Before Amelia (20 page)

England's first licensed woman pilot never lost her enthusiasm for aviation. In 1929 or 1930 she bought an interest with H.T. Morris in Southern Cross Airways Ltd., a New Zealand company formed in February 1929, which boasted a single Blackburn Blue Bird III. Despite the new management, the company folded, apparently, without doing any flying, and the Blue Bird was sold.

Hilda scored another flying first in 1932 as the first through passenger to fly from London to Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) en route to New Zealand. The trip took eleven days in the KLM airliner
Oolevaar
(Stork), a Fokker FVIIb/3m, with frequent stops for fuel, a cigarette, and a stretch. Hilda loved meeting people of different cultures, the insights glimpsed along the way; having tea served while flying at one hundred miles per hour was absolutely marvelous. The view of earth from seven thousand, sometimes ten thousand, feet, delighted her. The technical aspects of the trip held her attention, particularly as the aeroplane neared Batavia. There were no landmarks as the aeroplane, flying lower now, passed over endless forest; the pilot flew on compass while the wireless operator constantly checked the drift through the trapdoor in the floor. He saw a tiger once, which kept Hilda glued to the window; she saw birds but no tiger. Her son, a retired group captain, thought traveling as a passenger dull; there was nothing to do but look out the window. His mother saw the possibilities of global travel and applauded.

In New Zealand, as president of the Tauranga Aero Club in the early 1930s, Hilda was involved in finding a permanent airfield to replace the one on the tidal flats of the Waikareao Estuary, where flying time was limited to an hour on either side of low tide. When her son retired to New Zealand, he continued the search, which took a good six years before a suitable site was found at Whareroa. The airfield, linking Tauranga to the commercial air traffic on the east coast of New Zealand, opened January 14, 1939, with both Hewletts present.

Commenting on women in aviation after the war, Hilda observed that there were very few women pilots in the early days of aviation because the difficulties to be overcome were “many and great.” She knew several women “who tried very hard and made great sacrifices—they certainly lacked neither nerve nor courage—yet they were forced to give up the idea.” Comparing the number of motorcars driven by women before the war with the numbers driven by women during the war, Hilda was encouraged by what women had done and “can do in the mechanical line when they want to, or when they have to.” Will women become pilots? Her reply was: “I never could see the reason why they should not, there is no physical reason that I know of; they have ears, hands, nerves, and courage. What more do they want?”

In her later years Hilda was an enthusiastic gardener, loved camping, fly-fishing and deep-sea fishing, all of which she enjoyed in New Zealand. Her grandchildren remember that, almost blinded by glaucoma, she still made up the most wonderful games to play. She became more eccentric with the years, and her patience did not improve. When she could not find something in her purse, she would sit down where she was and turn it upside down to find what she wanted. Another time, she chopped up a lovely piece of furniture to make it fit in a smaller place where she fancied it.

England's first woman pilot died on August 21, 1943, at age seventynine, in Tauranga, New Zealand. She was found dead in bed by her housekeeper, with a note: “Dump me in the sea.” Forgotten were her days at Brooklands, but aviation hands remembered and respected her as an able and determined person who knew what she wanted to do and did it. “The Old Bird,” the family's affectionate name for her, had freed herself from Victorian constraints.

The
Bay of Plenty Times,
New Zealand, observed May 8, 1999: “It was typical of this eminently different woman that she should have an unusual burial. After a funeral service held at 1.20 pm on 23 August at the Railway Wharf, this woman of the air, also a keen game fisherwoman, was buried at sea.” It seemed just right.

The second English woman to win a pilot's license, Cheridah de Beauvoir Stocks, was social, charming, and considerably younger than Hilda Hewlett. Born in 1887 in the Somerset countryside, with a rosebud face, she belonged to the country gentry who amused themselves with endless social gatherings. Cheridah decided to take up flying, it was the in thing among the young men she knew, and at twenty-four years of age she earned license No. 153 from the Royal Aero Club, on November 7, 1911. She had trained at the Grahame-White school at Hendon (despite G.W.'s negative public comments on women in aviation), where
Flight
photographed her seated on a Farman biplane, the machine she used for her tests.

