From shoe factory to captain
in the French Air Force, Maryse Bastie was one of the early pioneers in women’s
aviation.
Born Marie-Louise
Bombec (1989-1952) in Limoges, France, she began her working life sewing
leather in a shoe factory. She married young and had a son who died of typhoid.
She divorced and remarried World War I lieutenant aviator Louis Bastie, but
after returning to civilian life he was killed on October 15, 1926, in a plane
crash.
Maryse Bastie took
flying lessons and learned to do aeronautic acrobatics to earn a living. She
became a flying instructor, and within a year, in 1927, she bought her own
plane, a Caudron C109 monoplane. It had room for a pilot and one passenger that
could sit behind the pilot in an open cockpit. The light plane, made in France,
was often used to set flying records, especially over long distances, in the
under 350 kilogram category. The Caudron C109 was 6 metres long (20 feet) with
a wingspan of almost 12 metres (almost 38 feet). Its maximum speed was 126
kilometres per hour (78 miles per hour).
In her new Caudron, Bastie
set a record for the first long duration flight by a woman on July 27, 1929, flying
for 26 hours and 47 minutes. In 1930 she beat her record when she flew for 37
hours and 55 minutes, enduring cold, lack of sleep, and engine fumes. In 1931
she set the long distance flight for women with a distance of 2,976 kilometres,
flying from Le Bourget to Yurino in Russia in 30 hours and 30 minutes. In total
she set 10 flying records in the early 1930s.
In 1935 she
established the Maryse Bastie Aviation School at Orly Airport. In that year
Australian aviator, Jean Batten, crossed the South Atlantic in the first female
solo flight, taking 13 hours and 30 minutes. A year later, on December 30,
1936, Maryse broke Batten’s record when she crossed the South Atlantic in 12
hours and 5 minutes from Dakar, Senegal, to
Natal in Brazil.
In 1937 she published
a book called Ailes ouvertes: carnet
d’une aviatrice – Open Wings: A book of an Aviatrix.
During the German
offensive of May 1940 at the start of World War II Bastie worked with the Red
Cross. She served in the French Air Force becoming a captain and logging more
than 3,000 hours of flying time. The French government promoted her to the rank
of Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1947 for ‘exceptional service’ becoming
the first woman to receive this decoration for military service.
In 1951 she worked in
public relations in a flight test centre. On July 6, 1952, she attended the Air
Show at Lyon Airport demonstrating civil and military aircraft. The meeting
ended with a presentation of a twin-engine cargo plane with Bastie and six crew
on board. The plane rose to about 200 metres but crashed and caught fire. She
died at the age of 63.
She is buried in Paris
at the Montparnasse Cemetery.
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