Jackie Cochran: The unlikely aviator
Determination and daring lead Jackie Cochran to National Aviation Hall of Fame
One of the most important women in U.S. aviation history– Florida’s own Jackie Cochran–was also one of the most unlikely to have been earmarked for that distinction. Unlike her friend, Amelia Earhart, who came from a wealthy Boston family, Jackie Cochran was one of seven children born to an itinerant family that worked in the cotton mills and sawmills of company towns in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. Hers was a rags to riches story that few works of fiction can rival.
From Deep South to city lights
Though Jackie claimed to have been an orphan raised by foster parents, it appears that she was in fact born Bessie Pittman in May 1906 in Muscogee, on the Florida panhandle. She completed only two years of school. At age eight, she was working 12-hour shifts in a cotton mill. She bought her first pair of shoes with extra money she made baby-sitting. When she turned ten, she began to work in beauty salons, shampooing hair, giving permanents and mixing up hair dyes. At 14, she had a son, from a marriage to Robert Cochran, a 20-year-old traveling salesman. The marriage didn’t last long and, tragically, her son died in an accident at age four while living with Jackie’s parents. By the time she was 22, she had studied to become–and had worked as–a nurse but never took the final exam due to fear of her limited writing abilities. At 23, she left the south for New York City and there, in 1929, she reinvented herself as Jacqueline Cochran, landing a job at Antoine de Paris, a prominent Saks Fifth Avenue beauty salon. Her vivacious personality made her many friends. She began wintering at Antoine’s Miami location and it was in Miami, at a dinner party, that she was seated next to her future husband, Floyd Odlum.
Challenged to fly
Odlum was an attorney turned financier who had made millions in the Depression buying distressed companies. Like Jackie, however, he came from humble roots. It was Odlum who challenged Jackie to get a pilot’s license, suggesting that it would help her realize her goal of developing a cosmetics company. She took to flying instinctively, incredibly earning her pilot’s license after less than three weeks of instruction. Flying became Jackie’s obsession and in 1934 she entered her first race. Odlum was her greatest supporter, and the couple married in 1936. In 1938 Jackie became the first woman to win the prestigious Bendix Transcontinental Air Race.
At left: Image courtesy Smithsonian National Postal Museum
Wartime role with WASPS wins her a DSM
As World War II approached, Jackie went to England, where she participated in the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) where women pilots ferried aircraft to fighting units across England. When she returned to the U.S. in 1943, she attempted to persuade the government to develop a similar program for the U.S. Army Air Forces. This eventually led to her holding an important role in forming the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), for which, after the war, she was awarded a Distinguished Service Medal.
Many “firsts” earn her a place in the National Aviation Hall of Fame
Following the war, Cochran earned more speed records. At the end of the 1940s she was named Aviatrix of the Decade and received the Harmon Trophy in 1950. In 1953, under the guidance of legendary WWII ace, test pilot and U.S. Air Force officer Chuck Yaeger, she became the first woman pilot to break the sound barrier. Her list of aviation accomplishments only continued to grow. She was the first woman to exceed Mach 2, to land a jet on an aircraft carrier, and to pilot a jet across the Atlantic. In 1971, she was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame.
Aviation records unequalled at time of her death
At the time of her death in 1980, Jackie Cochran held more speed, altitude, and distance records than any other male or female pilot in aviation history.
Additional information about this fascinating Florida woman and her career in aviation can be found on the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s website: https://airandspace.si.edu/…/meet-jacqueline-cochran.
At right: Photo courtesy Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
