5. The First Women’s Air Derby
In August the first Women’s Air Derby was held. Amelia left New York and joined the field of nineteen planes in Santa Monica. This was the kind of competition she liked. A women’s transcontinental air race had never been held before. It was something brand-new for fliers, judges, committees, those in charge of every point.
Early on the morning of the eighteenth, AE rolled her Vega onto the field and turned into a double row of planes. To her left and right the planes gleamed under a clear California sky. The lighter planes, six of them, took their positions in front of her. Amelia counted: hers was one of thirteen heavier planes lined up in the rear rank.
The starter dropped his flag. At one-minute intervals the planes roared into take-off. Part of the National Air Races, the women’s event would terminate eight days later at Cleveland, Ohio. Certain stops had to be made each day, and no one could fly at night.
As Amelia had done, women from all over the country flocked to take part. Wealthy women, sportswomen, businesswomen, wives, mothers; all were young; many of them pretty. Some came with old planes, others with new; some flew stock planes, others racers. All carried a few canned goods, enough food for three days in case of a forced landing in the desert.
From Santa Monica the women headed for the first stop at San Bernardino. All made it, Amelia learned, except one. Mary Elizabeth von Mack, flying one of the heavier planes, had found the landing field overcrowded and turned back to land at Montbello.
The next day, according to plan, the last woman in from the day before was the first off the ground. This prevented any lagging behind. One by one the women fliers headed toward the San Bernardino Mountains.
Following in turn, AE slipped through Cajon Pass and headed across the desert to Yuma, Arizona. Coming into the Yuma airport, Amelia crashed into a sandbank and damaged a propeller. She escaped unhurt. The other women, seeing what had happened to AE’s Vega, voted to stay three hours instead of an hour and a half, until the propeller was fixed.
Amelia loved this kind of sportsmanship. It saved time for her, she reflected, because her flying time was supposed to be counted from the starting time, regardless of repair time. Off they flew to Phoenix, where they would stay for the night.
For all the women the event promised adventure, for many danger, for a few disaster. Claire Fahy, of Los Angeles, withdrew because someone had been tampering with her motor. Marvel Crosson, from San Diego and holder of the women’s altitude record, was the only fatality. She was killed when she jumped from her disabled plane and her parachute failed to open.
One of them, her plane out of gas, went down in the sagebrush and cactus of the desert; another turned back because of engine trouble; one had to wait for a damaged landing gear to be repaired; another had wrestled with a whirlwind. Amelia, less fortunate than most because of the broken propeller, nevertheless thanked her luck that she had survived yet another crash, her seventh since she first started flying.
The days clicked by. The third day they remained overnight in Douglas, Arizona; the fourth, in El Paso, Texas. Everywhere they landed, the women, worn out with weariness, would find hundreds of autograph hunters and souvenir seekers waiting for them. The crowds thronged to Amelia’s plane more than to the others. AE despaired to hear that some of the other women had pencils punched through the fabric of their planes by the inquisitive. Her friend Blanche Noyes had discovered fire in her cockpit because of a carelessly thrown cigarette, and was forced to make an emergency landing.
At many of the fields there was no place to rest, no more than a table to sit on. At other airports there were banquets to be rushed to and back from. On the good days AE was happy to find luncheons served at the field and hotels to go to for the night. Many fields provided soap and water, clean towels, cold cream, powder, combs.
At the luncheons and dinners Amelia chuckled at some of the names the speakers used for the women fliers: “sweethearts of the air,” “flying flappers,” “angels,” “sunburned derbyists.” All they wanted to be called, AE insisted in vain, were “fliers,” and, if necessary, “women fliers.”
The press called the race “Lipstick Derby,” “Petticoat Derby,” “Powder Puff Derby.” The last one stuck and has continued to the present time.
At El Paso, the fourth stop, the women waited for a storm to pass, rather than risk some of them not having enough fuel to fly around it; for the next leg, to Fort Worth, was the longest and most hazardous—600 miles, much of it over mountains.
At Pecos they stopped for food and fuel. All the planes landed safely except one. Florence Barnes, wife of a San Morino minister, misjudged her landing roll, overran the runway, and crashed into an automobile. She was rescued, unharmed, from the wreck.
On the night of the fifth day they stayed in Wichita, Kansas; of the sixth, in St. Louis. When they landed in Columbus, Ohio, the last stop before Cleveland, sixteen of the original nineteen had made it.
The morning of the eighth day broke clear. Amelia and Ruth Nichols, her friend from Rye, had been running neck and neck during the entire race. AE had landed just two minutes ahead of Ruth at Columbus and looked forward to the last lap to Cleveland. It would be nip and tuck between them all the way. The girls started their engines and waited for the signal to move out in interval.
Ruth Nichols, poised at the far end of the runway, gunned her motor for take-off. Just as she broke from the ground, the right wing dipped, then hit a tractor parked at the edge of the runway. Amelia blanched. Ruth’s plane struck the ground, flipped over three times, and stopped in a shrieking scrape along the pavement.
AE stopped her engine, climbed out of the Vega, and ran toward the crash. Ruth Nichols was not hurt, but the wings and landing gear of her plane were smashed beyond immediate repair. The private race between the two friends was over.
Louise Thaden of Pittsburgh won the race. Gladys O’Donnell, the mother of two children, from Long Beach, came in second. AE, just nosing out Blanche Noyes, was third. In the light-plane class, Phoebe Omlie was the winner.