Born in Tournai, Belgium, Hélène Dutrieu (1877 – 1961) left school at the age of 14 to earn a living. She became a speed track cycling world champion, a stunt cyclist, a motorcycle stunt rider, an automobile racer and stunt driver before becoming interested in aviation.

On November 25, 1910, she became the first Belgian woman  to receive a pilot license. She reputedly was the first woman pilot to fly with a passenger. She set numerous records such as longest distance, highest altitude and longest time aloft. In late 1910, she was the first winner of the Femina Cup. Two years later, in 1912, she was the first woman to fly a seaplane.

Born in Tournai, Belgium, Hélène Dutrieu (1877 – 1961) left school at the age of 14 to earn a living. She became a speed track cycling world champion, a stunt cyclist, a motorcycle stunt rider, an automobile racer and stunt driver before becoming interested in aviation.

On November 25, 1910, she became the first Belgian woman  to receive a pilot license. She reputedly was the first woman pilot to fly with a passenger. She set numerous records such as longest distance, highest altitude and longest time aloft. In late 1910, she was the first winner of the Femina Cup. Two years later, in 1912, she was the first woman to fly a seaplane.

Born in Tournai, Belgium, Hélène Dutrieu (1877 – 1961) left school at the age of 14 to earn a living. She became a speed track cycling world champion, a stunt cyclist, a motorcycle stunt rider, an automobile racer and stunt driver before becoming interested in aviation.

On November 25, 1910, she became the first Belgian woman  to receive a pilot license. She reputedly was the first woman pilot to fly with a passenger. She set numerous records such as longest distance, highest altitude and longest time aloft. In late 1910, she was the first winner of the Femina Cup. Two years later, in 1912, she was the first woman to fly a seaplane.

Born in 1875 in Aurillac, Marie Marvingt (1875 - 1963) grew up enjoying many sports. At the age of 5, she could already swim 4000 meters. Marie became a world-class athlete who won numerous prizes in swimming, fencing, shooting, ski jumping, speed skating, luge and bobsledding. She was also a skilled mountaineer and, between 1903 and 1910, she became the first woman to climb most of the peaks in the French and Swiss Alps. In 1908 she was refused permission to participate in the Tour de France because the race was only open to men. Marvingt refused to relinquish her ambition and cycled the course after the race. She successfully completed the gruelling ride, a feat which only 36 of 114 male riders had managed that year.

Initially, she was involved in aviation as a balloonist. She learned to fly and flew solo in a monoplane, an Antoinette. She is credited as the first woman to do so. Marie became the third woman in the world licensed as an aeroplane pilot and the only woman ever licenced in the difficult to fly Antoinette monoplane. She participated in many airshows and set the first official women's flight records for duration and distance. In 1911, she won the Coupe Femina.

In 1915, Marvingt became the first woman in the world to fly combat missions when she became a volunteer pilot flying bombing missions over German-held territory and she received the Croix de Guerre (Military Cross) for her aerial bombing of a German military base in Metz. Between the two World Wars she worked as a journalist, war correspondent, and medical officer with French Forces in North Africa. While in Morocco she invented metal skis and suggested their use on aeroplanes landing on sand.

Marvingt devoted the remainder of her long life to the concept of aeromedical evacuation. She was co-founder of the French organisation Les Amies De L'Aviation Sanitaire (Friends of Aviation Medicine). In 1934 she established a civil air ambulance service in Morocco and in the same year, she developed training courses for the Infirmières de l'Air (Nurses of the Air). In 1935, she became the first person licenced to practice aviation paramedicine.

On 20 February 1955, her eightieth birthday, Marvingt was flown over Nancy by a U.S. Air Force officer from Toul-Rosières Air Base in a F-101 Voodoo fighter jet and reputedly broke the sound barrier. In the same year, she also earned her helicopter pilot's licence. In 1961, at the age of 86, she cycled from Nancy to Paris.

