Raymonde de Laroche

Raymonde de Laroche ( born August 22, 1886 in Paris, † July 18, 1919 ibid; actually Élise Roche) was the first woman in the world who made ​​a pilot's license. At the same time she was also the first woman who took a solo flight.

Life

As a young actress Élise Roche adopted the pseudonym " Baroness Raymonde de Laroche " because it was better suited to their opinion, for the stage. In 1909, they dined with the aviator Charles Voisin, who proposed her, teach her to fly on one of his machines.

As is usual at this time, Voisins were single-seater aircraft. The student pilot was at the wheel and the flight instructor was from the start and runway from his instructions. In the first lesson, it was a matter that Raymonde de Laroche developed a feel for the machine and was familiar with it. Voisin forbade her urgently to withdraw. She took in the driver seat, rolled across the airfield and brought the machine then the start position. To the horror of the spectators and the flight instructor, took a run and took off. She flew about three hundred meters at a height of about five meters. These were the world's first solo flight a woman.

Trained by Charles Voisin for the pilot, Raymonde de Laroche was on March 8, 1910 as the first woman in the world, the pilot testing of the Aero - Club de France. That same year she was the only woman participating in the " Flight week of Heliopolis " and reached there at the " Grand Prix of Egypt," the 6th Place. When flying meeting in St. Petersburg, she finished fourth. In the "big airplane weeks of Champagne" in Reims, they crashed hard when she fell into the vortex of another aircraft.

Despite severe head injuries, a broken arm and two broken legs did not want to give up flying. Two years later she again took part in competitions.

In 1912, she was in a car accident in which one of the brothers Voisin was killed, severely injured again. Nevertheless, she won the 1913 Women's Cup of the Aero - Club de France and the " Coupe Femina ".

After it was quiet during the First World War to them, they improved in 1918 the women's world record duration flight ( 323 km ) and 1919 with 4,800 yards as compiled by Ruth Law world altitude record for women.

In the summer of the same year she went to work as a co-pilot for the flight test of a new machine in Le Crotoy in Picardy. The plane crashed, however, and Raymonde de Laroche and the pilot of the aircraft were killed in the accident.

673940
de