Powder Puff Derby: Petticoat Pilots and Flying Flappers: Heroines of the Skies (History)

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.