French pilot Adrienne Bollard takes off from Mendoza…
On this day in aviation history, French pilot Adrienne Bollard takes off from Mendoza, Argentina in a Cauldron Biplane to become the first woman to fly over the Andeans Mountain Range. At the time of takeoff, Bollard had only 40 hours of flight time and neither maps nor any knowledge of the area.
The Caudron G.3 could not fly much higher than 14,800 ft (4,500 metres), well below the range’s summits, which reach up to 22,831 ft (6,959 metres) at Aconcagua, South America’s highest peak. So, she had to fly between and around them and through valleys, a riskier route than Godoy and her predecessors had chosen. The flight suit and pyjamas she wore under her leather jacket were stuffed with newspapers, which proved incapable of keeping her warm. The plane had no windshield, and the blood vessels in her lips and nose burst from the cold air at that altitude during the four-hour flight
Despite the physical and aircraft limitations, she completed this historic crossing to the Chilean capital of Santiago in 10 hours.