Powder Puff Derby: Petticoat Pilots and Flying Flappers

Cowboy journalist Will Rogers called it the Powder Puff Derby.  After all, who had ever heard of such an outrageous idea as dames in planes?  Worse, dames racing planes 2,700 miles from California to Cleveland.  One reporter reckoned that far from finding the finishing lie, the ′girls′ would have trouble finding somewhere to powder their noses.  He was wrong and one sunny day in 1929 nineteen young women set out to prove it.

A whole generation of brave, even reckless, young women were breaking the ties that bound them to home, to convention and to the earth, and taking to the skies to claim their independence.  Among them Florence (Pancho) Barnes, Jessie (Chubbie) Miller, Hanna Reitsch, Bessie Coleman, Lady Mary Heath, Bobbi Trout, Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart.

They were all stars and this is their story.

The Dames in Planes.

Introduction and Acknowledgements.

Maps.

1. Clover Field (The Powder Puff Derby of 1929).

2. Print the Legend (Florence ′Pancho′ Barnes).

3. Bicycle Dreams (Elisabeth Thible & Dolly Shepherd).

4. Death of an Unknown Woman (Lady Mary Heath).

5. Evelyn Bobs her Hair (Bobbi Trout).

6. ′They Say I Shot a Man and Killed Him′ (Jessie ′Chubbie′ Miller).

7. Degrees of Difficulty (Bessie Colemean & Hanna Reitsch).

8. Always Stand on the Right (Amelia Earhart & Amy Johnson).

Sources for Each Chapter.

Select Bibliography.

Mike Walker is a highly experienced, script writer of drama and documentary for film, radio and television. He has won several Sony Awards for Best Play as well as a Royal Television Society Gold Medal and other awards including ones from the Society of Authors and Writers Guild. He has also written several novels and non–fiction works and teaches creative writing at Morley College London. 

an interesting, lively account (Good Book Guide, May 2004)

about the eccentric and brave women of the pioneering  days of air racing. (Oxford Times, 14 May 2004)