Fiancées of the air
Adrienne Bolland (1895 - 1975 )
Born into a large family outside Paris, she became a pilot in her twenties to pay off gambling debts. An early crossing of the English Channel led René Caudron, her employer, to send her to South America to demonstrate his planes, where she made her Andes crossing assisted, she later said, by a tip relayed to her from a medium. Later in her life she became involved in leftlist political causes, and eventually became part of the French Resistance.
She was born in 1895 in Arcueil, outside Paris, the youngest of seven, to Belgian émigrés. She developed an independent, assertive streak in her childhood, as it was difficult to get her father's attention. In the house she was known as "the little terror". "No one could change my mind. I kept saying. I won't give up," she recalled later. As she grew into adulthood, that drive found its outlet in partying and gambling. During a drinking session afetr losing all her money at the race track, she expressed the desire to be a pilot. A friend present suggested she go work for Caudron, France's first airplane manufacturer. She could learn to fly and get paid, taking care of her financial problems.
A woman pilot of airplane
A typographical error added the second "l" to her name, which she kept for the rest of her life. She earned her pilot's license in two months. While her instructors saw great potential as a pilot, on the ground she continued to be difficult to get along with, sometimes physically attracking those she disagreed with. She was often grounded for disciplinary reasons. "Because on the ground, the truth is, I was totally insufferable."
After earning her license, she went to work for René Caudron doing what the other pilots did, mostly delivering and picking up planes. But she wanted to fly her own plane for him, and told her so. He pointed to one of his G.3s and said that if she could perform a loop, it was hers to fly for him. When she did, Caudron realized realized that having an attractive young woman flying his planes would be un excellent way to demonstrate how easy they were to fly. He told her to fly other the English Channel. On the way there, she went to Brussels to spend the night celebrating with her friends. The next morning, nespaper reported that she was feared lost at sea. "I may have drowned last night," she quipped in response, "but nor in the water." The next day, 25 August 1920, she flow across the Channel, repeating Harrier Quimby's 1912 feat.
The overflight of the Andes cordillera
Caudron then asked her to go to Argentina to do demonstration flights. After she arrived, Adrienne Bolland began planning her Andes flight. The G.3s that had been sent along the Argentina with her had been designed for use as military observation aircraft during World War I. Fragile and powered by Le Rgône 80 hp engines, they were not ideal for the trip, and she asked Caudron to send others. He said it was impossible. When she finally took off from Mendoza on 1 April 1921, she has 40 hours of flight time and neither maps nor any knowledge of the area.
The night before, Adrienne Bolland said later, a Brasilian woman claining to be a worker of French descent who had never even seen an airplane before haid visited her in her Buenos Aires hotel room. She thought the sky woman was trying to discourage her and told her she had as long as it would take a smoke cigarette for the Brasilian woman to say what she had to say. The woman told her that on her flight, when she saw an oyster-shaped lake, to turn left towards a steep mountain face that resembled an otherturned chair. "If you turn right, you are lost."
The Caudron G.3 of the crossing of the Andes cordillera. Incredible!
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In front of the scarcity of the historical data available, I owe a very large thanks with my two only sources for their friendly and invaluable assistance on the life of Adrienne Bolland. With all my recognition.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_Bolland
www.aerodrome-gruyere.ch/hommage/cordillere.htm
Adrienne Bolland's accomplishment went largely unnoticed in her homeland at the time. Two years later, René Caudron's new wife got jealous of her and pressured her husband into firing her. In 1924, she was created a Knight of the Legion of Honor in belated recognition of her Andes flight. She continued to fly, setting a women's record of 212 loops tying with ten other pilots, all men, in an 18-flight, 2,100-kilometre (1,300 mi) race around France the next year.
In 1930, she was taking another woman on her first flight near Le Bourget when the engine failed. As she was attempting to land, the plane hit some telegraph wires, knocking it off course. Bolland was able to land the plane on the roof of a nearby shed and restrain her panicked passenger. Both women escaped unharmed, the plane was damaged beyond repair.
In 1930 she married another aviator, Ernest Vinchon. Her combative nature continued to polarize those who knew her; a 1933 accident she survived was later ruled to have been the result of sabotage.
She and her husband became active in leflist political causes throughout the decade. They supported suffragist Louise Weiss, and later the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. During World War II they remained in France and were part of the resistance.
She remained humble about her Andes flight. On its 50th anniversary, in 1971, she told a journalist who asked about it that "ultimatly, it doesn't interest me. I'm much more interested in what's happening now than 50 years ago." She died in Paris in 1975.
In addition of the awards she received throughout her lifetime, she has been recognized more recently. A street and lycée have been named for her in Poissy, another Paris suburb. In 2005 La Poste, the French postal service, issued a stamp honoring her. The new Paris Tramway, T3, due to come into operation on 15 December 2012, have named nine of the 26 stops after notable women, and on the boulevard Mortier in the 20th arrondissement ther is one named in her honour..
