Just seven years after the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, two women joined the ranks of American aviators. Blanche Scott and Bessie Raiche each made solo flights in 1910, the first women in America to do so.
Today, historians are fairly certain that Blanche flew before Bessie, but in 1910, there was some confusion with newspapermen reporting on one pilot without knowing about the other. Additionally, Blanche’s first flight may have been “unintentional” and that seemed to matter to some people. Subsequently, a few history books credit Blanche with the first flight, but Bessie with the first “intentional” flight. Intentional or not, both women should be remembered.
Blanche Stuart Scott
Blanche, who also went by Betty, 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 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, so the manager of Glenn Curtiss’ 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 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 Blanche 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 Blanche 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.
Blanche 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, she suffered a serious crash that required a year of recuperation and she retired from professional flying in 1916. In the 1930s, Blanche worked as a scriptwriter for Hollywood studios and later returned to Rochester, where she produced and performed on radio shows.
She became the first American woman to fly in a jet in 1948 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 United States Air Force Museum (now known as the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force) to acquire artifacts. Blanche died Jan. 12, 1970, at age 84.
Bessie Raiche
Born Bessica Faith Medlar on April 23, 1875, in Beloit, Wisconsin, Bessie’s timeline is hard to determine. 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 a Frenchman, François Raiche, whom she’d met during 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 of aviation. When they returned home, they built their own biplane, like the Wright Brothers’ design, fabricating much of it in their living room with the final assembly taking place in the yard.
Although Blanche had made several flights in early September while training with Curtiss, Bessie was the first woman to announce she would fly and do it publicly.
Likely because Bessie was lighter, the couple had decided she would make the first flights. Neither had any training and on Sept. 16, 1910, Bessie made the first well-documented solo airplane flight by a woman in the United States at the Hempstead Plains Aerodrome. She 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.
A local newspaper account stated: “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, Bessie made more flights and the Aeronautical Society of America credited her with the first solo flight. On Oct. 13, 1910, they awarded her a gold medal studded with diamonds and inscribed “The First Woman Aviator in America.”
“Blanche deserved the recognition, but I got more attention because of my lifestyle,” Bessie said. “I drove an automobile, was active in sports like shooting and swimming, and I even wore riding pants and knickers.”
The Raiches formed the French-American Aeroplane Company, which built and sold a few airplanes before Bessie became ill, forcing her to give up flying.
Moving to California, Bessie opened a medical practice specializing in obstetrics and gynecology in Newport Beach in 1912. The couple divorced in 1925, and Bessie died of a heart attack in 1932 at the age of 56.
Bessie Raiche’s great-grandson appeared on this 2016 episode of PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow” with several pieces of memorabilia including her First Woman Aviator in America medal and a letter from Harry Houdini (also an early pilot).
Monuments & Remembrance
In 1980, the U.S. Postal Service issued an airmail stamp commemorating Blanche’s achievements and in 2005, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Her childhood home still stands at 116 Weld Street in Rochester, New York, and her grave is also in Rochester at Riverside Cemetery, Section T, Lot 524, Grave 2.
In 2023, a statue of Bessie 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. Bessie’s Diner at Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport (KJVL) near her hometown is a great spot to have breakfast or lunch in her honor.
Pioneering legacies
Blanche likely made the first flights by a woman in America, but in the privacy of Curtiss’ upstate New York flight school, so Bessie 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 a plane, Oct. 22, 1909.
Let’s honor Blanche, Bessie and Raymonde, not as rivals for aviation records but as women who defied the norms of their time and as pioneers in aviation.
Film about America’s overlooked female WWII aviators needs support
The Red Door Films production company found out in Spring 2025 that a significant National Endowment for the Humanities grant it had been awarded would be rescinded due to sudden and unprecedented cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency. Without those funds, Oscar-nominated director Matia Karrell and producer Hilary Prentice have not been able to complete the first feature-length documentary about Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) and other early female pilots.
The post-production gap to finish “Coming Home: Fight for a Legacy” is $400,000, and among the team’s fundraising efforts are seeking corporate donations, asking for grassroots donations and establishing a ticketed virtual event series. “Every donation helps,” Prentice said. “We are striving to complete the film by the end of this year – it all depends on the funding, of course.”
To donate, visit the film’s Women Make Movies website at tinyurl.com/ComingHomeFlyGirls. Get updates on the project at seedandspark.com/fund/fight-for-a-legacy or by following the film’s Facebook page at facebook.com/FlygirlsWW2.
The film’s synopsis: “Coming Home: Fight for a Legacy” is a ground-breaking documentary that tells the story of the daring women who performed heroically in the U.S. military’s first all–female Air Force program, called the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). When Congress suddenly disbanded the program in 1944, and banned women pilots from the military in 1948, these female pilots were effectively erased from history. In the 1970s they fought for recognition and achieved veteran status, but when one of them passed away and is denied burial in Arlington National Cemetery in 2016, these WASP veterans realized the fight for their legacy continued, even in death.
This is the first feature-length film documentary about the WASP and demonstrates the power of elder women as they make one last push to reclaim their rightful place in history.
“Coming Home” also features the African American women pilots who flew at Tuskegee, as they were denied entry into the WASP due to the segregation of the U.S. military at that time. Included in the film is a never-before-seen interview with Mildred Hemmons Carter, who was awarded WASP status in 2011, shortly before her death. Consulting and interviewing historians, military historians, aviation experts and journalists, the film will address the contribution of women to aviation, how race and gender impacted the experiences of these WWII pilots and why remembering this history is important today.