At just 19 years old, Katherine Stinson was one of the first American women to get a pilot’s license in 1912.
Katherine Stinson, who was born on February 14, 1891, in Fort Payne, Alabama, always wanted to work in aviation. Stinson made her first ascent in a balloon in Kansas City in 1911, and after that, she determined she wanted a life in the air. At the young age of 19, she was one of the first women in the US to get a pilot’s license in 1912.
After a year, Katherine and her mother in San Antonio, Texas, started a flying business. Katherine started running the flying school with her sister Marjorie Stinson, instructing their younger brothers as well as other neighborhood children. The National Aviation Hall of Fame’s website states that the family continued to maintain the flying school, which at the time was one of the most well-known flying schools in the country and taught individuals from all over the region.
During her exhibition flights around the US, for which Katherine would become best known, she attained widespread notoriety. The fourth American pilot overall and the first woman to accomplish a loop, she pulled off a snap roll at the top of the loop in 1915. Because of her prodigious flying abilities, Katherine gained a reputation as a daredevil; and she frequently led men in stunts while outflying them herself.
Stinson established the practice of skywriting when, in 1915, she affixed lights to her aircraft and spelled out “CAL” across the sky of California. She was known as “The Flying Schoolgirl,” and during a flight from San Diego to San Francisco, she broke several aviation records. Katherine would then travel abroad to advertise flying stunts and the aviation sector.
She planned a six-month flying demonstration tour of China and Japan in 1917, and the same year she also set a record with a nonstop flight from San Diego to San Francisco that took 9 hours and 10 minutes. Following the Postmaster General’s approval of Katherine’s position, she became the first female Air Mail pilot in 1918. When Stinson attempted a mail flight from Chicago to New York in the same year but had to land her Curtiss aircraft because it ran out of fuel, she set a new record for endurance.
Marjorie Stinson accepted a position at the Navy’s department of aeronautical design after the US government rejected the Stinson sisters’ request to enlist in the Air Service as combat pilots during World War I, while Katherine flew fundraising flights for the Red Cross and Liberty Loan bond drives, establishing her in aerial public relations. As the first pilot to ever knit for the Red Cross while flying solo in an open cockpit aircraft, she raised $2 million for the cause following her lengthy flight from Rochester to Washington, DC.
After being rejected for military service a second time, Katherine traveled to France on her own to volunteer as an ambulance driver for the Red Cross. Stinson ceased flying after contracting tuberculosis during the war, relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and started working as an architect. She wed airman and future judge Miguel Otero, Jr., in 1928.
She lived for a long time as an invalid until passing away on July 8, 1977, at the age of 86. One of the most significant aviation pioneers, Katherine Stinson shared her love of daring stunt flying with the entire world. She started her flying career early in the development of aviation and never stopped learning and challenging herself.
H/T Earl Belz
Source: The National Aviation Hall of Fame
Photo by Bain News Service, Library of Congress