Helen Richey was a pioneering female aviator and the first woman to be hired as a pilot by a commercial airline in the United States.
16 Facts About Helen Richey
1.
2.
Three years later, Richey set a women's international light plane record of 100 kilometers traveled in 55 minutes.
3.
In December 1933 Helen Richey partnered with another female pilot, Frances Marsalis, to set an endurance record by staying airborne for nearly 10 days over Miami, Florida, with midair refueling.
4.
The refuelling was achieved by opening the central hatch, grabbing a dangling hose out of a Curtiss Robin and shoving it into the gas tank, which Helen Richey likened to "wrestling with a cobra in a hurricane".
5.
In 1934 Helen Richey won the premier air race at the first National Air Meet for women in Dayton, Ohio.
6.
Helen Richey resigned before completing a year with the airlines.
7.
In May 1936, Helen Richey, flying a light plane, set an international altitude record for aircraft weighing under 200 kilograms.
8.
Helen Richey reached 18,448 feet during a flight from Congressional Airport to Endless Caverns Airport in New Market, Virginia.
9.
Helen Richey flew the same plane that Benjamin King had flown to break the record previously.
10.
Helen Richey was hired by the federal government's Bureau of Air Transport to assist with air marking, the act of making large signs on the ground or on rooftops to assist aviators in determining their location while airborne.
11.
Later, Helen Richey flew with the British Air Transport Auxiliary during World War II.
12.
In 1944, Helen Richey was a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots and was stationed at the New Castle Army Air Base in Delaware, where she was responsible for ferrying military planes to and from Canada.
13.
Sometime during late May or early June of 1945, Helen Richey injured her spine during an airplane accident.
14.
Helen Richey spent several weeks recuperating at a private hospital in New York.
15.
Helen Richey died in her apartment in New York City on January 7,1947, apparently from a pill overdose.
16.
Helen Richey's funeral was held in her hometown of McKeesport, Pennsylvania on January 10,1947, and she was then interred at that community's Versailles Cemetery.