Born in Texas in 1892, the tenth of thirteen children, Bessie Coleman (1892 - 1926) heard tales from pilots who were returning home from World War I and started to fantasize about being a pilot. However, she could not gain admission to American flight schools because she was black and a woman. No black U.S. aviator would train her either.

Robert Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, encouraged her to study abroad. Coleman took French language class and traveled to Paris on November 20, 1920. Coleman learned to fly in a Nieuport Type 82 biplane. On June 15, 1921 Coleman became not only the first African-American woman to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, but the first black woman in the world to earn an aviation pilot's license.

She became know as "Queen Bess" on the airshow circuit and was a highly popular draw for the next five years. Invited to important events and often interviewed by newspapers, she was admired by both blacks and whites. She also quickly gained a reputation as a skilled and daring pilot who would stop at nothing to complete a difficult stunt.

Daughter of Derry Westenra, the fifth Baron Rossmore of Rossmore Castle, Co. Monaghan, Lady Mary Bailey (1890-1960) married the South African millionaire Abe Bailey in 1911.

Awarded her pilot's licence in 1927, Lady Bailey left Stag Lane on a Standard De Havilland Moth with a A.D.C. Cirrus Mk. II engine of 75/80 h.p. on March 9, 1928. She reached Cape Town on April 30th after a journey of 8,000 miles. The return journey, which started in September, was made across the Belgian Congo, along the southern edge of the Sahara and up the west coast of Africa and home across Spain and France. Lady Bailey reached Stag Lane on January 16th after flying some 18,000 miles. She became the first woman to fly solo from England to South Africa. A mother of five children, she saw this act as a gesture of female independence and of faith in light aircraft.

She also flew in many international competitions and was awarded the Britannia Trophy.

Born in Kingston, Amy Johnson (1903 - 1941) studied at the University of Sheffield, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in economics. She then worked in London as secretary to the solicitor William Charles Crocker. She was introduced to flying as a hobby, gaining a pilot's A Licence No. 1979 on 6 July 1929. With funds from her father, she purchased G-AAAH, a second-hand De Havilland Gipsy Moth she named "Jason".

Amy achieved worldwide recognition when, in 1930, she became the first woman to fly solo from Britain, to Australia. She received the Harmon Trophy as well as a CBE in recognition of this achievement, and was also honoured with the No. 1 civil pilot's licence under Australia's 1921 Air Navigation Regulations.

In July 1931, Johnson and her co-pilot Jack Humphreys became the first pilots to fly from London to Moscow in one day, completing the 1,760-mile journey in approximately 21 hours. From there, they continued across Siberia and on to Tokyo, setting a record time for flying from England to Japan. The flight was completed in a De Havilland Puss Moth. In July 1932, she set a solo record for the flight from London to Cape Town, South Africa in a Puss Moth. In May 1936, Johnson made her last record-breaking flight, regaining her Britain to South Africa record in G-ADZO, a Percival Gull Six.

In 1940, during the Second World War, Johnson joined the newly formed ATA, whose job was to transport Royal Air Force aircraft around the country – and rose to First Officer.

Born in Etzdorf, Marga von Etzdorf (1907 - 1933) lost her parents in an accident when she was only four years old. She was a very athletic woman with interests in fencing, riding and hockey. At the age of nineteen, she decided to become a pilot.

After earned a pilot license, she became the first woman for an airline when she got a job as a co-pilot for Lufthansa and flew passengers on the Berlin-Breslau and Berlin-Sttugart-Basel routes in Junkers F-13 aircraft. In 1929, she took some gliding training and became one of the first women in the world to earn a glider pilot license.

One year later, with the help of her grandparents, she bought a Junkers A 50 CE airplane. She participated in the first German Women Aerobatic Championship and got fourth place. In late 1930, she flew to the Canary Islands. In 1931, she took off from Berlin towards Tokyo. She flew over the Urals and Siberia before reaching Tokyo 12 days later becoming the first woman to fly over Siberia. 

