Jackie Cochran: First Aviatrix to Break the Sound Barrier

Jackie in the Cockpit of a F-86 Sabre Jet

That's the Legendary Chuck Yeager Standing Next to Her

On this date in 1953 at Rogers Dry Lake, California, Jackie Cochran ( May 11, 1906- August 9, 1980) flew a Canadair F-86 Sabrejet at an average speed of 652.337 mph. She thus became the first woman to break the sound barrier.

Her other feats include: the first woman to land and take off from an aircraft carrier, the first woman to reach Mach 2, the first woman to pilot a bomber across the Atlantic in 1941, the first to make an instrument (blind) landing, the first woman to fly a fixed-wing , jet aircraft across the Atlantic and the first woman to enter the Bendix Transcontinental (LA to Cleveland) Race, which she won in 1938 flying a P35 at an average speed of 249.11MPH in 08:10:31.4 (H:M:S) and finally the first pilot to fly above 20,000 feet with an oxygen mask.

Major General Fred T. Ascani had this to say about her: "There are cautious pilots who never want to know what the plane's maximum performance is and then there are pilots like Yeager and Cochran."