Adrienne Bolland

Adrienne Bolland
Bolland ca. 1921
Born	(1895-11-25)November 25, 1895 Arcueil,Île-de-France,France
Died	March 18, 1975(1975-03-18)(aged 79) Paris,France
Nationality	French
Known for	First flight overAndesby a woman
Spouse	Ernest Vinchon
Aviation career
Famous flights	Across Andes, 1 April 1921
Flight license	1920 Le Crotoy

Adrienne Bolland,bornBoland,(25 November 1895 – 18 March 1975) was a Frenchtest pilot.She was the first woman to fly over theAndesbetweenChileandArgentina.She was later described as "France's most accomplished female aviator",setting a woman's record for loops done in an hour. The French government eventually recognized her with theLegion of Honorand other awards. Since her death, she has been commemorated with a postage stamp of Argentina.

Born into a large family outside Paris, she became a pilot in her twenties to pay off gambling debts. An early crossing of theEnglish Channelled RenéCaudron,her employer, to send her toSouth Americato demonstrate his planes, where she made her Andes crossing, assisted, she later said, by a tip relayed to her from amedium.Later in her life she became involved inleftist political causes,and eventually became part of theFrench ResistanceduringWorld War II.

Early life

Bolland was born in 1895 inArcueil,outside Paris, the youngest of seven, to Belgian émigrés.She developed an independent, assertive personality in her childhood, as it was difficult to get her father's attention. In the house she was known as "the little terror."

"No one could change my mind. I kept saying, 'I won't give up," she recalled later. "It served me well in life; I never gave in." As she grew into adulthood, that drive found its outlet in partying and gambling. During a drinking session after losing all her money at the race track,she expressed the desire to be a pilot. A friend present suggested she go work forCaudron,France's first airplane manufacturer. She could learn to fly and get paid, taking care of her financial problems.

Aviation career

Bolland went to Caudron's headquarters atLe Crotoy,on theEnglish Channelin northern France, and enrolled in flying lessons. A typographical error added the second "l" to her name, which she kept for the rest of her life. She earned her pilot's license in two months. While her instructors saw great potential as a pilot, on the ground she continued to be difficult to get along with, sometimes physically attacking those she disagreed with. She was often grounded for disciplinary reasons."I became a different person in an airplane. I felt small, humble," she said later. "Because on the ground, the truth is, I was totally insufferable."

A G.3 on display in a Brazilian museum

After earning her license, she went to work for René Caudron doing what the other pilots did, mostly delivering and picking up planes. But she wanted to fly her own plane for him, and told him so.He reportedly pointed to one of hisG.3sand said that if she could perform aloop,it was hers to fly for him. When she did, Caudron realized that having an attractive young woman flying his planes would be an excellent way to demonstrate how easy they were to fly. He told her to fly it over theEnglish Channel.On the way there, she went toBrusselsto spend the night celebrating with her friends. The next morning, newspapers reported that she was feared lost at sea. "I may have drowned last night," she quipped in response, "but not in water." The next day, 25 August 1920, she flew across the Channel, repeatingHarriet Quimby's 1912 feat.

Caudron then asked her to go toArgentinato do demonstration flights. After she arrived, Bolland began planning her Andes flight. The G3s that had been sent along to Argentina with her had been designed for use as military observation aircraft duringWorld War I.Fragile and powered byLe Rhône 80 hpengines, they were not ideal for the trip, and she asked Caudron to send others. He said it was impossible.When she finally took off fromMendozaon 1 April 1921, she had 40 hours of flight timeand neither maps nor any knowledge of the area.

Adrienne Bolland - El Gráfico 91

The night before, Bolland said later, a Brazilian womanclaiming to be a worker of French descent who had never even seen an airplane before had visited her in herBuenos Aireshotel room. She thought the shy woman was trying to discourage her and told her she had as long as it would take to smoke a cigarette for the Brazilian woman to say what she had to say. The woman told her that on her flight, when she saw an oyster-shaped lake, to turn left towards a steep mountain face that resembled an overturned chair. "If you turn right, you're lost."

