Making Flying "Thinkable": Women Pilots and the Selling of Aviation, 1927-1940

Abstract

took off from New York's Floyd Bennett Field and roared west into the darkness. It was the start of the coast-to-coast Bendix Trophy Race, the of all air races. Some 16 hours later in Los Angeles, as thousands of excited spectators cheered, a plane appeared over the municipal airport and descended for a landing. The sleek cabin ship rolled to a stop and out stepped the first place Bendix finishers: Louise Thaden and Blanche Noyes, veteran women pilots. 1 A little later a second aircraft sped over the finish line and then landed. From its cockpit emerged solo flier Laura Ingalls. Finally, behind two planes piloted by men, a silver, twin-engined craft taxied to a halt to win its pilots, Amelia Earhart and Helen Richey, the fifth place purse in the 1936 Bendix.2 Women won three places out of five. Outstanding, yes, but not unusual. Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, numbering at most about 500 and constituting less than a thirtieth of all aviators, women pilots played a highly visible and important part in flying. Not only did they race against men and often beat them, but they also held various positions in commercial aviation. In one sample of women pilots, fully one out of five flew professionally. Women sat in the cockpits as test pilots, flight instructors,