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Maryse Bastie: aerobatic aviatrix



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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