Born in 1903, Maryse "Marie-Louise" Hilsz (1903 - 1946) became interested in flying. She made parachute jumps and performed stunts by standing on the wings of airplanes to raise money for flying lessons. After receiving her pilot's license in 1930.  She mostly flew alone, without a mechanic, which forced her to repair her plane on her own.

A woman of action, elegant, and with a strong personality, she held numerous records for speed and distance by airplane in the 30s. She undertook some daring endurance flights: Paris - Saigon - Paris on a Gipsy Moth in 1931 and Paris - Tokyo - Paris (30,000 km )on a Bréguet 33 R in 1934. She established multiple altitude records such as the women record altitude (10,000 m) in 1932, the world record altitude of women flying a Morane at 11,800 meters in 1934, and the unbroken women world record altitude in a propeller-driven airplane of 14,310 m in an airplane propeller in 1936.

She entered the French Resistance in 1941 and flew covert missions. In 1945, she was one of prestigious women aviators that was selected to form a group female military pilots. She was selected as the leader of the group. However, recruiting for the group stopped in 1946.

Born in 1875 in Aurillac, Marie Marvingt (1875 - 1963) grew up enjoying many sports. At the age of 5, she could already swim 4000 meters. Marie became a world-class athlete who won numerous prizes in swimming, fencing, shooting, ski jumping, speed skating, luge and bobsledding. She was also a skilled mountaineer and, between 1903 and 1910, she became the first woman to climb most of the peaks in the French and Swiss Alps. In 1908 she was refused permission to participate in the Tour de France because the race was only open to men. Marvingt refused to relinquish her ambition and cycled the course after the race. She successfully completed the grueling ride, a feat which only 36 of 114 male riders had managed that year.

Initially, she was involved in aviation as a balloonist and was the first woman to balloon across the English Channel. She learned to fly and flew solo in a monoplane, an Antoinette. Marie became the third woman in the world licensed as an aeroplane pilot and the only woman ever licenced in the difficult to fly Antoinette monoplane. She participated in many airshows and set the first official women's flight records for duration and distance. In 1911, she won the Coupe Femina.

In 1915, Marvingt became the first woman in the world to fly combat missions when she became a volunteer pilot flying bombing missions over German-held territory and she received the Croix de Guerre (Military Cross) for her aerial bombing of a German military base in Metz. Between the two World Wars she worked as a journalist, war correspondent, and medical officer with French Forces in North Africa. While in Morocco she invented metal skis and suggested their use on aeroplanes landing on sand.

Marvingt devoted the remainder of her long life to the concept of aeromedical evacuation. She was co-founder of the French organisation Les Amies De L'Aviation Sanitaire (Friends of Aviation Medicine). In 1934 she established a civil air ambulance service in Morocco and in the same year, she developed training courses for the Infirmières de l'Air (Nurses of the Air). In 1935, she became the first certified flight nurse.

On 20 February 1955, her eightieth birthday, Marvingt was flown over Nancy by a U.S. Air Force officer from Toul-Rosières Air Base in a fighter jet and reputedly broke the sound barrier. In the same year, she also took helicopter flying lessons. In 1961, at the age of 86, she cycled from Nancy to Paris.

Born in Rotorua, New Zealand, Jean Batten (1909 - 1982) was a gifted pianist. At the age of 18, she decided to become a pilot. In 1929, she moved to England with her mother to join the London Aeroplane Club. She took her first solo flight in 1930 and gained private and commercial licenses by 1932, when she acquired a second-hand Gipsy Moth bi-plane.

In 1934, she became the first woman to fly solo the round trip between England and Australia in the Gipsy Moth. For this achievement and for subsequent record-breaking flights, she was awarded the Harmon Trophy three times from 1935 through to 1937. She also received an endorsement contract with Castrol oil.

In 1935, she set a world record flying from England to Brazil in the Percival Gull. In 1936, she set another world record with a solo flight from England to New Zealand. At her birthplace of Rotorua she was honored by local Maori, as she had been after the 1934 journey. She was given a chief’s feather cloak and given the title Hine-o-te-Rangi – "Daughter of the Skies". Batten was created Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1936, and she was also given the Cross of the French Legion of Honour that year.

