All Stories

Travel across the globe and discover four women pilots that were taking to the skies and setting records.

Flying under all four bridges in New York by age 17.  Simultaneously holding the women’s world speed, altitude, and distance records.  Breaking their own world record with 930 barrel loops. The women in this article set and broke records with feats of flying. Discover their stories.  

Breaking records or excelling in physical competition are feats of endurance, training, and skill. Jeana Yeager and Patty Wagstaff’s stories exemplify this, as they soared above the competition.  

Women made history not only as pilots of aircraft, but also by being willing passengers. Read about three women that were brave enough to fly in aircraft when they were relatively new inventions.

In addition to the feats accomplished while in a plane, Earhart made an impact in areas from ranging from fashion to flying an autogiro. Here are five things you may not know about the famous American pilot.

When World War II broke out, hundreds of women took to the skies in support of the war effort. Many contributed as Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). However, women like Willa Brown who were barred from becoming a military pilot by both her race and gender, found other ways to contribute. These are the stories of five women who contributed to the war effort by flying. 

On May 18, 1953, Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound and, at the time of her death in 1980, she held more speed, altitude, and distance records than any other male or female pilot in aviation history. 

100 years ago Bessie Coleman became the first African American woman to earn her pilot's license. In part because she was a woman, and especially a woman of color, Bessie had to travel all the way to Europe to get her flight training. Today on AirSpace, we're looking back on Bessie's experiences in France and Germany in the 1920s and exploring just how far she went to earn her historic license (and inspire generations of pilots along the way).

Wally Funk is finally going to space. After being the youngest of the female pilots tested by Dr. Lovelace, Funk will become the oldest person to fly into space at age 82.

What do archivists do when they’re not in the archives? Last summer, in addition to making digital collections available to researchers all over the world, National Air and Space Museum archivists Elizabeth Borja and Melissa Keiser experimented with historical recipes found in the Benjamin O. Davis Jr. Collection.