The women of early aviation

Air Date: August 22, 2018 10:00 am

Ruth Nichols’ pilots license, signed by flight pioneer Orville Wright.
Competitors in East St. Louis at the first-ever women’s air derby. From left to right: Mary Elizabeth von Mach, Jessie “Chubbie” Miller, Gladys O’Donnell, Thea Rasche, Phoebe Omlie, Louise Thaden, Amelia Earhart, Blanche Noyes, Ruth Elder and Vera Walker.
Florence Klingensmith in 1928.
Rivals in the sky, Earhart, Nichols and Thaden became friends on the ground, helping the female pilots organize against the men.
By 1935, crowds surged around Earhart wherever she went, including this landing in Oakland.

Guests: Keith O’Brien, Bonnie Tiburzi Caputo

Air shows of the 1920s and 1930s were competitive, dangerous and often deadly events. Hundreds of thousands of spectators watched pilots race through the skies in rickety, single-propeller, open-cockpit planes and crashes were common. It was a sport not welcoming to women but that didn’t stop Amelia Earhart, Ruth Nichols, Louise Thaden, Ruth Elder, and Florence Klingensmith from taking to the skies and breaking records crossing oceans and continents. KEITH O’BRIEN chronicles these pioneers in his new book, Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History. We talk with O’Brien about these fearless women who were a part of the early days of aviation, and their struggle to fly in a male-dominated field. And we hear from BONNIE TIBURZI CAPUTO, the first woman to be hired by a major US airline in 1973, about her experience breaking into aviation.

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