World War II was the end of Batten's flying adventures. Her Percival Vega Gull was commissioned to active service but Batten was not permitted to fly it.

Born in Kansas in 1897, Amelia Earhart (1897 - 1937) decided to study nursing after she met four wounded World War I veterans on the street. During the war, Amelia worked as a military nurse in Canada. At the war's end, she became a social worker at the Denison House in Boston and taught English to immigrant children.

One day, after taking a ten minute plane ride, Amelia knew that she wanted to learn to fly. By working several odd jobs and with the help of her mother, Amelia earned enough money to take flying lessons. Ten hours of instruction and several crashes later, Amelia was ready to fly solo. She made her first solo flight in 1921. Except for a poor landing, the flight was uneventful. By the next year, Amelia had saved enough money to buy a plane of her own. Flying was merely a hobby for her at that time.

In 1928, Amelia received a call from Captain Hilton H. Railey asking her to join pilots Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon on a flight from America to England. Although she was only a passenger, Amelia became the first woman to cross the Atlantic on a plane called the Friendship on June 17-18, 1928. Amelia's 1928 flight brought her tremendous publicity, and she subsequently endeavored to justify this renown. On May 20-21,1932, Amelia crossed the Atlantic on her own, establishing a new transatlantic crossing record of 13 hours, 30 minutes. Amelia was celebrated throughout Europe and the United States and received a medal from President Herbert Hoover. Several years later, Amelia became the first woman to successfully complete the hazardous flight from Hawaii to California.

In June 1937, Amelia began what was to be her final flight. Amelia and navigator Fred Noonan set out in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra in an attempt to fly around the world. They departed from Miami, Florida to South America, and then across the South Atlantic Ocean to Dakar, Africa. After crossing the Sahara desert, they flew to Thailand, Singapore, Java, and Australia. However, after departing Lae, New Guinea for Howland Island, the U.S. Coast Guard lost contact with the plane. They received a final message on July 2 at 8:45 a.m., and Amelia's tone was described as frantic.

The United States Navy searched extensively but never found a trace of the aviators or the plane. The mysterious disappearance of Earhart and her plane has raised considerable speculation throughout the years. Some believe that she and Noonan were captured and executed by the Japanese. Others speculate that President Roosevelt sent Earhart on a secret spy mission. However, none of the many theories for her disappearance have ever been confirmed.

Amelia was a founder member and the first president of the 99s, a women pilots association.

Born in England, Beryl Markham (1902 - 1986) moved to Kenya when she was four years old. As a young adult, she became the first licensed female horse trainer in Kenya. Impetuous, single-minded and beautiful, Beryl was a noted non-conformist, even in a colony known for its colourful eccentrics.

She befriended the Danish writer Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa, when Blixen was managing her family's coffee farm in the Ngong hills outside Nairobi. Largely inspired by the British pilot Tom Campbell Black, she took up flying. She worked for some time as a bush pilot, spotting game animals from the air and signaling their locations to safaris on the ground.

When Beryl decided to take on the Atlantic crossing, no pilot had yet flown non-stop from Europe to New York, and no woman had made the westward flight solo, though several had died trying. She hoped to claim both records. On September 4, 1936, she took off from Abingdon, England. After a 20-hour flight, her Vega Gull, The Messenger, suffered fuel starvation due to icing of the fuel tank vents, and she crash-landed at Baleine Cove on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia (her flight was, in all likelihood, almost identical in length to Mollison's). In spite of falling short of her goal, Beryl had become the first woman to cross the Atlantic east-to-west solo, and the first person to make it from England to North America non-stop. She was celebrated as an aviation pioneer.

Beryl chronicled her many adventures in her memoir, West with the Night, published in 1942. After living for many years in the United States, Beryl moved back to Kenya in 1952, becoming for a time the most successful horse trainer in the country.

