Hilda Hewlett

Hilda Hewlett, circa 1911

Hilda Hewlett (born February 17, 1864 in London Borough of Lambeth , England , † August 21, 1943 in Tauranga , New Zealand ) was a British-New Zealand pilot and founder of the first English flight school. On August 29, 1911, she became the first woman in Great Britain to obtain a pilot's license in Brooklands.

life and work

Hewlett was born Hilda Beatrice Herbert, one of nine children of Anglican pastor George William Herbert and his wife Louisa, and was called "Billy" in their childhood and "Old Bird" in later life. She was home-schooled and attended the National Art Training School (now the Royal College of Art ) in South Kensington . At the age of 19 she traveled to Egypt with her parents and two years later was trained as a nurse in Berlin for a year. In 1888 she married the future writer Maurice Henry Hewlett in her father's church in St. Peter in Vauxhall , with whom she had a son and a daughter. The couple separated amicably after the First World War . In 1909 she took part in the first English flight meeting. Later that year she traveled to the airfield in Mourmelon-le-Grand , France , under the pseudonym "Grace Bird" to study aviation. There she met the aeronautical engineer Gustav Blondeau, who became her business partner. She returned with a biplane Farman III to England and opened with Blondeau the first flight school in the United Kingdom on the Brooklands -Rennstrecke in Weybridge in the county of Surrey . On August 29, 1911, in Brooklands, she became the first British woman to receive the Royal Aero Club (RAC) pilot's certificate No. 122 . On September 11, 1911, she flew her Farman biplane in an air show in Chelson Meadow, Plymouth, and in 1912 she won a quick start aviation competition. Her students included Geoffrey de Havilland , Spencer Douglas Adair Gray, and their son Francis Hewlett . When the school closed in 1912 it had 13 RAC certificates. Together with Blondeau, she founded Hewlett & Blondeau Ltd., which built Farman , Caudron and Hanriot aircraft under license. In 1912 production was relocated to Battersea (London) and in 1914 to Leagrave in Bedfordshire . During the First World War, the company supplied over 800 military aircraft and by 1919 ten different types of aircraft had been built. When the war ended in 1918, the company turned to building agricultural equipment, but was closed in late 1920. During that time, Hewlett spent nine months in New Zealand, Rarotonga, and the United States . After the site was finally sold in 1926 and integrated into the new Elektrolux factory, she and her daughter Pia moved to Tauranga, New Zealand. A few years after settling in New Zealand, it bought Southern Cross Airways with a partner, but the company closed before flights were operated. From 1928 to 1929 she bought four sections of a road in Tauranga that had served the city as an airfield for eight years, and in 1932 she became the founding president of the Aero and Gliding Club. In 1939, when a new airfield was opened in Tauranga, then New Zealand Secretary of Defense Frederick Jones named a nearby road to Hilda Hewlett and her son Francis in recognition of their contributions to aviation. She died in Tauranga in 1943 and was buried at sea as she wished.

literature

• Gail Hewlett: Old Bird - The Irrepressible Mrs Hewlett , Troubadour Publishing Ltd, Leicester, 2010, ISBN 978-1848763371
• Ernst Probst: Hilda Hewlett - The first British female aviator , Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-640-57267-0

Web links

Commons : Hilda Hewlett  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Short biography
• biography
• Early flying
• Hilda Beatrice Hewlett - biography
• A History of the Hewlett & Blondeau Company
• Jeanne Rathbone Hilda Hewlett-first female licensed pilot and airplane manufacturer based in Battersea 1912–1914 plaque unveiled