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Bobbi Trout
Evelyn
"Bobbi" Trout was born in Greenup, Illinois, on January 7,
1906 and got her name when she had her hair bobbed ala
screen star Irene Castle. At the age of twelve she saw her
first airplane flying overhead and it was love at first
sight. "Some day I'll be up there. Someday I'm going to fly
an aeroplane." She took a big step toward that goal on
December 27, 1922 when she had her first ride in a Curtiss
Jenny at Rogers Field in Los Angeles (coincidentally, it was
the same site that Amelia Earhart took her first airplane
ride).
"Bobbi" took her first flying lesson on 1 January 1928 and
received her Federation Aeronautique
On New
Year's Day 1928, Bobbi began her flight training at Burdett
Air Lines, Inc., School of Aviation in Los Angeles with
Burdett Fuller. She soloed on April 30, 1928, two weeks
later completed her training and was issued license number
2613. She was the fifth woman in the USA to obtain her
transport license.
Bobbi Trout and Elinor Smith at Van Nuys Airport before
their record flight
Making
and Breaking the Records
At 6:25 AM
on the morning of January 2, 1929, Bobbi took off from Van
Nuys Airport on an endurance flight that would last for
twelve hours and eleven minutes and beat Viola Gentry’s
eight hour endurance record. She had set a new solo
endurance record for women. But the record was only to last
until January 31, 1929 when Elinor Smith beat her time by an
hour. And the race was on!
On February
10, 1929 Bobbi took off at 5:10 PM from Mines Field to beat
Elinor Smith’s time. She wanted to extend the time by four
hours just as she did for the earlier record. She expected
to land at 10:30 AM but at 10:05 AM her engine started
cutting out from fuel starvation and then died completely.
She glided the Golden Eagle to a perfect landing at 10:16
AM. Her new records now included the first all-night flight
by a woman and a new seventeen hours, twenty-four minutes
solo endurance record for women. One of the local papers had
the headline, "Tomboy" Stays in Air 17 Hours to Avoid
Washing Dishes.
Four months
later, on June 16, 1929 she climbed into a new ninety
horse-powered Golden Eagle Chief, climbed to fifteen
thousand two hundred feet and shattered an altitude record
for light class aircraft.
Women’s Transcontinental Air Derby
Will Rogers
dubbed the race the "Powder Puff Derby" and the name stuck.
Any qualified female pilot who had a license and a plane
could enter the long and difficult race from Santa Monica to
Cleveland. On the morning of August 18, 1929 Bobbi was the
fifth racer flagged off to start the race with her 100
horsepower Golden Eagle Chief. The first day of the race
went well - it wasn't until day two that disaster struck and
Bobbi had to do a dead stick landing in a field about six
miles from the Yuma, Arizona Airport, that day's
destination. Her airplane suffered some damage upon landing
and took several days to repair. Undaunted, she continued
with race, catching up with the many of the fliers in Kansas
City. Other contestants had problems as well - Claire Fahy,
in an OX5 Travel Air was forced down near Calexico with
broken wire braces, Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Vega nosed
over upon landing and damaged the prop, Thea Rasche was
forced down at Holtville, Arizona and Marvel Crosson had a
fatal crash in the Gila River Valley, east of Yuma.
Bobbi ran
into trouble days later when her engine quit again and she
was forced to make another dead-stick landing that ended
with the plane ground-looping this time. She was able to
make the airplane repairs herself and on August 22, even
though she knew she was out of the running in the official
race, she took off again. In Columbus, Ohio she found out
that it wasn't as bad as she thought when a few of the other
racers were just departing for Cleveland. She pushed hard
and completed the course.
After the
air races, while standing under the bleachers and discussing
the events, several of the women pilots came up with the
idea of forming a woman's flying organization. Bobbi, Amelia
Earhart, Phoebe Omlie, Louise Thaden, Blanche Noyes and
several other women decided to create by-laws and get the
group started. And that was the start of The Ninety-Nines!
More Records and Races
During the
Powder Puff Derby, plans were made for Bobbi to join forces
with Elinor Smith and go for setting another endurance
record. This time it would be the woman's endurance record
and they planned on being airborne for a month. After many,
many hours of preparation and test flights, they were able
to stabilize the plane long enough for Bobbi to grab a bag
of food, oil and mail hanging from the refuelling plane.
This refuelling routine would take place twice a day with
the fuel plane being able to transfer one hundred
eighty-five gallons of fuel to the receiver aircraft in only
four minutes. Bobbi would grab the bag which was tied to a
rope and lead the gasoline nozzle into a pipe that lead to
the cabin gasoline tanks.
On November
27, 1929, Bobbi and Elinor started the run. They alternated
four hour shifts of sleeping and flying with the routine
going smoothly for the first two days. In the thirty-ninth
hour there was a refuelling mishap and the refuelling plane
had to do an emergency landing and while it sustained minor
structural damage, the engine had to be overhauled. With the
transferred fuel, the women were able to stay flying until
3:47 AM when they were almost totally out of fuel. The
official time was forty-two hours, three and one-half
minutes and they had refuelled three and one-half times.
They set a world record.
For the next
few months, Bobbi won several air races, including the
Women’s Air Race at the official opening of United Airport,
now named Burbank Airport, May 1930. She also agreed to go
for another refuelling endurance record with Edna May
Cooper.
After one
failed attempt on January 1, 1931, Bobbi and Edna May took
off from Mines Field again on January 4th, hoping to stay up
for at least a month. Once they were aloft long enough to
break Bobbi’s first record, there was airplanes flying all
around them cheering them on. Bobbi celebrated her
twenty-fifth birthday two days later by eating a chocolate
birthday cake (minus the candles) sent up by a good friend.
Day three brought on bad weather and they relocated to
Imperial Valley Airport, about two hundred miles away.
Later that
day, they returned to Mines Field when the weather cleared.
On January 9, with Bobbi at the controls, trouble struck
again. The engine started coughing and spewing out oil. With
great effort, the plane was kept airborne for several more
hours but it was only a matter of time until they would be
forced to land. As night came on, they were forced to land
but they had set a new women’s refuelling record. They had
officially been airborne for 122 hours, 50 minutes; covered
7,370 miles at an average speed of sixty miles per hour;
taken on 1,138 gallons of fuel and 34 gallons of oil; and
received food and supplies during 22 contacts with the
refuelling ship.
Women's Air Reserve and Beyond
Bobbie
continued to be very active in aviation. She joined with
Pancho Barnes to form the Women's Air Reserve, W.A.R., whose
principle purpose was to aid in disasters, where it was
impossible to reach people in need of medical attention,
except by plane. They had uniforms and trained in first aid,
navigation and military manoeuvres. W.A.R. consisted mostly
of doctors, nurses, pilots and parachutists who could go
directly to the scene of a disaster by air and help.
Bobbi
continues to have an active and full life. In 1976 she was
awarded the OX5 Pioneer Woman of the Year Award and in 1984
she was inducted into the OX5 Aviation Pioneers Hall of
Fame. She is a director of Aviation Archives, a California
non-profit corporation, to preserve aviation history. Lt.
Col. Eileen Collins took Bobbi's international pilot license
(endorsed by Orville Wright) into space when Eileen became
the first woman to pilot the shuttle.
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