Forgotten feat of aviation pioneer
Here's a poser from Telford aviation historian Rob Davis to test frustrated Shropshire pub quizzers in lockdown – who was the first woman to fly across the English Channel?
And he has a significant related question: why have you never heard of her?
Rob says her major aviation achievement, which happened this month in 1912, was overshadowed by the Titanic disaster which was filling all the newspapers at the time.
Many people will know who was the first person to fly the Channel. On July 25, 1909, Frenchman Louis Bleriot piloted his Blériot XI, a monoplane with a 25-horsepower engine, from Calais to Dover, winning a £1,000 prize in the process.
As for that first woman to achieve the feat, Rob says: "The answer is Harriet Quimby, an American aviatrix, who flew the Channel on April 16, 1912, her achievement being relegated to page 99 of the newspapers. Sadly she died in a flying accident on July 1 that same year."
Quimby had flirted with the idea of being an actress, then became a star journalist and talented photographer, before becoming an automobile freak with a love of travel and speed, which led her to a fascination with flight.
As she learned to fly she wrote about her experiences for the benefit of magazine readers. She became the first American woman to gain a pilot's licence, and only the second in the world, in August 1911, and with her striking good looks, and striking dress sense – she wore trousers tucked into high lace boots accentuated by a plum-coloured satin blouse, necklace, and antique bracelet – became something of an aviation cover girl.
Her cross-Channel flight, which was the day after the Titanic sank, took her from Dover to Hardelot in a Bleriot, in a heavy overcast which meant she was virtually blind flying, her eyes glued to her compass.
The circumstances of her death on July 1, 1912, are swathed in a mystery which can never be solved. During the Harvard-Boston aviation meet, her aircraft was seen to suddenly plunge earthwards without obvious reason, and she and her passenger were both thrown out to fall to their deaths in Boston harbour.
