If I asked you to name a record-setting female test pilot there’s a good chance you’d pick Jackie Cochran, and you wouldn’t be wrong. Your other option might have been Hanna Reitsch, but she was a freakin’ Nazi and we’ve got enough of those already.
I’m talking about the great Jacqueline Auriol, however. Why? Because she was French, and I’m a huge Francophile. I even eat snails! C'est vrai! I can remember reading her autobiography when I was a kid and finding it inspiring. If I can find another copy I’d read it again.
Does this mean I have a thing for fast women? Bad Kong! Bad! Behave yourself!
Actually I was inspired by this short animated film that popped up on my Facebook feed. I thought it was very well done.
I believe part of this was based on an incident where she spun a Mystere IV and barely recovered before hitting the ground. The electrically operated rudder failed. Fortunately a manual backup had been installed fairly recently. Always useful to have one of those.
That’s one of those scenarios where you have the rest of your life to troubleshoot the problem. She said that she pretty much accepted that she was going to die here and even called the incident her “first death”.
Despite being subjected to 12 G’s, she was finally able to engage manual reversion and recover just before she would have merged her molecules with a field in Provence. Afterwards she said something like “I messed up the grass a bit back there”.
The Mystere IV was one of those “in between” jet fighters of the mid 1950s. It was capable of going supersonic, although I’m not sure if it could do it in level flight. Roughly equivalent to a late-model F-86 or a MiG-17. The Israelis made excellent use of them in 1956 and 1967.
So, how did a woman end up testing jet fighters in 1950s France?
Certainly not an easy thing to do in those days. Women didn’t even get to vote in France until 1944.
Jacqueline Auriol was born to wealth and married the the man who’s father would become President of the French Republic following WWII. Not content to hang around the palace looking elegant she decided to take up flying. She earned her private pilot’s license (or the French equivalent) and then took up aerobatics.
Her instructor and long-time mentor was Raymond Guillaume, who I can’t find much about but apparently was a big name in French aviation. He was reportedly a tough instructor but he quickly determined that she wasn’t acting on a whim but was really determined to fly.
In 1949, while riding as a passenger in a SCAN 30 (Grumman Wigeon) seaplane, it crashed into the Seine during a demonstration flight.
I think her face was pretty much merged with the instrument panel. As she described it: “I was broken into a million pieces. I had no face, no nose, nothing.”
Her first words in the ambulance were "Will it be long before I can fly again?"
She endured somewhere between 16 and 33 (depending on the source) reconstructive surgeries to piece her head back together. She wouldn’t even let her two sons see her until she had her face back. I’d say they did pretty amazing work, since plastic surgery was a fairly new technology in 1949.
Now most people would call it quits after something like that, but this was one determined woman. During her recuperation she studied to get her advanced pilot certificate.
She earned her military pilot’s license in 1950 and was accepted as the first female test pilot in France. I’m sure it didn’t hurt having the President as your father-in-law but that doesn’t take anything away from her skill as an aviator.
She set her first record in 1951. Flying a de Havilland Vampire she flew a 100km closed course from Istres (near Marseilles) to Avignon and back.
There were no two-seat versions of the Vampire so her first flight in it would have to be solo. She had to prove herself with several high-speed taxi runs before they would let her fly it.
“When I finally flew the Vampire, its controls were so responsive that I felt the sky was mine.”
Most of her records were set from Istres AB. It’s the French version of Edwards AFB as well as their main nuclear base. It’s in Provence, just west of Marseilles. I was fortunate enough to deploy there several times in the KC-135. Tough duty but someone had to do it.
Her 1951 record beat the previous women’s record set by Jackie Cochran in a P-51 Mustang. This would start a long rivalry with Cochran, although the two became close friends. It was at Cochran’s insistence that Jacqueline Auriol was awarded the Harmon Trophy for her record. She went on to win the trophy a total of four times.
In 1952 she flies the same course in a Sud-Est Mistral to break her own record. The Mistral was a French-built version of the Vampire that I didn’t even know existed until I started writing this piece.
Jacqueline Auriol and Jackie Cochran go on to swap records multiple times throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.
In 1953 Jackie Cochran, flying a Canadian F-86 becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier.
I’m not sure how she managed to go supersonic in an F-86, which I was certain could only go through the mach in a dive. The Canadian version did have a more powerful engine than the US version. I suppose with the engine “tweaked” a bit, all the rough edges polished and a bare minimum fuel load it might have done it. Just guessing here.
Cochran apparently hated the smell of kerosene and would douse the cockpit with perfume when she flew. Chuck Yeager said that a year later you could tell which planes she had flown by the smell of perfume. I believe Yeager flew the chase aircraft on all of Cochran’s record attempts.
In 1955 Jacqueline Auriol takes back the women’s speed record flying a Mystere IV N. The “N” model of the Mystere looks a lot like an F-86D with a radome mounted over the air intake.
Now Cochran apparently didn’t like to lose. In 1961 she takes the record back, flying a T-38 Talon.
As Jacqueline Auriol described their rivalry: “When Jackie loses to me, she can’t sleep. When I lose to her, I just see another opportunity.”
Then, as President of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, she arranges for the women’s speed record as a category to be abolished in something like eight days. She then conveniently invites Jacqueline Auriol to a party in New York so that she wouldn’t have time to break the retake the record. This would effectively lock Jackie Cochran in as the record holder for all time.
Auriol declines the invitation. Working against deadline, a Mirage IIIC is prepared for her and she retakes the record.
I feel so happy when I’m flying. Perhaps it is the feeling of power, the pleasure of dominating a machine as beautiful as a thoroughbred horse. Each time I set foot on an airfield, I sense this is where I belong.
Jacqueline Auriol
Like I said before, Jackie Cochran didn’t like to lose. She reinstates the FAI women’s speed category and retakes it in 1963, flying a TF-104 Starfighter.
Now these records were all set flying a 100 kilometer “closed course”. The best description I could find is from Cochran’s autobiography.
The 100 kilometer closed course was so damn difficult. Imagine an absolutely circular racetrack, about a quarter of a mile wide, on the ground with an inner fence exactly 63 miles long.
Now, in your mind’s eye, leave the track and get into the air at 35,000 feet. Fly it without touching the fence in the slightest.
It’s tricky because if you get too far away from the inner fence, trying not to touch, you won’t make the speed you need to make the record. And if you get too close, you’ll disqualify yourself.
Jacqueline Auriol retakes the record in 1963 flying a Mirage IIIR (reconnaissance version).
The recce version of the Mirage had a smaller nose than the fighter version and was aerodynamically “cleaner”. Recce aircraft usually rely on speed as their only defense and tend to be faster than their fighter counterparts.
Jackie Cochran had the final word and retook the speed record in 1964 flying a TF-104G. To this day she holds more records than any pilot in history.
In addition to her aviation records Jacqueline Auriol was awarded the Ordre national du Mérite (National Order of Merit) and the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honor). Those sound pretty important to me. I’d guess if you walked into a bar in France wearing your Legion of Honor ribbon it might be good for a free drink.
In addition to setting records in jets, she also learned to fly helicopters in the United States. Lawrence Bell himself (Bell Helicopters) described her as:
The most extraordinary woman in the world. She has met fear head-on and conquered it.
She went on to test 140 different aircraft and helicopters of all types. She died in 2000 at the age of 82.
This great lady has embodied for the French, for decades, courage and modernity. Her name will forever be associated with the heroic history of aviation and aeronautical research.
President Jacques Chirac
Note: I based some of this on the documentary Supersonic Women: A Duel in the Sky. It’s worth a watch if you can find it.