By the summer of 1912, she had changed to a Blériot monoplane with a thirty-five-horsepower Anzani motor. Apparently, she was a regular at Hendon meetings, where her circuits—“a finished performance,” according to the journal writers—were cheered by the public. Hendon airfield had planned to organize a Ladies' Day in July under the auspices of the Women's Aerial League, with Hilda Hewlett, Hélène Dutrieu, and Jeanne Herveux mentioned as possible starters, but, reportedly, the French women wanted high financial guarantees, which were not forthcoming.
Since Hilda was not interested in competing, the field was left to Cheridah, the lone woman flier. Unfortunately, a tricky wind that day was judged too risky for a lady pilot, and the cross-country passenger handicap and the ladies' speed race were postponed. Cheridah continued to appear at meets, winning occasional prizes for women, but without any competition. She was an enthusiastic spectator as well as a performer, and she enjoyed being a passenger in the speed races favored at the meets.

On September 20, 1913, at Hendon aerodrome near London, Cheridah asked to go along with Sydney Pickles, another popular pilot, who was about to take a short flight on a 110-horsepower Anzani-powered Champel biplane, an interesting new model. It was a pusher type, with the outrigger behind and seats in front, similar to the Farman machine. Dusk was drawing in, but there was still light for a short trip to top off the successful second Aerial Derby Day. As soon as Pickles and Cheridah were seated, the machine started off and rose quickly to about 250 feet, to the other side of the aerodrome, and proceeded around the course usually used for races. The lights of London were visible in the distance. Pickles turned to comment to Cheridah on their beauty, then decided it was time to come down. The ensuing flight was described vividly by Pickles in
Flight
some eight months later.

Continuing toward the No. 1 pylon, he planned a sharp left turn to glide across the aerodrome toward the pylon at the opposite end before turning back to land. He throttled the motor down and started his turn. The turn completed, he discovered the rudder bar, which brings the rudder straight again, refused to budge. The aeroplane made a complete circle, banking wide as Pickles tried to work the lateral control to reduce the bank, but the machine kept spinning and side-slipping.

At this point, Pickles remembered the fate of Paul Beck, who had crashed in America. At the time, one critic said that if Beck had turned his motor on, he might have saved himself. Pickles felt he had nothing to lose and quickly reached for the throttle lever, and with the throttle opened wide, he pulled the elevator lever back, hoping to get the nose up. After another complete circle with no improvement, Pickles closed the throttle, realizing that the machine's position was desperate. He reached forward and turned the motor switch off, thinking that at least there wouldn't be a fire after the inevitable crash. In the next instant, the green megaphone stand flashed past and Pickles realized the machine was coming down in the enclosure, where shortly before people and cars had stood, instead of over the field. The only explanation he could give was the machine had drifted as it spiraled down and opening the throttle increased this. In the next moment there was a loud crash as the aeroplane hit the ground.

Pickles and Cheridah, who through the crisis had not made a sound, were seriously injured. Both were taken to Central London Sick Asylum, Hendon, where Pickles underwent surgery for a compound leg fracture and Cheridah remained unconscious for several days, with a concussion and back injuries. Recovery was a long affair for both unfortunate fliers. Cheridah gave up flying, but Pickles continued to fly “as an amateur”— strictly for pleasure. His analysis months later blamed the accident on his heel becoming wedged between the rudder bar and the flooring of the fuselage so that the machine kept turning. Opening the throttle only aggravated the situation.

Two years later, Cheridah was well enough to visit Hendon, where she was warmly greeted by the old-timers, to watch flying activities. Still paralyzed on the right side, she had learned to write with her left hand and kept in touch with aviation activities through
Flight,
which passed along information about her to its readers. An ardent supporter of Flying Services Fund, which helped aviators in the service and their dependents, Cheridah donated a litter of three Pekingese puppies in 1915 to be sold for the benefit of the fund.
Flight
published her letter with two photographs of Cheridah, stylishly dressed as usual, and her favorite dog, Peter. Even before the war, she was active in raising money to purchase a hydro-aeroplane for the British Navy as a gift of Somerset County. Like Hilda Hewlett, she believed that aviation was the wave of the future, and, although she never flew again, she remained an interested supporter of aerial progress.