Although her father wanted her to become a doctor, Hanna Reitsch (1912 – 1979)  was interested in aviation and thought she might become a flying doctor in North Africa and even studied medicine for a time. Reitsch began flying in 1932 in gliders. She left medical school in 1933 to become a full-time glider pilot and instructor at Hornberg in Baden-Württemberg. She was soon breaking records and earning a Silver C Badge in 1934. She flew from Salzburg across the Alps in 1938 in a Sperber Junior.

In 1937, Hanna was posted to the Luftwaffe testing centre at Rechlin-Lärz Airfield. She was a test pilot on the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka and Dornier Do 17 projects. Reitsch was the first female helicopter pilot and one of the few pilots to fly the Focke-Achgelis Fa 61, the first fully controllable helicopter. Her flying skill, desire for publicity and photogenic qualities made her a star of Nazi party propaganda. In 1938 she made nightly flights of the Fa 61 helicopter inside the "Deutschlandhalle" at the Berlin Motor Show.

With the outbreak of war in 1939, Hanna was asked to fly many of Germany's latest designs. Among these were the rocket-propelled Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet and several larger bombers on which she tested various mechanisms for cutting barrage balloon cables. During the winter 1943-44, she was assigned to the development of suicide aircraft. This project where the pilots flew manned bombs and ultimately died during the mission was similar to the Japanese later use of Tokkōtai ("Kamikaze") and was put forward by Adolf Hitler on 28 February 1944. It is probable that the idea originated with Hanna during her testing of the Messerschmitt Me 163 in 1942, and she was also the first to volunteer for the newly formed Leonidas unit. This program was met with a considerable resistance and was disbanded one year later.

During the last days of the war, Hanna was captured along with her companion, von Greim. She was held and interrogated for eighteen months. Her companion committed suicide. Her father killed her mother, her sister, and her sister's children, before killing himself after expulsion by the Polish from their hometown of Hirschberg.

After her release, Reitsch settled in Frankfurt. Following the war, German citizens were forbidden from flying but within a few years gliding was allowed, which she took up. In 1952, Reitsch won third place in the World Gliding Championships in Spain (and was the only woman to compete). She became German champion in 1955. In 1959, she was invited to India by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to begin a gliding centre. In 1961, Reitsch was invited to the White House by US President John F. Kennedy. From 1962 to 1966, she lived in Ghana where she founded the first black African national gliding school.

She gained the Diamond Badge in 1970. Throughout the 1970s, Reitsch broke gliding records in many categories, including the "Women's Out and Return World Record" twice, once in 1976 (715 km) and again in 1979 (802 km) flying along the Appalachian Ridges in the United States. During this time, she also finished first in the women’s section of the first world helicopter championships.

Born Bessie Lee Pittman, she married Robert Cochran, a young aircraft mechanic at a young age. A few years later, Bessie Lee Cochran (1906 – 1980) filed for divorce and moved to northwest Florida  where her parents were then living. She, then, became a hairdresser and got a job in Pensacola, eventually winding up in New York City. There, she used her looks and driving personality to get a job at a prestigious salon at Saks Fifth Avenue. Somewhere along the way, she chose to change her name from Mrs Bessie Cochran to Miss Jacqueline Cochran.

Later on, she met Floyd Bostwick Odlum, the middle-aged founder of Atlas Corp. and CEO of RKO in Hollywood. Widely reputed to be one of the ten richest men in the world, Odlum quickly became enamored with Jacqueline and offered to help her establish a cosmetics business. After a friend offered her a ride in an aircraft, a thrilled Jacqueline Cochran began taking flying lessons at Roosevelt Airfield, Long Island in the early 1930s. She learned to fly an airplane in just three weeks. A natural, she quickly soloed and within two years obtained her commercial pilot's license. Odlum, whom she married in 1936 after his divorce, was an astute financier and savvy marketer who recognized the value of publicity for her business. Calling her line of cosmetics "Wings," she flew her own aircraft around the country promoting her products.

