Harriet Quimby, the forgotten cross-Channel female flying pioneer

She was the first woman to make a solo flight across the English Channel, but her achievement has been all but forgotten because of one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th Century.

Harriet Quimby, an American screenwriter and journalist, made the crossing from Whitfield in Dover to Boulogne in France on 16 April 1912, in a plane borrowed from Louis Bleriot, the first man to cross the Channel.

Her achievement was reported by the newspapers, but was overshadowed by news of the sinking of the Titanic in the Atlantic the day before.

She was killed in a flying accident in America the following September.

“She took off at half-past five in the morning and it took her an hour and nine minutes to cross the Channel,” said Brian Flood, chairman of the Dover Transport Museum Society.

“Her instrumentation consisted of a watch and a hand-held compass, and pilot comfort entirely in the hot water bottle she had strapped to her middle.”

Mr Flood believes were it not for her tragic early death, Harriet and her achievements would not have faded into obscurity.

“An effort was made locally to resurrect her memory in 2012 for the centenary, and a plaque was placed on what is now the Holiday Inn at Whitfield, a close location to what had been the Whitfield Flying Grounds – in their day one of the three most important airfields in the country.

“If I were a young woman Harriet Quimby would be one of my heroines, she was an extraordinary character, extraordinarily brave and extraordinarily capable.

“Between 1910 and 1913, 29 British pioneer aviators were killed. It was a very risky business to take to the air.”