Pilots had been attempting to cross the Andes since 1913, and theNational Congress of Chilehad offered a prize of 50,000pesosfor the first successful crossing of the range by a Chilean (if no foreigner had done so first) between the31stand35th parallels,where the highest peaks lay.Chilean ArmyofficerDagoberto Godoyclaimed the prize in 1918.

Andes in the area of Bolland's flight, seen from a commercial airplane in 2008

Bolland's flight was especially challenging. The G.3 could not fly much higher than 4,500 metres (14,800 ft), well below the range's summits, which reach up to 6,959 metres (22,831 ft) atAconcagua,South America's highest peak. So, she had to fly between and around them and through valleys, a riskier route than Godoy and her predecessors had chosen.The flight suit and pajamas she wore under her leather jacket were stuffed with newspapers, which proved incapable of keeping her warm.The plane had no windshield, and the blood vessels in her lips and nose burst from the cold air at that altitude during the four-hour flight.

Seeing the oyster-shaped lake she had been warned about, with a valley leading to the right she did as she had been advised and turned toward the mountain face. "I had to choose; I don't know why I trusted the girl from Buenos Aires," she said many years later. "I turned left, thinking to myself: to think I'll crash for such a stupid reason."Butthe wind lifted her upjust before she struck the mountain, and a break in the mountains soon appeared, beyond which were the plains ofChile.Later she learned the young woman had been sent to her by amedium."Make whatever you will of it. I still don't believe in the occult sciences. But you have to admit that it takes some effort to not believe!"

She landed inSantiago,the capital. Many people had gathered to celebrate the feat. The Frenchconsul,who had believed it was anApril Fool's Dayjoke, was not among them.She was called "the goddess of the Andes" by the celebrants, but dismissed the acclaim. "I said to myself: this is glory? It's nothing. Glory isn't worth anything compared to the inner joy of accomplishing something."

Bolland's accomplishment went largely unnoticed in her homeland at the time. Two years later, René Caudron's new wife got jealous of her and pressured her husband into firing her. In 1924, she was created a Knight of theLegion of Honorin belated recognition of her Andes flight.She continued to fly, setting a women's record of 212 loopstying with ten other pilots, all men, in an 18-flight, 2,100-kilometre (1,300 mi) race around France the next year.

In 1930, she was taking another woman on her first flight nearLe Bourgetwhen the engine failed. As she was attempting to land, the plane hit some telegraph wires, knocking it off course. Bolland was able to land the plane on the roof of a nearby shed and restrain her panicked passenger. Both women escaped unharmed; the plane was damaged beyond repair.

Later life

In 1930 she married another aviator,Ernest Vinchon.Her combative nature continued to polarize those who knew her; a 1933 accident she survived was later ruled to have been the result of sabotage.

She and her husband became active in leftist political causes throughout the decade. They supportedsuffragistLouise Weiss,and later theRepublicansduring theSpanish Civil War.DuringWorld War IIthey remained in France and were part of theresistance.

She remained humble about her Andes flight. On its 50th anniversary, in 1971, she told a journalist who asked about it that "[u]ltimately, it doesn't interest me. I'm much more interested in what's happening now than 50 years ago." She died in Paris in 1975.

Legacy

In addition to the awards she received throughout her lifetime, she has been recognized more recently. A streetandlycéehave been named for her inPoissy,another Paris suburb. In 2005La Poste,the French postal service, issued a stamp honoring her.The new Paris Tramway, T3, due to come into operation on 15 December 2012, have named nine of the 26 stops after notable women, and on the boulevard Mortier in the 20th arrondissement there is one named in her honour.

Bibliography

• Béry, Coline (January 29, 2016).True Birds, looking for Adrienne Bolland's two legendary planes.Collection Corde Raide.ASINB01B9IQBW2.
• Vandamme, Anne (November 2003). "Adrienne Bolland: La sauterelle des Andes" [Adrienne Bolland: Grasshopper of the Andes].Le Fana de l'Aviation(in French) (408): 48–53.ISSN0757-4169.

See also

• List of firsts in aviation
• Women in aviation