Spirit in the Sky

May 1, 2014 | People

[title subtitle=”words: Brenda Baskin
images: courtesy Dr. Terry von Thaden”][/title]

When astronaut Linda Godwin boarded the space shuttle Atlantis on April 5, 1991, she carried with her a good luck charm — the flight helmet of pilot Louise McPhetridge Thaden. It was a tribute to a unique trailblazer. During the Golden Age of Aviation, Louise Thaden helped pave the way for generations of women who, like Godwin, dreamed of soaring through the skies, thousands of miles above the earth. Though Amelia Earhart’s mysterious disappearance over the Pacific Ocean made hers the name most people recall, her friend, peer and competitor Louise was equally famous at the time. Throughout the late 1920s and early 30s, Louise fearlessly and successfully broke records and knocked down barriers for female pilots.

Iris “Louise” McPhetridge was born in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1905. Her parents encouraged independence. Roy McPhetridge taught Louise to fish, hunt, and later, repair cars. Her first attempt at flight came at age seven, when she jumped off the roof of their barn, using an umbrella as a parachute. At age fourteen, she paid a stunt pilot five dollars to give her a ride in his biplane.

The Wright Brothers’ famous flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina took place in 1903. Once they proved air travel possible, the world rushed to get in on the act. During the next few decades, improvements to “flying machines” were made at lightning speed. World War I created an added urgency for fast, dependable planes. By the war’s end, flight records were broken weekly, and newspapers sensationally reported on the latest stunts and the newest developments, all infused with the restless spirit of the Roaring Twenties.

Louise was restless too. In 1921, she tried her hand at college, attending the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and switching majors three times before dropping out in 1925. She went to work for the J.H.J. Coal Company in Wichita, Kansas. Among their customers was Travel Air Manufacturing Company, one of the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers. Enthralled by the sight of their planes taking off and landing, Louise began spending every free moment at their air field. Sometimes, the pilots even took her up in their planes. Walter Beech, the company’s owner, noticed her obsession. He offered her a sales position at his San Francisco office. The pay was low, he informed her, but flying lessons were included in the benefits package. By May of 1928, Louise had earned her pilot’s license, signed by Orville Wright himself. The same year, in keeping with her whirlwind pace, she fell in love and eloped to Reno, Nevada with Herbert von Thaden, a former WWI pilot and aeronautical engineer. By December, she’d broken the women’s record for flight altitude.

In those days, pilots flew in an open cockpit. Warm jackets and helmets helped combat the cold air rushing through. They zipped by each other in airplanes, waving and shouting as they passed. Pressurized cabins hadn’t even been thought of. When planning her record-breaking flight, Louise heard horror stories of pilots climbing too high and fainting due to loss of oxygen. She solved the problem by borrowing an air tank from a machine shop, attaching a rubber hose to one end and a surgical mask to the other. As she ascended, she slipped on the mask. Using pliers to open the tank’s valve, she administered enough oxygen to keep climbing. She did pass out at one point, but awoke as the plane plunged to 16,000 feet, still leaving her enough time to land safely. The plane’s readout had recorded her record-breaking altitude: 20,260 feet.

Three months later, in March of 1929, she broke the world’s solo endurance record. Louise managed to stay in the air for twenty-two hours, three minutes and twenty-two seconds. She reported in her autobiography High, Wide and Frightened that she’d stayed awake by whistling, chewing gum, drinking coffee and hanging her head from the side of the cockpit, letting the cold air hit her. She was terrified, especially when the spinner broke off from her propeller, but told herself, “There’s no use being a sissy.”

In April, she earned her transport pilot’s license, which allowed her to fly commercial planes. She was the fourth woman in the US to do so. The same month, she shattered the women’s speed record. To this day, she’s the only female to hold three simultaneous world flight records. She was only twenty-three years old. It was all thrillingly dangerous, but Louise was philosophical. “If your time has come,” she said, “it is a glorious way to pass over…There has never been, nor will there ever be, progress without sacrifice of human life.”

