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.  

Elinor Smith

Elinor Smith soloed at 15, earned her license at 16, and holds the honor of having flown under all four bridges (1920s-era) in New York City, though she received a temporary suspension of her license for doing so. 

By age 17, in early 1929, Smith was trading records with other women pilots of the day, establishing marks in endurance in a Brunner Winkle Bird in January (13 hours, 16 minutes) and in a Bellanca CH in April (26 hours, 21 minutes). Bellanca hired her as a demonstration pilot and later as a high altitude test pilot.  

Smith teamed up with Bobbi Trout in November of 1929 (after two unsuccessful tries) to set a new women's endurance record of 42 hours and to become the first women aviators to accomplish aerial refueling. Their Sunbeam airplane was refueled from a Curtiss aircraft which had an emergency landing after 30 hours. The Curtiss’ emergency landing forced the women to land when their fuel was exhausted.  

In 1930, Smith set a women's altitude record of 8,357 meters (27,418 feet) in a Bellanca Pacemaker and she was named Woman Pilot of the Year at the age of 19. She made two attempts in 1931 to regain the record, passing out the first time. She also set a straight course speed record for women of 369 kph (229 mph) in 1932. From 1930 to 1935 Smith was an aviation commentator for NBC radio, covering such events as the Graf Zeppelin landings in the United States and the National Air Races. She was a frequent contributor of aviation articles to several magazines as well. In New York, she helped shape aviation policy as an official advisor to the New York State Aviation Committee. 

Ruth Nichols

Ruth Nichols was the only woman to hold simultaneously the women's world speed, altitude, and distance records for heavy landplanes.  

She soloed in a flying boat and received her pilot's license after graduating from Wellesley College in 1924, becoming the first woman in New York to do so.  

Defying her parents' wishes to follow the proper life of a young woman, in January 1928 she flew nonstop from New York City to Miami with Harry Rogers in a Fairchild FC-2. The publicity stunt brought Nichols fame as "The Flying Debutante" and provided headlines for Rogers' airline too. Sherman Fairchild took note and hired Nichols as a northeast sales manager for Fairchild Aircraft and Engine Corporation.  

She helped to found the Long Island Aviation Country Club, an exclusive flying club, and participated in the 19,312-kilometer (12,000-mile) Sportsman Air Tour to promote the establishment of clubs around the country. She was also a founder of Sportsman Pilot magazine.  

Nichols set several women's records in 1931, among them a speed record of 339.0952 kph (210.704 mph), an altitude record of 8,760 meters (28,743 feet), and a nonstop distance record of 3182.638 kilometers (1,977.6 miles).  

Her hopes to become the first woman to fly the Atlantic Ocean were dashed by two crashes of a Lockheed Vega in 1931, in which she was severely injured, and again in 1932.  

In 1940, Nichols founded Relief Wings, a humanitarian air service for disaster relief that quickly became an adjunct relief service of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) during World War II. Nichols became a lieutenant colonel in the CAP. After the war she organized a mission in support of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and became an advisor to the CAP on air ambulance missions.

Laura Ingalls

Laura Ingalls was a highly successful female pilot of the 1930s with several unusual records to her credit. Daughter of a wealthy New York City family, Ingalls learned to fly in 1928. In 1930, she performed 344 consecutive loops, setting a women's record, and she shortly broke her own record with 930 loops. She also did 714 barrel rolls breaking both women's and men's records.  

Ingalls held more U.S. transcontinental air records during the 1930s than any other woman, including a transcontinental record of 30 hours east to west and 25 hours west to east (round trip from New York to  Los Angeles), both in 1930. In 1935, she became the first women to fly nonstop from the east coast to the west coast and then immediately broke Amelia Earhart's nonstop transcontinental west-to-east record with a flight from Los Angeles to New York in 13 hours, 34 minutes.  

Her most well-known flights were made in 1934 and earned her a Harmon Trophy as the most outstanding female aviator of the year. Ingalls flew in a Lockheed Orion from Mexico to Chile, over the Andes Mountains to Rio, to Cuba and then to New York, marking the first flight over the Andes by an American woman, the first solo flight around South America in a landplane, the first flight by a woman from North America to South America, and setting a woman's distance record of 27,358 kilometers (17,000 miles). In 1936, she placed second behind Louise Thaden in the prestigious Bendix Trophy Race. In 1939, Ingalls became an outspoken member of the America First Committee, an isolationist movement, including illegally dropping leaflets advocating U.S. non-intervention in the European war from a plane over the White House. She then planned a flight to Berlin to ostensibly search for peace, but was arrested on charges of aiding the German government in the US. In 1942, she was convicted of acting as an unregistered paid agent of Nazi Germany and served 1 year, 7 months, and 15 days in prison.

Betty Browning

Air race enthusiast Betty Browning won the 1936 Amelia Earhart Trophy Race at the National Air Races in Los Angeles. Flying a Cessna C-34, Browning led a group of eight women in the 40-kilometer (25-mile) race at an average speed of 251 kph (156.4 mph). She placed  second in the same race in 1937.  

Browning found pylon racing to be of great sport, but she did not depend on aviation as a source of income. Instead she worked as a secretary at the Sheffield Steel Corporation in Kansas City, and flew on a Trans-World Airline flight to Los Angeles to participate in the fifty-minute race. She also participated in the Miami Air Maneuvers flying from Miami to Havana. She was skeptical about women's commercial flying opportunities beyond the few superstars at the top. Adopting a philosophical attitude, Browning hoped to make enough money by racing just to break even on her flying expenses. 

This content was migrated from an earlier online exhibit, Women in Aviation and Space History, which shared the stories of the women featured in the Museum in the early 2000s.