Elise Raymonde De Laroche, First Woman Issued a Pilot's License

Elise Raymonde Deroche didn't set out to be a pioneering aviatrix.

Born in the late 1800's, the daughter of a plumber, Deroche first tried her hand at being an actress. She went by the name "Raymonde de Laroche." The title of "Baroness" was inadvertently added to her name in an article in Flight magazine. From that point on, she was known as "Baroness Elise Raymonde De Laroche."

De Laroche was already a hot-air balloon pilot when she met Charles Voisin. Voisin had designed his own plane and named it after himself. The Voisin aeroplane was a one-seater that looked like two box kites had been strapped together.

When De Laroche asked Voisin to teach her to fly the plane, he had no opposition, although he did not give De Laroche permission to actually take off. He allowed De Laroche to taxi on the runway and around the aerodrome.

An anxious De Laroche decided to take matters into her own hands and announced that she was going to attempt to fly.

As it happened, an English reporter was also at the field that day. The reporter and Voisin watched in amazement as De Laroche rolled down the strip and became airborne. She only took the craft up to about 15 feet but it was still the first air solo by a woman.

The reporter later wrote, "The airplane was gliding through the air completely level for several hundred meters before it came down gently and taxied back."[1]

In March of 1910, De Laroche was the first woman in the world issued a pilot's license by the Aero-Club de France.

In July of that same year, the fearless De Laroche suffered head wounds, a broken arm and two broken legs from a plane crash.

De Laroche was known to make this commentary on her fearlessness of flying: "Most of us spread the hazards of a lifetime over a number of years. Others pack them into minutes or hours. In any case, what is to happen, will happen. It may be that I shall tempt Fate once too often, but it is to the air that I have dedicated myself and I fly always without the slightest fear."[1]

Which explains why, two years after the accident, De Laroche was back in the air again, this time participating in air racing. She won the Coupe Femina in 1913, which was established explicitly for female pilots.

Private flying was banned during World War I, but De Laroche wasn't still. She drove officers from the rear zones to the front line under fire.

There is no mistaking that De Laroche was an adventurer. In 1919, she flew up to 15,700 feet, an altitude record for women at that time. She also set a women's distance record at 201 miles.

But, as fate would have it, that same year, De Laroche was riding as a passenger in a test flight of a new plane. It was her goal to become the first professional woman test pilot. However, the pilot of the plane lost control. It crashed and killed both the pilot and De Laroche.

A statue of de Laroche stands at Le Bourget Airport in France.

[1] Bookrags