She was a woman in an industry dominated by men, during an era in which many still held to the adage “a woman’s place is in the home.” Women were often viewed as physically weak and too emotionally fragile to fly competently, a view that frustrated Louise. “I see this question of a woman’s ability to fly developing into the battle of the sexes,” she lamented. “Women can never hope to compete with men in the actual flying of airplanes. Not that a woman can’t handle a plane as well as a man. She can, and many of them do the job a lot better.”

Men were challenging each other in air races, but women weren’t allowed to compete. That changed in 1929, when the first National Women’s Air Derby (nicknamed “The Powder Puff Derby”) was held in California. Twenty female pilots, including Louise and her friend Amelia Earhart, competed in the cross-country race, which proved to be a difficult and tragic one. A pilot was killed when her plane crashed; Amelia Earhart’s plane crashed as well. After eight days of flying, Louise won the event, but it was a bittersweet victory.

Shortly afterward, she, Amelia Earhart and Ruth Nichols founded the Ninety-Nines, an organization that still exists today. Named for the number of female pilots who initially joined, the group dedicated themselves to promoting the equality of female pilots and the advancement of aviation. Louise turned down the office of president and instead became treasurer, and later, its national vice president.

All the while, she continued breaking records, among them for speed and refueling endurance. In 1930, after Louise and Herbert relocated to Pittsburgh, she flew around the country promoting air travel and safety in her role as Public Relations Director for Pittsburgh Aviation Industries. During that time, she also gave birth to two children, William and Patricia, both of whom grew up to be pilots as well.

The granddaddy of all flying competitions was the Bendix Transcontinental Air Race, established in 1931. The winner received a $4,500 cash prize and a coveted trophy. Race officials worried about the competence and safety of female pilots, and banned them from the competition. The women objected for years, until finally, in 1935, the ban was lifted. Convinced that the girls would be no match for their daring male counterparts, in 1936 organizers offered a lesser $2,500 “Women’s Prize” to the fastest female pilot.

Louise entered the 1936 Bendix Race, though she later admitted she never thought she had a prayer of winning. She was up against pilots whose custom-designed, dual-engine racing planes were built especially for the event. Louise and co-pilot Blanche Noyes climbed into their worn, single-engine stock model biplane and hoped for the best. Dashing off from New York City, they flew for fifteen hours. At some point, they lost radio power, and with it, the ability to hear the race’s progress. When they finally landed in Los Angeles, they realized they’d crossed the finish line backwards. Believing that the approaching crowd was coming to laugh at their mistake, they looked for someplace to hide. But it soon became apparent that the commotion was due to the fact that they’d won, not just the “Women’s Prize,” but the entire race. They received both cash prizes ($7,000) and Louise was awarded the trophy. “Well, that’s a surprise!” she told Time magazine. We expected to be the cow’s tail.” Shortly afterward, Louise was awarded the Harmon Trophy, aviation’s top honor.

Despite her achievements, Louise expressed conflicting feelings regarding her passion for flying and her love of family. After her Bendix Trophy victory, she broke two more flight records for speed and endurance, but soon after her friend Amelia Earhart’s 1937 disappearance over the Pacific Ocean, Louise announced her retirement from competitive flying. She claimed she wanted to spend more time with her family, though she never completely retired from aviation. She continued her work for the Ninety-Nines, promoted air safety, performed volunteer work for a civilian air ambulance service, served in the Civil Air Patrol and became a partner in her husband’s aircraft engineering firm. After his passing in 1969, she ran the company herself. Throughout her life, she was showered with awards and accolades. In 1951, the Bentonville Municipal Airport changed its name to the Louise M. Thaden Field. Nationally, she’s been inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame, the International Aerospace Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Aviation Hall of Fame, among others.

The farm girl from Arkansas who ushered in the Golden Age of Aviation and lived to see the Space Age, died of a heart attack on November 9, 1979, three days before her seventy-fourth birthday. Eleven years later, Linda Godwin carried Louise’s flight helmet aboard the Atlantis, symbolically acknowledging the woman who’d made her flight possible. Perhaps more than anyone else, Louise McPhetridge Thaden proved to the world that up in the sky, all things are equal.

Do South Magazine

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