FlyZolo Team Update - Day 16
Whilst Zara Rutherford is attempting to break the world record of youngest woman flying solo around the world, hoping at the same time to inspire girls and young women to follow their dreams, let's talk about the "National Women's Air Derby", also known as the "Powder Puff Derby".
More than 80 years ago, in 1929 and for the first time ever in the US, 20 women took to the skies in a women's only Air Race. The race took 9 days from Santa Monica, California to Cleveland, Ohio, where 15 women arrived. One of them was Amelia Earhart.
The planes had none of the safety features of airplanes today: very few to no instruments, no gps, no lights. House keys were sometimes hung in the cockpit to see where was up and where was down. During the 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 below mentioned documentary, 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.
The women not only had to have great piloting skills, they also needed to be accomplished mechanics to keep their planes flying.
By the time they arrived in Cleveland, an estimated 18,000 people had gathered to greet the pilots at the end of the race. Louise Thaden won the heavy class in a time of 20 hours, 19 minutes and 4 seconds. Phoebe Omlie won the light class in 25 hours, 12 minutes and 47.5 seconds
Watch an amazing excerpt of Heather Taylor's 2010 documentary "Breaking Through The Clouds: The First Women's National Air Derby", here: https://ecs.page.link/xnoCn
The first frame begins with the following words from Emily Dickinson.
We never know how high we are
Til we are called to rise
And then if we are true to plan
Our statures touch the skies
May you each touch blue skies in your own journey.
Amelia Earhart The Ninety-Nines, Inc, International Organization of Women Pilots Indian Women Pilots' Association Women For One International Association of Women The International Society of Women Airline Pilots Women in the World Women in Aviation International Women in Corporate Aviation - WCA Pilote & Filles
