Powder Puff Derby by Mike Walker, Wiley, £16.99/$27.95, ISBN 0470851406 Reviewed by Roy Herbert
A flying race in 1929 was nicknamed the Powder Puff Derby by the American comedian Will Rogers because all the pilots flying from Santa Monica, California, to Denver, Colorado, were women.
At the time, aviation was in its infancy and caught the headlines. And, big news, the idea of female flyers was even more revolutionary. These early aircraft were custom built and unreliable, and pilots navigated by using road maps and following railway lines. Records for altitude, distance, speed and endurance were being broken all the…