Known by her friends as "Jackie" and maintaining the Cochran name, she flew her first major race in 1934. In 1937, she was the only woman to compete in the Bendix race. She worked with Amelia Earhart to open the race for women. That year, she also set a new woman's national speed record. By 1938, she was considered the best female pilot in the United States. She had won the Bendix and set a new transcontinental speed record as well as altitude records (by this time she was no longer just breaking women's records but was setting overall records).

Before the United States joined World War II, she was part of "Wings for Britain", an organization that ferried American built aircraft to Britain, becoming the first woman to fly a bomber, (a Lockheed Hudson V) across the Atlantic. In Britain, she volunteered her services to the Royal Air Force. For several months she worked for the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), recruiting qualified women pilots in the United States and taking them to England where they joined the Air Transport Auxiliary.

In September 1940, with the war raging throughout Europe, Jackie Cochran wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt and Lt. Col. Robert Olds suggesting that women pilots be employed to fly non-combat missions for the new command. In spite of pilot shortages, Lieutenant General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold was the person who needed to be convinced. In September 1942, General Arnold authorized the formation of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) under the direction of Nancy Harkness Love. In August 1943, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was created using Jackie Cochran as director and Nancy Love as head of the ferrying division. As director of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, she supervised the training of hundreds of women pilots. For her war efforts, she received the Distinguished Service Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

In 1948, Jackie joined the U.S. Air Force Reserve where she eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Encouraged by then-Major Chuck Yeager, with whom she shared a lifelong friendship, on May 18, 1953, at Rogers Dry Lake, California, Cochran flew a Canadair F-86 Sabre jet borrowed from the Royal Canadian Air Force at an average speed of 652.337 mph, becoming the first woman to break the sound barrier. She was also the first woman to land and take off from an aircraft carrier, the first woman to reach Mach 2, the first woman to pilot a bomber across the North Atlantic (in 1941), the first pilot to make blind (instrument) landing, the only woman to ever be President of the Federation Aeronautique International (1958-1961), the first woman to fly a fixed-wing jet aircraft across the Atlantic, the first pilot to fly above 20,000 feet with an oxygen mask and the first woman to enter the Bendix Trans-continental Race. She still holds more distance and speed records than any pilot living or dead, male or female.

Born Bessie Lee Pittman, she married Robert Cochran, a young aircraft mechanic at a young age. A few years later, Bessie Lee Cochran (1906 – 1980) filed for divorce and moved to northwest Florida  where her parents were then living. She, then, became a hairdresser and got a job in Pensacola, eventually winding up in New York City. There, she used her looks and driving personality to get a job at a prestigious salon at Saks Fifth Avenue. Somewhere along the way, she chose to change her name from Mrs Bessie Cochran to Miss Jacqueline Cochran.

Later on, she met Floyd Bostwick Odlum, the middle-aged founder of Atlas Corp. and CEO of RKO in Hollywood. Widely reputed to be one of the ten richest men in the world, Odlum quickly became enamored with Jacqueline and offered to help her establish a cosmetics business. After a friend offered her a ride in an aircraft, a thrilled Jacqueline Cochran began taking flying lessons at Roosevelt Airfield, Long Island in the early 1930s. She learned to fly an airplane in just three weeks. A natural, she quickly soloed and within two years obtained her commercial pilot's license. Odlum, whom she married in 1936 after his divorce, was an astute financier and savvy marketer who recognized the value of publicity for her business. Calling her line of cosmetics "Wings," she flew her own aircraft around the country promoting her products.

Known by her friends as "Jackie" and maintaining the Cochran name, she flew her first major race in 1934. In 1937, she was the only woman to compete in the Bendix race. She worked with Amelia Earhart to open the race for women. That year, she also set a new woman's national speed record. By 1938, she was considered the best female pilot in the United States. She had won the Bendix and set a new transcontinental speed record as well as altitude records (by this time she was no longer just breaking women's records but was setting overall records).

