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[[image No. 121 - black & white photograph of pilot Blanche Scott]]

[[image No. 122 - black & white photograph of Blanche Scott in her Red Devil biplane]]

[[caption]]Voluptuous Blanche Scott was a flying fashion plate. Refusing to wear the ugly football helmet headgear of the era, America's first female exhibition pilot had a velvet goodie designed (121). Before a flight, July 27, 1911, at Mineola, N.Y. in her Baldwin-designed Red Devil biplane (122). She was an excellent stuntswoman.[[/caption]]

Blanche Stuart Scott

"Glenn Curtiss was mad. In fact he was absolutely livid about sweet little me learning to fly. A bird woman in that day and age? Never!"

The age was 1910. Glenn Hammond Curtiss was the unquestioned Titan of American aviation, for earlier that year he had won the New York World $10,000 prize in a record flight of 142.5 miles from Albany to New York--winning the Scientific American Trophy for the third time. Taciturn Curtiss just didn't like the idea of a bloomered young beauty at the Hammondsport flying field. But then, Blanche was something special--indeed a celebrity. A few months before, she became the first woman to drive a car from New York City to San Francisco, forging a trail in her Overland that was sensational.

After her September 6, 1910 solo, Blanche Scott joined the Curtiss Exhibition Company team, giving her first public performance in Fort Wayne, Ind., October 22. The crowds loved her, and soon with a nickname of "America's Flying Bloomer Girl," she was seen at the best air meets. There were disagreements with Curtiss--he never again had the heart to train any women, and Blanche joined with Glenn Martin and Thomas Scott Baldwin for greater fame.

America's premier aviatrix became the first woman to experience the thrill of a jet when she rode a two-place trainer during the 1948 National Air Races, soaring along Cleveland's lake front in a quantum jump "that was wonderful."

[[image - small drawing of a propeller]]

Blanche Stuart Scott: born Rochester, New York, April 8, 1889.

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