On Veteran's Day ... and Baroness Raymonde de Laroche, Part 2

Jacqueline Cochran, in uniform, 1943. Photo: Airbus.com

We here in the U.S. are set to celebrate Veteran's Day tomorrow, October 11th. Of course, we are not the only country paying tribute to war veterans, as France is currently marking the centenary of the end of WWI.

I thought this might be a fitting time to post the second part of my article on the Baroness Raymonde de Laroche, who was a veteran of WWI: she settled for driving an ambulance on the front, after the French government turned down her request to fly for France. The Baroness gave so much to that particular war effort, and of course she was not alone, although I am uncertain whether France formally recognizes the sacrifice of the women who served in non-traditional capacities.

Of course, this non-recognition of female war contributions continued (at least in the U.S.) through WWII. Notably, Jacqueline Cochran, the head of the WASP - Women's Air Force Service Pilots - which trained many women to fly during WWII, fought hard to get female pilots the official federal government recognition their service and sacrifice so richly deserved. Unfortunately, Cochran was unsuccessful in that attempt, and other attempts since then have also failed. 

So, to honor all veterans' service - both official and non-official - here is the second and final part of the amazing story of the first woman of flight, Baroness Raymonde de Laroche. (If you missed the first part, feel free to access it here.)

Raymonde de Laroche, the Baroness of Flight

The Baroness Raymond de Laroche. Photo
from Airbus.

When we last left the Baroness, she had just successfully competed with male pilots in the first five days at the second Grande Semaine d’Aviation in July, 1910 in Reims, France. On the sixth day, however, she suffered an incredible accident that saw her almost die on the competitive field.

Elise remained grounded for six months after the Reims accident as she recuperated, returning to the airfield on crutches in January 1911. Throughout 1911, she resumed flying and successively traded up to better planes until she was piloting a Farman biplane. By this point, she and Charles were living together. Voisin had left the family plane business to manage a group of the best pilots of the day, including Roland Garros (for whom the French Open tennis match was named).

In the same year, dangerous machines caused another tragedy for de LaRoche even when her feet remained squarely planted on the ground. She and Charles were driving near Lyons when they collided with another car. Charles died at the scene, and Elise sustained serious injuries.

The Baroness turning to flying (in new-to-her plane manufacturers) for solace, and it played an eventful role for her in 1912. Although de Laroche had been working her way through a series of different planes other than Voisins prior to Charles’ death, there was no more relationship with either the Voisin brothers or their planes since Gabriel, Charles’ surviving brother, blamed her for the accident.  Additionally, a French company, Office d’Aviation, was supposed to provide her with a plane as well as secure her flying engagements, which it did not do. As a result, she brought a breach of contract claim against the company, and after initially losing in a lower tribunal, won a 10,000 francs court judgment in the Fourth Chamber.

Then, in 1913, the year in which one of her Belgian contemporaries, Hélène Dutrieu, announced her retirement from flying, the Baroness won the coveted European Femina Cup—and the hefty prize money that came with it—for setting a flight record by a female pilot. She also seemed to fully recover from her loss of Charles Voisin and married Jacques Vial in the same year. Had it not been for the outbreak of WWI, when all non-military flight came to a halt, she would have continued, unabated, to fly.

However, when WWI broke out in 1914, civilian flying – including that of the Baroness - came to a complete stop. Elise actually wanted to fly for France, but had to settle for driving an automobile instead. She survived the war, but these years greatly impacted the rest of her life: the government requisitioned her plane to fight the war, her husband Vial died on the battlefield, and the Spanish flu killed her son.

In the summer of 1919, after setting (for a brief time) a women’s altitude record, de Laroche visited the airfield at Le Crotoy Somme, where she was offered a ride in a new Caudron airplane. Elise was in the process of reimagining a new “first” role for herself- that of test pilot. No other woman had, to that point, qualified for that type of pilot work. At just 33 years old, however, Elise died on that flight, along with the pilot. Flight’s obituary notice on July 24, 1919, approvingly documented her many achievements and closed with a nod to one of many controversies at the time: “A few weeks ago she took a machine up to a height of 4,900 metres (16,170 ft.) but the French Club refused to recognize ‘women’s records,’ a decision which has caused some discussion across the Channel.” Local flying clubs had forbid women to compete with men, but since the FAI was the official international record-keeping body, Elise and all other women had used it as a way to crack the gender flight ceiling.

It is clear that de Laroche loved flying and remained dedicated to it despite the obvious and the all-to-often fatal risks involved in early aviation. The Baroness, in her own words, hauntingly alluded to both her dedication and the associated risk, when she spoke to reporters after she earned her pilot’s license in 1910: “Most of us spread the perils of a lifetime over a number of years. Others may pack them into a matter of only a few hours. In any case, whatever is to happen will happen. It may well be that I shall tempt fate once too often. Who knows? But it is to the air that I have dedicated myself, and I fly always without the slightest fear.”

Further Reading:

Books:

Gibson, Karen Bush. Women Aviators: 26 Stories of Pioneer Flights, Daring Missions, and Record-Setting Journeys. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2013

Lavoie, Denise. Leather, Lace, Grit & Grace: Crochet and Knit Designs Inspired by the Early Females of Flight Including Bessie Coleman and Harriet Quimby. Seattle: Tough as Lace Publishing, 2015.

Lebow, Eileen F. Before Amelia. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's Inc., 2002.

Lieberg, Owen S. The First Air Race: The International Competition at Reims, 1909. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1974.

Marck, Bernard. Women Aviators: From Amelia Earhart to Sally Ride, Making History in Air and Space. Paris: Flammariion, 2009.

Pawlak, Debra Ann. “The Baroness of Flight,” Aviation History (July 1, 2008).

Villard, Henry Serrano, and William M. Allen, Jr. Looping the Loop: Posters of Flight. Carlsbad, California: Kales Press, 2000.

Voisin, Gabriel. Men, Women, and 10,000 Kites. London: Putnam, 1963

Magazine articles:

Air Trails, July, 1953 – “The Brave Baroness – First Licensed Ladybird,” Harry Harper, pp. 19-21, 56, 58.

Flying, March, 1957 – “The Intrepid First Lade of Flight,” Harry Harper, pp. 34, 84-85.

Icare, Revue de l’Aviation, edited by SNPL France ALPA (Association des Pilotes de Ligne), December 2012, vol.

            no. 223 – Courses et Meetings Aeriens de la Belle Epoque (1909-1914) – Vol. 2: 1910, pp 12-12, 18, 86-

            88, 95 (a French language publication).

Knitting Traditions, Fall, 2017 - "Aviation's Baroness: Elise Raymonde de Laroche," Denise Lavoie, pp. 22-27.