Louise Thaden's “Noble Experiment”: An American Aviation Dystopia

Abstract

IntroductionIn 1921, Giulio Douhet (1869-1930), a retired brigadier general in Italian army, published The Command of Air (II Domino delTAria), a bluntly explicit consideration of evolving role of air power in wars of future. The book went into a second, enlarged edition in 1927 and by time of Douhet's death was receiving serious attention from world's major air forces. Chief among these was United States Army Air Service, headed by Brigadier General William (Billy) Mitchell (1879-1936), a vigorous and outspoken proponent of air power as principal element of modern war. Mitchell's views on strategic bombing in total war paralleled Douhet's, and by time Douhet's book was being disseminated War Department General Staff and Air Service Field Officers' School in 1930s, their combined contention that the bomber will always get through was shaping American air force's aerial strategy and tactics (Buckley 74-79; Hurley 76-91, 146; see also Sherry 23-28,238-239).For all their attractiveness to American military, views espoused by Douhet and Mitchell had their critics, some military, some civilian. Among latter was Iris Louise Thaden (19051979), one of most prominent American female pilots of 1920s and 1930s. She won first National Women's Air Derby (the Powder Puff Derby) in 1929, set a women's endurance record (196 hours, 5 minutes) in 1932, and in 1936 was first woman to win transcontinental race for Bendix Trophy, flying a stock Beechcraft Model Cl7 Staggerwing. She worked, in addition, as a salesperson and test/demonstration pilot for Beechcraft manufacturing firm. Her accomplishments were recognized later in 1936, when she received Harmon Trophy as outstanding woman flier of 1936. She was also no stranger to military practices: her husband, Herbert von Thaden, had been a member of United States Army Air Corps Reserve, and in 1935 was on active duty with Air Corps at Langley Field. During his assignment there, Louise Thaden had opportunity to pilot a twinengined Martin B-10 bomber, then most advanced aircraft in American air arsenal (Thaden [2004] 141-44; Sherman 633-34; Oakes 65).Thaden retired from active competition in 1938 and shortly thereafter published her autobiography, High, Wide, and Frightened (1938). The book is of interest for candid view it gives of life of a female pilot in 1920s and 1930s and issues confronting her, but takes on even greater interest with Chapter Thirteen. Here, in Noble Experiment, a chapter omitted from 1973 and 2004 reissues of book, Thaden offers a little-known and intriguingly dystopian vision of life in a Douhet-influenced future. She postulates a time when Douhet's theories have been comprehensively embraced by world's air forces, then goes on to consider just what those theories might mean to-and might cost-the female pilots who have been reluctantly pressed into service. Writing as a committed but nonmilitant feminist of 1930s, she pays little heed to geopolitical elements of war she records; instead, she focuses on personal and emotional consequences of military policy.Douhet builds his argument in several stages. Recognizing that his policies would require a significantly enlarged air force, he calls upon civil aviation to supplement military resources. For all its innocuousness as recreational or commercial flying, civil aviation has military applicability, for it employs planes, trains pilots and maintains them in active service, and makes use of various aviation accessories ... directly utilizable by organs of national defense. The active nature of civil aviation dictates that pilots will be flying the latest types of plane (as opposed to antiquated types likely to be found in military, where research and development is subject to governmental policies and whims). …