Before the United States joined World War II, she was part of "Wings for Britain", an organization that ferried American built aircraft to Britain, becoming the first woman to fly a bomber, (a Lockheed Hudson V) across the Atlantic. In Britain, she volunteered her services to the Royal Air Force. For several months she worked for the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), recruiting qualified women pilots in the United States and taking them to England where they joined the Air Transport Auxiliary.

In September 1940, with the war raging throughout Europe, Jackie Cochran wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt and Lt. Col. Robert Olds suggesting that women pilots be employed to fly non-combat missions for the new command. In spite of pilot shortages, Lieutenant General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold was the person who needed to be convinced. In September 1942, General Arnold authorized the formation of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) under the direction of Nancy Harkness Love. In August 1943, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was created using Jackie Cochran as director and Nancy Love as head of the ferrying division. As director of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, she supervised the training of hundreds of women pilots. For her war efforts, she received the Distinguished Service Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

In 1948, Jackie joined the U.S. Air Force Reserve where she eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Encouraged by then-Major Chuck Yeager, with whom she shared a lifelong friendship, on May 18, 1953, at Rogers Dry Lake, California, Cochran flew a Canadair F-86 Sabre jet borrowed from the Royal Canadian Air Force at an average speed of 652.337 mph, becoming the first woman to break the sound barrier. She was also the first woman to land and take off from an aircraft carrier, the first woman to reach Mach 2, the first woman to pilot a bomber across the North Atlantic (in 1941), the first pilot to make blind (instrument) landing, the only woman to ever be President of the Federation Aeronautique International (1958-1961), the first woman to fly a fixed-wing jet aircraft across the Atlantic, the first pilot to fly above 20,000 feet with an oxygen mask and the first woman to enter the Bendix Trans-continental Race. She still holds more distance and speed records than any pilot living or dead, male or female.

Ada Rogato (1910 - 1986) received from her parents, Italian immigrants, the same education given to most women of that time - but she wanted to learn to fly. She did abandoned her goal even when her parents separated and she had to help her mother with activities such as embroidery and crafts to support themselves.

She managed to collect enough money to take flying lessons in 1935 and received her pilot's license the following year. Later, she followed a course in skydiving and earn the first paratrooper license awarded to a Brazilian. Ada used her skills to participate to aviation shows demonstrating acrobatics and parachute jumps. In 1948, when the authorities decided to air combat the coffee berry borer - a pest that threatened the crops of our main export at the time - she accepted the challenge of fulfilling the task that made her a pioneer of crop dusting in Brazil.

Single and childless, she worked for the government for a living . She began in 1940 as a clerk in the Biological Institute and retired in 1980 as head of technical section of the Sports and Tourism. In the 1950s, she was an aviation editor of the Journal of the Flyers as well as the magazine Speed.

In 1956, Ada was invited to be part of the organizing committee of the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1st Flight of the 14-bis. Her suggestion was to fly through all the Brazilians States and Territories to honor and publicize the achievements of Santos-Dumont. On this trip, she traveled 25,057 kilometers in 163 flight hours. She flew her tiny Cessna over unexplored parts of the Midwest, landed at airfields in newly opened forest and visited several Indians villages. She became the first woman to flight solo over the Amazon jungle, including the far-fearful passage Xingu Pipe-Jacareacanga, in a small airplane.

After reaching the Arctic Circle, the highest airport, and the depths of the Amazon, she still wanted to reach the southern continent. Four years later (1960), she reached Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego (Argentina), the southernmost city in the world.

As member of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the 14-bis, she became involved with the Santos-Dumont Foundation (FSD) in order to care for the collection of the inventor and support the development of aeronautics. As head of that entity as successively counselor, secretary and president, Ada welcome the most distinguished visitors of the Museum of Aeronautical FSD (the first in South America).

Valentina Tereshkova (1937 - ) was born in a small village in the Yaroslavl Oblast in western Russia. Tereshkova's father was a tractor driver and her mother worked in a textile plant. She became interested in parachuting from a young age, and trained in parachuting at the local Aeroclub, making her first jump at age 22 on May 21 1959. It was her expertise in parachute jumping that led to her selection as a cosmonaut.

