‘Believe nothing to be impossible’

THE 1930s were a golden age, for dance bands, dictators—and aviation. Flying small planes was fashionable, air races were popular and records were constantly broken. It was a time when the desire swiftly to link distant lands coincided with the ability to do so. Pilots were stars and many of the brightest were women.

The first to get a pilot’s licence (and possibly the first to fly a plane) had been French actress ‘Baroness’ Raymonde de Laroche, in 1910. She flew 300 yards with the aircraft’s maker, Charles Voisin, running alongside shouting, having forbidden her to take off. She perished in a crash in 1919.

Also in 1910, American musician and painter Bessica Raiche built