May 18, 1953: Jacqueline Cochran, flying a Canadian-built F-86 Sabre at Edwards AFB, Calif., became the first woman to fly faster than sound. She averaged 652.337 mph on a 100-kilometer closed-course to earn the women's jet speed record.
Cochran was also the first woman to land and take off from an aircraft carrier, the first woman to reach over Mach 1 in a Northrop T-38 Talon, the first woman to pilot a bomber across the North Atlantic (in 1941) and later to fly a jet aircraft on a transatlantic flight, the first female pilot to make a blind (instrument) landing, the only woman ever to be president of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (1958–1961), the first woman to fly a fixed-wing, jet aircraft across the Atlantic, the first female pilot to fly above 20,000 ft with an oxygen mask, and the first woman to enter the Bendix Transcontinental Race.
Jackie still holds more distance and speed records than any pilot living or dead, male or female.
Pictured here - Jackie Cochran and Col. Chuck Yeager, Edwards Air Force Base, 1962
