It’s day 2 of our theme week on Female Firsts in honor of Women’s History Month. Today we’re talking about the first woman to fly solo around the world – Jerrie Mock! Known as “The Flying Housewife”, she flew a single engine Cessna 180, christened The Spirit of Columbus. Her trip started and ended in Columbus, Ohio, taking off March 19, 1964 and landing 29 days later on April 17.
Mock’s interest in flying started when she was 7 years old when she and her father had the opportunity to fly in the cockpit of a Ford Trimotor airplane. She took an engineering course in high school (the only girl in the class) and decided flying was her passion. She later went to Ohio State University where she was one of the first female aeronautical engineering students. She left OSU to marry her husband in 1945.
She and her husband both had an interest in travel and aspired to be pilots. They took turns acquiring their licenses, with Jerrie earning hers at the age of 32. She accumulated 750 hours of flight time, and when her husband half-jokingly suggested she make a world flight, Jerrie responded enthusiastically, “Why not!”. With help from friends in the Air Force, Jerrie planned her route, making sure she would exceed the required official distance for a round-the-world flight.
Just weeks before her planned departure, Jerrie learned that another woman had also filed for a world flight. Joan Merriam Smith was planning to leave mid-March from outside San Francisco. Though neither woman called it a race, Mock moved up her departure from April 1 to March 19, 2 days after Smith. There was much media coverage tracking the progress of each pilot, fascinated with who would complete the journey first. Mock finished in 29 days and Smith finished in 56 days.
Mock landed back in Columbus to much fanfare. State officials congratulated her on her achievement, with the governor of Ohio declaring her “Ohio’s Golden Eagle”. President Lyndon B. Johnson later awarded Mock with the Federal Aviation Agency’s “Decoration for Exceptional Service”. During and after her ground-breaking flight, Mock set 21 world records. Not only was she the first woman to fly solo around the world, she was also the first woman to fly the Pacific West to East, to fly both the Atlantic and Pacific, and to fly around the world in a single-engine plane.
Mock died at her home in Florida in September 2014. Today, her plane, The Spirit of Columbus hangs in the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian.