The first female Champions in the history of world aviation
Their stories — to the 120th anniversary since the birth of the legendary pilot Amelia Earhart.
The first woman pilot to fly over the Atlantic ocean, the American pilot-record holder Amelia Earhart was born in the USA July 24, 1897. Becoming one of the most famous figures in aviation records in the 1930s, she reinvented the sky for women. 40 years later, in July 1937, Earhart along with her Navigator Fred Noonan disappeared while trying to make a round the world flight at the equator line — the debate about its further fate is still underway.
The history of the first women recordsmens and Amelia Earhart — in the article “Izvestia”.
Elise Desroches — the actress who conquered the sky
The first female, self-piloting airplane, officially the French Elise Desroches. However, the public knew her as the Baroness Raymond de Laroche — this sonorous name Eliza chose for his stage career. Stage actress, noted for attractiveness and love of beautiful outfits for the first time on the airplane in the sky she raised up almost by accident.
Fascinated by ballooning, in the Wake of General interest to the conquest of the sky she is befriended by the balloonist, Charles Wasalam. In October 1909 Eliza persuaded him to let her “steer” the airplane on the ground. However, whether the actress disobeyed the owner of the car, or simply lost control and too dispersed airplane, but he took to the air and flew several hundred meters. The incident ended well, but the 23-year-old Eliza set out to learn to fly a plane.
On March 8, 1910 Desroches, after graduating from flying school, took part in the competition, the results of which the first French women received the official certificate of the pilot.
For several years, she traveled to Europe in the flying circus, including visited Desroches and Russia.
With the beginning of the First world war, women were officially removed from the flight, and Desroches went to work in the French army. In June 1919, he returned to flying, she set two world records for distance and altitude. In July of the same year, 33-year-old pilot died in a plane crash. A monument to her installed in the Paris airport Le Bourget.
Lydia Zvereva — schoolgirl at the controls of an airplane
The daughter of a Russian army General who became famous during the war in the Balkans, a graduate of the Institute for noble maidens, Lydia, from his youth dreamed about aviation. In 1910, at the age of 20, she entered the Gatchina flying club “Humayun” — one of the first in Russia.
Lydia Zvereva passed the final exams in November 1911, becoming the first in the Russian Empire female certified pilot. There, in the school, she met her husband, a flight instructor, and aircraft manufacturers Vladimir Slyusarenko. Together they organized a private flight school and a workshop on repair of planes in Riga, which was then the aviation Empire at this time located in the same Russko-Baltiyskiy Zavod actively attracted pilots for testing new aircraft.