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[[image No. 38 - black & white photograph of Jacqueline Cochran]]

[[image No. 39 - black & white photograph of Jacqueline Cochran at an award ceremony]]

[[caption]] Miss Cochran, as she won third place in the 1948 Bendix Trophy Race, and first place in woman's participation event in North American P-51 (38). At an award ceremony for author-journalist William Allen White, second from left, Cochran appears with Harry Bruno, center, Brock Pemberton, left, and Howard Chase (39). [[/caption]]

Jacqueline Cochran

At the age of eight she took a 12-hour a night job in a cotton mill: a school dropout in the third grade. Today, she is the preeminent aviatrix of the world, and holds more records in more types of aircraft than any woman. Her list of honors, decorations, and trophies cannot be equaled.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Jacqueline Cochran! And aviation pioneering just wouldn't be the same without her.

On one occasion in 1962, at an age when she could have been a grandmother, Miss Cochran flew a Lockheed Jet Star from New Orleans, La., to Hanover, Germany, establishing 69 inter-city, inter-capital, and straight-line distance records en route, while becoming the first woman to fly a jet across the Atlantic. And in the summer of 1964, she established three new world speed records in Lockheed's F-104G Starfighter. Eleven years before, she became the first woman to exceed the speed of sound.

Jacqueline Cochran first became interested in aviation while in her mid-20s, at a time in the early 1930s when names such as Ruth Nichols, Amelia Earhart, and Amy Johnson were vibrant news. In 1932, after three weeks instruction at Roosevelt Field, Long Island, she had her license. In 1934 she was the only woman entrant from the U.S. in the London-Melbourne air races. In 1935 she was the first woman to participate in the Bendix Transcontinental Race; in 1937 Jacqueline won first place in the women's division, and the next year the aviation world was spellbound by her winning the Bendix against a field of all male pilots. Her war service on behalf of Great Britain and America, is a book.

[[image - small drawing of a propeller]]