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Incidentally, she also made her mark in history as being the first person to fly above 20,000 feet with an oxygen mask. Her 1940 recommendation to lengthen the tail wheel installation on the P-43 was adopted on the P-47 aircraft. Cochran’s accomplishments weren’t limited to the United States. She left some ever-lasting impressions just about everywhere she flew in the world.

The 1935 Bendy Trans-Continental Race included the first woman to participate – Jacqueline Cochran. She captured first place in the women’s division of the Bendy Trans-Continental Race in 1937 and place third among all pilots. She also made the first totally blind instrument landing for women that same year.

The Bendy Races proved that the third time was indeed lucky for Cochran as she won the 1938 Trans-Continental Race overall that year. She also set a new women’s division record (10 hours, 7 minutes and 10 seconds.) The talented aviator won the General William E. Mitchell Memorial Award for making the greatest contribution to aviation in 1938.

In the year 1941, Cochran captured another aviation first when she became the first woman pilot to fly a military bomber across the Atlantic Ocean.

She was president of the Ninety-Nines – an organization of women pilots founded by her friend, Amelia Earhart, in 1929. Cochran was their president from 1941 to 1943.

In 1943, she founded the WASP (Women’s Air Force Service Pilots) program. More than 25,000 applied for training, 1,830 were accepted and 1,074 made it through a very tough program to graduation. These women flew approximately 60 million miles for the Army Air Force with only 38 fatalities, or about 1 for every 16,000 hours flown.

She went on to be a press correspondent and was present at the surrender of Japanese General Yamashita. Jackie was the first U.S. woman to set foot in Japan after the war.

Jackie Cochran was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for services to her country during World War II.

Flying was still her passion and, with the onset of the jet age, there were new planes to fly and records to break. Access to jet aircraft was mainly restricted to military personnel; but, Cochran, with the assistance of her friend (then) Captain Chuck Yeager, became the first woman to break the sound barrier in an F-86 Sabre Jet in 1953, and went on to set a world speed record of 1,429 mph in 1964.  She was well over 50 years old at the time.

Ironically, it was Jackie Cochran who may have kept early women astronauts grounded. Testifying before the House of Representatives Science and Astronautics Committee in the early 1960s, Cochran warned NASA not to "waste a great deal of money" by taking "a large group of women in, because you lose them through marriage," according to an August 1994 Smithsonian magazine article.

In 1975, she became the first woman to be honored at the U.S. Air Force Academy with a permanent display of her memorabilia.

After heart problems and a pacemaker stopped her fast-flying activities at the age of 70, Cochran took up soaring.

Some of her other achievements include setting an altitude record of 33,000 feet (1938), flying future president Lyndon Johnson to the Mayo clinic for emergency kidney surgery, saving his life (1948), serving as company pilot for Canadair, Lockheed and Northrop, earning the USAF Distinguished Flying Cross (1969), being named Honorary Fellow, Society of Experimental Test Pilots (1971) and being inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame (1971).

A closing note: What ever happened to Jackie's interest in cosmetics?

In 1934, she founded Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics, a highly successful company and was designated Woman of the Year in Business by an Associated Press Poll of newspaper editors in 1963.

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