The early Birds of Aviation is an exclusive American organisation that limits its membership to aviators who piloted a glider, gas balloon or aeroplane, during the first 13 years of aviation i.e. before December 17, 1916. Of the 598 names on the list, less than ten are women and Tiny Broadwick is the only one who features despite never having piloted an aircraft.

‘The First Lady of Parachuting’ was the first woman to descend from an aircraft by parachute, the first person to make a free-fall descent and the first woman to parachute into water. She made her first descent in 1908 at age 14 and during the next 14 years she jumped more than 1,000 times, all across the United States. She played a vital role in demonstrating the usefulness of parachutes as lifesavers during the perilous early years of flight.

Georgia Ann Thompson was born into a poor farm family on April 8, 1893, in Oxford, North Carolina. The youngest of seven daughters, she was married at 12 and gave birth to a daughter at 13. She was soon abandoned by her husband, then dropped out of school and took up a 14-hour job at a cotton mill to survive. Things began to improve in 1907 when she first witnessed ‘The Broadwicks and their Famous French Aeronauts’ in action. The sight of the intrepid balloonists breaking free of the bonds of earth and making ascents in hot-air balloons, then calmly jumping out of the basket and floating back to earth did something to her. Charles Broadwick instantly recognised her potential to attract the crowds by her youthfulness, spunk and good looks and agreed to hire her. Her diminutive size, just about 70 pounds in weight and under five feet in height was a big advantage. Georgia’s baby was left in her mother’s care and she promised to send back some money regularly to help. For reasons of propriety Broadwick obtained her parents’ consent to legally adopt Tiny. And that is how she became Tiny Broadwick.

Tiny Broadwick made her first jump from a hot-air balloon in December 1908. Clad in a silk dress, ruffled bloomers and bonnet, with pink bows on her arms and ribbons in her curly hair she was billed as ‘The Doll Girl.’ Newspapers printed breathless accounts about “the most daring female aeronaut ever,” as she performed at numerous fairs, carnivals and parks. She was utterly fearless when she donned the ‘life preserver’ designed by her adopted father and performed the most dangerous feats with élan. She was specially admired for her ‘cutaway act’ in which she discarded one parachute after another during the descent only to open one more and make a safe landing. She suffered mishaps and close shaves aplenty like landing on top of a train and in swamps, getting entangled in a windmill and high tension cables. Once she alighted on the roof of a mill, was unable to grab hold of anything and fell two stories, fracturing her arm and sustaining other injuries. This was just one of many accidents in which she broke bones, dislocated her shoulder and sprained an ankle. Did these deter her? “I was never afraid. I’d go up any time, any place. The only thing I hated was getting back to earth so quickly,” she said.

But balloons were on the way out and it was time to make her first jump from a plane. There’s some doubt about whether it happened on June 21, 1913, or on January 9, 1914. Either way, the aircraft was built and piloted by the famed pilot Glen Martin, flying at 1,000 feet over Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Charles Broadwick made a parachute of silk, closely packed it, and attached it to a canvas jacket with harness straps. When Tiny jumped out of the plane, a string attached to the fuselage pulled the cover free and the parachute filled with air.

In 1914, hearing of Tiny’s exploits, the US Army requested a demonstration. They were losing many pilots in plane crashes and were looking for a practical way to exit a stricken aircraft. Tiny flawlessly executed three out of four planned jumps. However, on the final attempt the parachute’s line became entangled in the airplane’s tail assembly. She was unable to climb back into the aircraft. Another person might have panicked, but Tiny simply cut the line and fell free of the aircraft; then pulled the remaining bit of line to open her parachute. Elated by the success of this technique, in future demonstrations she did not attach the cord to the aircraft, but jumped free of the plane and then manually deployed the parachute by pulling the line, later called the ‘rip cord.’ Thus the US Army was convinced that a pilot wearing a parachute could safely bale out of an aircraft and glide back to earth.

Given a choice, Tiny Broadwick would most likely have continued jumping for many years. However, her ankles could no longer take the shock of repeated landings and she made her last descent in 1922. At a felicitation dinner in 1964, National Air Museum Director Philip Hopkins said, “Measured in feet and inches, her nickname ‘Tiny’ is obviously appropriate. Measured by her courage and by her accomplishments, she stands tall among her many colleagues – the pioneers of flight.” In 1976, she was made an honorary member of the elite US 82nd Airborne Division and awarded a set of wings. When she died on August 25, 1978, her coffin was borne by members of the same Division. On International Women’s Day it is worth remembering that neither size nor gender is an accurate predictor of courage or skill. All that matters is the soaring human spirit and Tiny Broadwick had that in plenty.