women in flight gear ww2

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with luck Yeager

 

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Women flyers assembled at the Breakfast Club for the start of the first National Women's Air Derby from Clover Field in Santa Monica, to Cleveland, Ohio, Los Angeles, California, 1929. Left to Right Louise Thaden, Bobbie Trout, Patty Willis, Marvel Crosson, Blanche Noyes, Vera Dawn Walker, Amelia Earhart, Marjorie Crawford, Ruth Elder, Florence Lowe Barnes. Thaden finished first, Earhart was third.

Florence Lowe Barnes, good-natured "Tomboy of the Air", who will be flown from here to Cleveland starting August 8. She is from California.

Florence Loew Barnes, holder of the women's airplane speed record is one of the many favorite entrants in the women's division of the National Transcontinental Air Derby from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland. Other famous women fliers in the race which starts August 23rd are expected to run close competition. Photo shows "Pancho" Barnes with the low wing Mystery Ship she will pilot in the air derby. She is the only\y woman pilot of such a ship. Mrs. Barnes, wife of an Episcopalian minister and daughter of Professor Thaddeus Lower after whom Mt. Lowe in California was named is known as one of the outstanding woman fliers in the world

 

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Pancho originally offered a free steak dinner to anyone who broke the sound barrier. After Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, others followed. Pretty soon, she was offering up several free steak dinners a week. Later, the Happy Bottom Riding Club became THE place to hold air race victory parties. To celebrate the winner of the Bendix Air Race, Pancho decided to devise a unique reward. On one of her trips to Mexico, she discovered a factory that made falsies. She purchased a large strip of falsies for her club. Now, the winner of the Bendix Air Race got the boobie prize, which meant that the aviator got to walk across the mat barefoot!! It was at Pancho's "Happy Bottom Riding Club" that a titillating twist to the term 'boobie prize' was created!

 

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[Ken at Aero Leather]

Great Stuff Dinomartino, thanks

 

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Ruth Law Oliver
Ruth Law Oliver (May 21, 1887 - December 1, 1970) was a pioneer American aviatrix during the 1910s.

She was inspired to take up flying by her brother, parachutist and pioneer movie stuntman Rodman Law with whom she challenged herself to physically keep up with during their childhood.

She was instructed by Harry Atwood and Arch Freeman at Atwood Park in Saugus, Massachusetts, having been refused lessons by Orville Wright because, according to Law, he believed that women weren't mechanically inclined, but this only made her more determined, later saying "The surest way to make me do a thing is to tell me I can't do it," and was an adept mechanic.She received her pilot's license in November 1912, and in 1915 gave a demonstration of aerobatics at Daytona Beach, Florida, before a large crowd. She announced that she was going to "loop the loop" for the first time, and proceeded to do so, not once but twice, to the consternation of her husband, Charles Oliver.

In the spring of 1916, she took part in an altitude competition, twice narrowly coming in second to male fliers. She was furious, determined to set a record that would stand against men as well as women.

Her greatest feat took place on 19 November 1916, when she broke the existing cross-America flight air speed record of 452 miles (728 km) set by Victor Carlstrom by flying nonstop from Chicago to New York State, a distance of 590 miles (950 km). The next day she flew on to New York City. Flying over Manhattan, her fuel cut out, but she glided to a safe landing on Governors Island and was met by United States Army Captain Henry "Hap" Arnold (who changed her spark plugs in the Curtiss pusher), who would one day become Commanding General of the United States Army Air Forces. President Woodrow Wilson attended a dinner held in her honor on 2 December 1916.

Ruth Law, from the cover of the May 5, 1917 issue of Billboard.
After the United States entered World War I in April 1917, she campaigned unsuccessfully for women to be allowed to fly military aircraft. Stung by her rejection, she wrote an article entitled "Let Women Fly!" in the magazine Air Travel, where she argued that success in aviation should prove a woman's fitness for work in that field.

After the war, she continued to set records. After Raymonde de Laroche of France set a women's altitude record of nearly 13,000 feet (3,962 m) on 7 June 1919,She broke Laroche's record on 10 June, flying to 14,700 feet (4,481 m). Laroche in turn, however, broke Oliver's record on 12 June, flying to a height of 15,748 feet (4,800 m).

On a morning in 1922, Law woke up to read with surprise an announcement of her retirement in the newspaper; her husband had tired of her dangerous job and had taken that step to end her flying career, and she acquiesced to his demand.

She attributed a 1932 nervous breakdown to the lack of flying, having settled down in a Los Angeles, spending her days gardening.

I

 

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Curtiss Model D Headless, Ruth Law.

 

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1917

 

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Ruth B. Law, in a military uniform, posed standing beside her Curtiss Model D Headless with modified controls.

 

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Ruth Law standing in front of her Wright Model B biplane at the New York State Fair, Yonkers, 1913.

 

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Ruth Law "bombshell" Liberty Bond advertising leaflet designed to be dropped from her airplane in flight

 

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