Bessie or Blanche?

Today, historians are fairly certain that Scott flew before Raiche, but in 1910 there was some confusion, with newspapermen reporting on one pilot without knowing about the other. Additionally, Scott’s first flight may have been “unintentional” and that seemed to matter to some people. Subsequently, a few history books credit Scott with the first flight, but Raiche for the first “intentional” flight. Intentional or not, both women should be remembered.

Blanche Stuart Scott was born in Rochester, New York, on April 8, 1885. Like many Americans, she was fascinated by the latest contraptions, especially the automobile. She was driving her father’s car at age 13 and terrorizing the local pedestrians. In 1910, she became the second woman to drive across the United States, taking 67 days to cross from New York City to San Francisco.

Her cross-country journey made her a minor celebrity and the manager of Glenn Curtiss’s Flying Exhibition Company invited her to join the team, thinking it would be good advertising. But first, she needed to learn to fly, and Curtiss taught her himself at his flight school in Hammondsport, New York. As was common at the time, a device was installed on the throttle of the airplane to limit the rpm and prevent it from becoming airborne. In August or early September, while Scott was practicing taxiing, either the limiter slipped or a strong gust of wind lifted the aircraft into the air. Some considered this an “unintentional” flight, but Scott claimed she made “short hops” and then “intentional flights” soon thereafter. Years later, the “Early Birds of Aviation”—a group founded in 1928 whose members had all flown before 1916—credited her as the first woman to solo an airplane in the United States.

Scott joined the Curtiss exhibition team, becoming the first woman to fly in an airshow in America. The press dubbed her the “Tomboy of the Air” and she became known for her daring stunt flying. She set several long-distance records for female pilots with flights up to 60 miles and was featured in a silent film, The Aviator’s Bride, filmed at Mineola, New York, in 1911

In 1913, Scott suffered a serious crash that required a year of recuperation, and she retired from professional flying in 1916. In the 1930s, Scott worked as a scriptwriter for Hollywood studios and later returned to Rochester where she produced and performed on radio shows.

In 1948, Scott became the first American woman to fly in a jet when she was the passenger in a Lockheed Shooting Star piloted by Chuck Yeager at Cleveland’s National Air Races. In 1954, she was employed by the U.S. Air Force Museum to acquire artifacts for the collection. Scott died on January 12, 1970, at age 84 and was interred at Rochester’s Riverside Cemetery.

Bessica Faith Medlar was born on April 23, 1875, in Beloit, Wisconsin. It’s hard to determine a reputable timeline for her, but at some point she was working as a dentist in New Hampshire and then attended Tufts Medical School in Boston where she earned a medical degree in 1903. Along the way, she married François Raiche, a Frenchman she’d met during her European travels, and they moved to Mineola on Long Island.

While visiting France in 1908, Bessie and François saw Wilbur Wright demonstrate the Wright Flyer, and they became enamored with aviation. When they returned home, they built their own biplane, similar to the Wright brothers’ design, fabricating much of it in their living room with the final assembly taking place in the yard.

Although Scott had made several flights in early September while training with Curtiss, Bessie Raiche was the first woman to announce she would fly and do it publicly.

Likely because she was lighter, the couple had decided she would make the first flights. Neither had any training and on September 16, 1910, Raiche made the first well-documented solo airplane flight by a woman in the United States at the Hempstead Plains Aerodrome. Raiche made five flights that day with the last covering nearly a mile, similar to the Wright brothers’ first day of flying. The last flight ended in an accident.

 

Bessie Raiche

In 2023, a statue of Raiche and Roxey, the Long Island Railroad dog, was installed at the Long Island Railroad station at Mineola, New York, not far from where she lived. It’s 1.5 miles west of Roosevelt Field shopping mall, the former Roosevelt Field, and 2.5 miles from the Cradle of Aviation Museum. She is entombed at the Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California, in the Historical Mausoleum, Room 1, Space 165. Raiche’s great-grandson appeared on a 2016 Antiques Roadshow TV program with her “First Woman Aviator in America” medal and photos, and a letter from Harry Houdini (also an early pilot).

A local newspaper wrote, “She scrambled to her feet and before any of the mechanics and others who had witnessed the fall of the biplane could reach her, she had shut off the engine and stopped the propeller. She calmly said she was not injured.”

Over the next few weeks, Raiche made more flights, and the Aeronautical Society of America credited her with the first solo flight. On October 13, 1910, they awarded her a gold medal, studded with diamonds and inscribed “The First Woman Aviator in America.”

Raiche said, “Blanche deserved the recognition, but I got more attention because of my lifestyle. I drove an automobile, was active in sports like shooting and swimming, and I even wore riding pants and knickers.”

Raiche and her husband formed the French-American Aeroplane Company, which built and sold a few airplanes, but Bessie became ill, forcing her to give up flying.

Moving to California, Raiche opened a medical practice in Newport Beach in 1912, specializing in obstetrics and gynecology. The couple divorced in 1925, and Bessie died of a heart attack in 1932, at the age of 56 years. She was interred at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California, the same cemetery as another famous flyer, Douglas “Wrong Way” Corrigan, and Glenn Martin, the aircraft designer.

Scott likely made the first flights by a woman in America, but in the privacy of Curtiss’s upstate New York flight school, so Raiche received more press coverage. After all this controversy, remember that it was a French woman, Raymonde de Laroche, who was the first woman to pilot an airplane, on October 22, 1909.

Dennis K. Johnson is a frequent contributor to AOPA publications. He is a private pilot.