European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - April 30, 1977, Darmstadt, Hesse Pioneer Sivia trix Louise Ali Ailcy virtuoso of the staggering Beech by Mike Spear staff writer t Here have been Strong stands by High Mili tary men against sending american women into combat but a woman with a Pioneer position in american aviation disagrees with them on one Wii men Are As capable of flying combat missions As says Louise who has been very much a part of aviation Volvo mint from a stage or two this Side of kites to its current state of High with All the boosts on mane vering in mini air planes is pie in the she says and As for physical women have As much As Thaden has abundant experience to Back her state she has logged thousands of hours in planes from the Early travel airs of the 1920s to modern Jet one thing i Learned from demonstrating air planes Over the years is that men pilots As a class Are not Superior to women arc innately better pilots than men because they have a More sensitive More acute sense of rhythm and they Are fundamentally More the woman pilots greatest Handicap has been her in ability to secure flight training comparable with that available to and the Opportunity of securing flying jobs to gain Thaden has watched aviation grow for so Yean and very Early she started cutting a Swath through the aviation in the 1920s and 1930s she set numerous flight records and she has a room full of aviation her name is in the smithsonian institutions aviation Hall of and during her years in aviation she has in one time or another Well known Avi Alor or Many were her friends among them was Amelia Earhart whose death in the Pacific she feels was she makes Strong differentiation Between the Small planes of today and those to 50 years and the lying done then and now Thaden is one of the last pilots from an Era in America when aviation was Young and when almost anyone who flew co Tribul cd something to its she Inguld Well be called the Patron of that classic the a single engine biplane whose lower Wing jutted farther Forward than the lop one she made herself known in the filiation world with it and its setting records and winning races today 3 museum housing stagger wings and paraphernalia connected with it at Tenn is mimed after her in her year of flight through this world she is still winging it quite literally she flew until a couple of years ago when a minor heart Cun Dilion grounded she wines that the condition will improve so she can regain her kor although she is a grandmother in fact she is not one in spirit or Outlook she took up glider flying several years ago and even though she lives in High n she looks Forward to the times she can gel away to new England where her who is an airline lives it is new England where she prefers in Fly when you ask her Bow it was that she happened to get into the native will Tell you in a relatively soft Southern voice that it was All a Happy i was awfully Lucky it was pure Beautiful i happened to be born at the right time and by Luck i happened to get to know the i ight people Al the High one of the right people was Walter whom she met in Kan in i92fi where he ran the travel air manufacturing company she was working Summers in Wichita during Breaks from the University of Arkansas at the the Man 1 worked for knew of my interest in and that s How i happened to get introduced to Walter she says Beech was in the process of giving a distributorship to a West coast agent and the agent asked her to come work for my decision logo was a major turning Point in my life my parents didst want me to go but i wanted a career in the whole so i i did everything from Selling tickets for Short plane hops on in working on i eventually worked into Selling and finally to managing the Oakland Branch of the by this time she was an accomplished aviation was so Young then that every Challenge we met contributed to its to the state of the much could be done if you could get the i was extremely fortunate in getting to do what i one of the first challenges she took up was a Solo endurance flight above Oakland Airport in december flying a Hiss 180 travel air with extra gasoline she remained aloft for 22 hours to set a Solo endur Ance record for that during the flight the spinner on the planes propeller let go and narrowly missed her the san Francisco papers carried an account of the flight on their front pages the next Day but she fortunately i had sufficient honesty to Analyse the situation realistically to know that staying in the air 22 consecutive hours was not much of a feat that i could have made a better soon she was planning an attempt to break the woman Altitude she had the extra tanks taken off the plane but she still needed oxygen equipment for the High Altitude and this took resourcefulness to in a machine shop i finally came on a Small Metal Cylinder of from a Hospital i secured an Ether a rubber Hose completed the equipment needed but in formation on How to regulate it was you must be very a Hospital intern told if you dont get sufficient oxygen youll pass out and if you take too much youll pass whats the right amount that hard to your reactions will slow Only you wont realize watch yourself with that to go she took off on a warm january Alernon in 1938 wearing a fur lined flying suit and a fur lined gloves and at feet the outside temperature read 2 degrees above she slipped the oxygen mask Over her nose and Mouth and turned the oxygen control valve open a fraction of an with the Ether mask i inhaled through my nose and exhaled through my ice started forming on my face at feet she gave the oxygen bottle valve another Quarter it was now 16 degrees below soon one altimeter read feel and the other one read More than the plane was mushing and every foot of Altitude was a it was literally hanging on its then the next thing she remembers is waking up with the engine nose turning in fast circles at about it took me awhile to sort things along about feet i got my wits about me and i jerked the oxygen mask then i was All the official Reading was a disappointment to her but a record three months later she set a Speed record of 156 Over a measured mile course at the Oakland so far As i know no other woman has held three records at the same i was beginning to feel that i was a hot she Calls that a dangerous and it was Only a Short time later that she was involved in a fatal air she was flying from Alameda to Oakland on an Oxx Waco when the engine overheated and the plane went into a spin and killing the Man in the front the incident occurred shortly after Takeoff and she says it might never have happened if she had followed her instructors earlier lesson never try turning Back to the Field after Takeoff if the engine quits at Low Ive always heard it said that you have to crack up once to be a real Good so i guess in a real Good Pilot it certainly taught me a dont gel too big for your Fly within your there was another big event in her life that she married Herb a plane builder and inventor who is now the first woman air Derby was held in August of 1929 in connection with the National air and she talked Beech into building a special plane for her to Fly in Louise Thaden Waves from j5 travel air in Clevelan it a j5 travel she competed with such Well known women pilots of the Day As Amelia Blanche Ruth Marvel Crosson and Thea Rasche of the race began in Santa on 19 and ended in Cleveland she won the covering during the race Crosson was the Only close Call came before the race when she was flying the plane from the she was nearly Over come from exhaust without realizing it and nearly crashed at overnight Beech installed a four Inch pipe that led from the engine Cowling into the cock Pill a b c 1 the Dea Frances Thaden and the flying boudoir in Page 14 the stars and stripes f Thaden won 1936 be mix race with Blanche Noyes auf a