An English citizen, Winnie Buller won her license at the Bréguet School at Douai, France—No. 848, dated May 3, 1912, flying one of the school's machines. Although she was born in Bacton, Norfolk, England, aviation historians in that country regard her as French; the French, as English. Winnie first flew in an aeroplane in England in 1910 with the Comte de Montalent, who was demonstrating the Bréguet. Much taken with the machine, she determined to learn to fly. When business required her husband to travel for a long period, Winnie closed her house, packed up her two small sons and their nurse, and drove to Douai, eighteen miles south of Lille, for aviation training.

As was the practice at French flying schools, Winnie spent time in the workshop, where she learned to weld, solder, and make any fitting needed on a machine. The first lessons consisted of example and explanation. On her third lesson she was told to do “straights” back and forth across the field, but Winnie found she could turn easily and, before she knew it, she had lifted into the air, where she remained circling the town of Douai for an hour, to the dismay of her instructors and fellow pupils. In no time she was making cross-country flights, one as long as one hundred kilometers, from Douai to Arras and back. Shortly after, she passed her tests and made cross-country flights carrying a passenger.

The English journal
Aeronautics
hailed her arrival on the flying scene with an article headed “Men of Note in Aeronautics—Mrs. Winnie Buller.” The editor wrote: “No apology, after all, is needed for the contradiction implied in the title, since Mrs. Buller has, by sheer force of merit, won for herself a place among the first rank of pilots, and merit knows no distinction of rank or sex.” Her try for the Coup Fémina in the fall was mentioned in particular. Winnie had been flying for more than two hours in a severe wind when the oil pump failed and the motor froze and stopped with the propeller vertical in the air. Without hesitation, the quick-thinking pilot turned the machine downward and volplaned to a perfect landing. At the time, Winnie said that students at Douai have such confidence in the stability of their machines in the air, and the protection offered by the aeroplane's design, that they fly in any weather. Seated behind the engine in an enclosed body gave a secure feeling. How secure, she found out for herself, when her machine flew into the wash of another aeroplane and came down with “a nasty bump”—without injury to herself.

Aeronautics
looked forward to seeing Winnie perform in England to uphold national pride, because by the end of 1912, English skies were empty of women pilots. By early 1913, Winnie was waiting at Shoreham, England, for her own aeroplane to arrive. In July, the Bréguet arrived, to her delight, with M. Brégi, who would assist in assembling it. She did not compete in England, since competitions and competitors for women were nonexistent there. Viewed as less able pilots—after all, women were fragile and prone to fainting—women could not compete with men under regulations set by the Royal Aero Club, which controlled exhibition flying. It is small wonder that the number of licensed English women was no more than two.

In May 1914, Winnie was at the Caudron School at Hendon, learning to handle a new aeroplane of French design. She found it quite different from the Bréguet because of the footwork required to fly it, but she was soon making exhibition flights on the Caudron to demonstrate its maneuverability for the British Caudron School. Unquestionably, she was a competent, versatile flier.

When the war came, Winnie went on active service with a volunteer motor ambulance corps in northern France. Before she left England, the aviatrix admitted she was not much of a nurse, but she could see that the ambulance engines ran properly—no small matter, considering the corps's problems with sluggish, overworked vehicles. There is no record of Winnie's return to flying after the war.

Even before Hilda Hewlett and Cheridah de Beauvoir Stocks, a young woman in Northern Ireland had succumbed to aerial fever. Showing great imagination and engineering skill, she designed and built an aeroplane from scratch, and flew it in Carnmoney, Belfast, in the years between 1909 and 1911.

Lilian E. Bland, a young woman who was anything but bland, was one of the more colorful personalities of the early aviation period. She smoked, took prizewinning photographs, and wrote sports articles for London papers, all activities considered not quite proper in Belfast, especially for the granddaughter of the Episcopal dean of Belfast. Her early interest in photographing birds, watching as they soared overhead in flight, kindled a wish to do the same. The news of the Wright brothers' achievement led Lilian to read everything she could find about their invention and, curious to see how it worked, she built a model biplane, which she flew as a kite. Fortunately for Lilian, her late uncle General Smythe, had left a well-equipped workshop in her aunt's house, where she and her father lived. After she fashioned the kite model, she resolved to build an aeroplane.