world.
Were Women Pilots in WWII in Combat?
It depended on the country.
The British women of the ATA were not combat pilots. Their job was to move aircraft where the RAF needed them, freeing military pilots for operational duties.
American WASP pilots were also noncombat pilots and remained civilians during the war, despite undertaking military flying duties.
The Soviet Union took a different approach. Soviet women served in combat aviation units and flew operational missions against German forces. Women served as fighter pilots, bomber pilots and navigators, including in the famous 588th Night Bomber Regiment, whose crews became known by the German nickname “Night Witches.”
So the phrase female pilots of WWII describes women performing very different jobs.
Some fought the enemy directly. Others performed the less celebrated but essential work of keeping enormous wartime air forces supplied with aircraft.
And that work could still be dangerous.
How Dangerous Was Flying for the Air Transport Auxiliary?
ATA pilots weren't being shot at over occupied Europe, but ferry flying carried risks of its own. Pilots frequently flew alone. They operated in Britain's notoriously unpredictable weather. They often had limited familiarity with the particular aircraft they had been assigned. Radio use was restricted, meaning navigation depended heavily on maps, landmarks and pilot judgement.
The organisation ultimately delivered more than 300,000 aircraft during the war, and of the 168 women who served among its ferry pilots, 10% loss their lives in the line of duty.
From Women Aviators to FLY GIRLS
The history of women aviators is often told through famous names and record-breaking firsts. But World War II created another kind of aviation story.
Hundreds of women weren't trying to become famous or set records. They were doing a job that needed to be done, flying military aircraft around a country at war.
The British women of the Air Transport Auxiliary inhabited an extraordinary world of Spitfires, Hurricanes and bombers; unpredictable weather; unfamiliar aircraft; wartime airfields; and a profession that had barely existed for women a generation earlier.
That historical world inspired screenwriter Phil Parker's feature screenplay FLY GIRLS. A project her was hired to write by Toil Films. Its principal characters are fictional, but the remarkable aviation world they inhabit was real.
