Coleman's life and death contrasted drastically with that of Earhart, who also became a pilot in 1921. Only a year after getting her license, Earhart set an unofficial women's altitude record of 14,000 feet. But at first, flying was just a hobby for her; for a while she was a social worker in Boston. Then in 1927, the vast celebration of Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic solo flight fired her ambition to become just as famous. Success in events like the Women's Air Derby gave Earhart the will to reach even farther, and in 1932 she set a transcontinental record and finally soloed across the Atlantic.

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Her flight from Newfoundland to Northern Ireland took 14 hours, 56 minutes—almost 18 hours and 1,600 miles shorter than Lindbergh's from Long Island to Paris. But such performances opened the way for women to be admitted at last into some of the big-money races that proliferated in the 1930s. They could even fly specially built speedsters, like the notoriously troublesome Gee Bee series, produced by the Granville brothers of Springfield, Mass., and raced by renowned pilots like Jimmy Doolittle.

Florence Klingensmith had to work her way up to flying a Gee Bee. Inspired by a Lindbergh visit to Fargo, N.D., in 1927, she started taking lessons—and helped pay for them with sky diving exhibitions, which almost got her killed. Once licensed as a pilot, she persuaded local businessmen to buy a plane christened Miss Fargo to promote the town, and began breaking records. She easily cracked the unofficial women's mark of 39 consecutive inside loops, but then Laura Ingalls set a new record of 344, then 850. Klingensmith finally topped her, landing exhausted after going around 1,078 times. That kind of grit got her into top races like the 1932 Nationals, where she won the Amelia Earhart Trophy. The next year, she was the only woman who entered the unlimited $10,000 Philips Trophy race at the Internationals at Chicago.

Her stubby, overpowered Gee Bee No. 7 seemed to be all engine as it whirled around the far pylon and streaked past the grandstand, reaching more than 220 mph between turns. Almost two-thirds of the way through the 100-mile closed course, Klingensmith was in the middle of the pack, ahead of four male pilots, when suddenly a strip of bright red fabric ripped away from a wing panel and floated to earth. For three miles, she fought to hold the Gee Bee steady. Then, at 350 feet, it nosed over and plunged to the ground. She apparently had tried to jump; her parachute was found tangled in the debris.

Klingensmith died because her plane's owner, in his eagerness to win races, had installed a souped-up 450 hp engine in a craft designed for 215 hp. She was not at fault. Nevertheless, officials used her death as an excuse to bar women from competing against men in sanctioned air races.

That ruling would not last long. In protest, Earhart refused to fly movie star Mary Pickford to Cleveland to open the 1934 National Air Races as planned. Under such pressure, officials relented by 1936, opening the transcontinental Bendix Trophy race to all comers—and with restrictions lifted, women swept to convincing victory. The redoubtable Louise Thaden, flying with Blanche Noyes, finished first. Laura Ingalls, who earlier had flown across the Andes and circled South America, came in second.

Amelia Earhart, flying her twin-engine Lockheed Electra, placed fifth. In that same plane, she would wing out across the Pacific the following year on her way around the world, to be lost in an unsolved mystery that makes her still the most celebrated woman in aviation history.

Ernest B. Furgurson, a former Baltimore Sun correspondent, is the author of Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War.

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