Fiercely competitive, she began exploring audacious aerobatic manoeuvres, such as the loop and demonstrated them before rapt crowds. She also became the first woman to fly at night and broke the women’s altitude record by climbing to 11,200 feet. At one point she was earning as much as $9,000 a week for her daredevil stunts.

Ruth Bancroft Law, a daring American pioneer aviator and record setter, was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, on May 21, 1887. Her elder brother Rodman was one of the original stuntmen of the silent movies and an experienced parachutist. Ruth perhaps naturally developed a similar adventurous streak. When she bought her first plane from Orville Wright in 1912, only a few hundred men and a handful of women had tasted flight. Yet Ruth took just over a month from the day she first flew to go solo.

Fiercely competitive, she began exploring audacious aerobatic manoeuvres, such as the loop and demonstrated them before rapt crowds. She also became the first woman to fly at night and broke the women’s altitude record by climbing to 11,200 feet. At one point she was earning as much as $9,000 a week for her daredevil stunts.

But Ruth Law’s greatest triumph came in 1916. For much of her flying career, she had been pitted against men, because very few women were flying. On more than one occasion she was narrowly beaten by male pilots. So she deliberately set out to do what no aviator, male or female, had ever done before—fly from Chicago to New York City in a day. Recall that the Wright brothers’ historic first powered flight at Kitty Hawk in December 1903 traversed 852 feet. So this proposed journey over a distance of 1,416 kilometres was an amazing feat and would call for great endurance. Although the expedition had official sanction, many doubted that a woman could possess the necessary stamina and mental strength. Would she get lost? Would she panic? Would she be able to withstand the numbing cold of such a long flight?

Ruth ignored such apprehensions and concentrated on more practical matters, purchasing a larger plane with greater fuel capacity. However, the manufacturer citing preoccupation with the US war effort, refused to oblige, also voicing the opinion that a large plane might be “too much for a girl to handle”. Finally, she had to make do with a Curtiss pusher biplane, a small obsolete machine made of stick and wire. Hundreds of lengths of piano wire crisscrossed the plane in every direction to hold it together. It had an ancient eight-cylinder 100-hp engine with a huge 12-foot diameter wooden propeller at the back of the plane. The hapless pilot sat right in front on “a little contraption, which was just a cushion with a backrest”. There was no cockpit, indeed not a shred of protection from the icy blast on any side, except a small crude shield to protect the feet. Ruth’s main worry was the fuel capacity of just 16 gallons which wouldn’t take her far. So she designed a supplementary system increasing the capacity to 53 gallons with auxiliary tanks. She also made a scroll device that helped her to read maps without taking both hands off the controls. She began sleeping in an open tent on a rooftop to acclimatise to the extreme cold that she would encounter at high altitude in winter. Finally, the moment of truth came at 8:25 a.m. on November 19, 1916. On that fateful day, one of the mechanics of her small support team couldn’t restrain his tears, convinced that she was hastening to certain death.

As Ruth got off the ground, the cold hit her. Despite the initial scepticism of the public, news had spread, and hundreds of people flocked to the route to try and catch a glimpse of the flimsy plane. At 2:10 p.m., she landed at Hornell, New York State, after every drop of fuel was gone. She had to glide the last bit to the ground where her cheering supporters were assembled. She was so frozen that she had to be helped out of the plane and into the waiting automobile. But her non-stop distance of 945 kilometres, averaging about 168 kmph, had smashed the existing American cross-country record of 723 kilometres. And she wasn’t done yet. An hour later she took off again; made a night halt en route and the next day reached New York City. Once again her fuel ran out on the home stretch as she was overflying Manhattan, but she glided down to a confident and safe landing. She was the toast of the city. Even President Woodrow Wilson attended a dinner held in her honour. Her total flight time was eight hours fifty-five minutes and thirty-five seconds. A reporter asked, “You have made the longest flight a woman ever made, haven’t you?” She answered, “I have made the longest flight an American ever made.” She had set three new records: the US non-stop cross-country record, the world non-stop cross-country record for women and the second best world non-stop cross-country record.

Once, while describing what makes women good aviators, Ruth Law said, “They are courageous, self-possessed, clear-visioned and quick to decide in an emergency and usually make wise decisions.” It was perhaps a fair description of her remarkable qualities. Many young girls who took to aviation cited her as their inspiration. She died on December 1, 1970, at the age of 83. In an era when aviation was decidedly a dangerous enterprise and death was often one flight away, her husband also deserves credit for her longevity. He persuaded her to give up aviation at an early age because his nerves couldn’t bear the strain of watching her fly any longer.