Tereshkova was a textile-factory assembly worker and an amateur parachutist when she was recruited into the cosmonaut program. In 1961 she became secretary of the local Komsomol (Young Communist League) and later joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

After the flight of Yuri Gagarin in 1961, Sergey Korolyov, the chief Soviet rocket engineer, decide to put a woman in space. On 16 February 1962, Valentina Tereshkova was selected to join the female cosmonaut corps. Out of more than four hundred applicants, five were selected: Tatyana Kuznetsova, Irina Solovyova, Zhanna Yorkina, Valentina Ponomaryova, and Tereshkova. Qualifications included that they be parachutists under 30 years of age, under 170 cm (5 feet 7 inches) tall, and under 70 kg (154 lbs.) in weight.

Training included weightless flights, isolation tests, centrifuge tests, rocket theory, spacecraft engineering, 120 parachute jumps and pilot training in MiG-15UTI jet fighters. The group spent several months in intensive training, concluding with examinations in November 1962, after which four remaining candidates were commissioned Junior Lieutenants in the Soviet Air Force. Tereshkova, Solovyova and Ponomaryova were the leading candidates, and a joint mission profile was developed that would see two women launched into space, on solo Vostok flights on consecutive days in March or April 1963.

On the morning of 16 June 1963, Tereshkova and her back-up Solovyova were both dressed in spacesuits and taken to the launch pad by bus. After completing her communication and life support checks, she was sealed inside the Vostok. After a flawless two-hour countdown, Vostok 6 launched faultlessly, and Tereshkova became the first woman to fly into space. Her call sign in this flight was Chaika (English: Seagull), later commemorated as the name of an asteroid, 1671 Chaika.

Although Tereshkova experienced nausea and physical discomfort for much of the flight, she orbited the earth 48 times and spent almost three days in space. With a single flight, she logged more flight time than the combined times of all American astronauts who had flown before that date. Tereshkova also maintained a flight log and took photographs of the horizon, which were later used to identify aerosol layers within the atmosphere. Vostok 6 was the final Vostok flight and was launched only two days after Vostok 5 which carried Valery Bykovsky into orbit for five days, landing only three hours after Tereshkova. The two vessels were at one point only 5 km apart, and communicated by radio.

Even though there were plans for further flights by women, it took 19 years until the second woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, flew into space, in response to the pressure of impending American Space Shuttle flights with female astronauts. None of the other four in Tereshkova's cosmonaut group ever flew.

Born in Bognor Regis, England, Barbara Harmer (1954 - ) left school aged 15 to pursue a career in hairdressing. Harmer's first experience in the aviation industry was six years later when she left hairdressing to go and be an air traffic controller at London Gatwick Airport. When she took on the job of air traffic controller Harmer decided to study for A Levels, which she had missed out on because she had left school at such a young age. Harmer obtained A levels in Geography, English Law, Constitutional Law and Politics. She then began flying lessons. Once she had gained her Private Pilot Licence (PPL) and then her Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL) she became a flying instructor and pilot with a small commuter airline.

In 1984 Harmer joined British Caledonian and flew BAC One-Elevens for three years. She then started flying long haul McDonnell Douglas DC-10. British Airways bought British Caledonian in 1988, four years after Harmer had joined. British Airways employs over 3000 pilots, but only sixty of them are women, and on top of that when Barbara joined British Airways no woman had ever piloted the Concorde. It was at this time that Harmer realised that her ultimate ambition was to fly the Concorde. Only a handful of pilots are hand picked by British Airways to undergo the rigorous 6 months of training that British Airways insists all pilots selected to fly Concorde must undergo. Harmer was finally chosen to undergo this intensive and expensive training in 1992.

On the 25 March 1993 Harmer became the first qualified female Concorde pilot, and later that year she made her first Concorde flight as Captain to New York Citys John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK).