Maude Bonney

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Maude Bonney (around 1933)

Maude Rose "Lores" Bonney OBE (born November 20, 1897 in Pretoria , South Africa , † February 24, 1994 in Miami , a suburb of the Gold Coast in Queensland , Australia ) was an Australian aviation pioneer . In addition to several national and international record flights, she was the first woman to successfully fly a solo flight from Australia to Great Britain .

Life

Maude Bonney's family originally lived in South Africa, then moved to Great Britain and emigrated to Australia in 1906. Maude Bonney went to school in Melbourne and completed her education in Germany. In 1917 she worked for the Australian Red Cross, where she met her husband Harry Barrington Bonney, an entrepreneur who ran a leather factory. She married him and lived with him in Brisbane , Queensland.

Aviation pioneer

Flight license

Maude Bonney is said to have learned to fly because her husband forbade her to drive. She took her flying lessons in secret at Eagle Farm Airport , to which she traveled with a milk supplier. Maude Bonney's interest in flying arose from the aviation pioneer Bert Hinkler , her husband's cousin, who supported her in it from 1928. When Maude Bonney received her flight license in 1931, however, her husband bought her first airplane. Shortly after the Second World War , she separated from him because he was hindering her activities for fear for her.

Flights

After she had learned to fly, they flew in the years 1931-1933 several records in the two-seater biplane of the type de Havilland Moth DH.60 , she My Little Ship called. Her concern was not necessarily to be the fastest, rather she was guided by coping with the length of the flight route.

In 1931 she managed to fly from Brisbane to Wangaratta over 1,600 kilometers. Back then, that was the longest distance a woman could cover in one day.

From August to September 18, 1932, she was the first woman to circumnavigate Australia in an airplane. She covered a flight distance of around 12,800 kilometers.

On April 10, 1933, she took off again from Archerfield Airport near Brisbane, left the Australian airspace at Darwin on April 15, 1933 and reached Croydon in southern England on June 21, 1933. This made her the first woman to fly this route solo.

In 1937 she flew with a Klemm Kl 32V , a single - engine low - wing aircraft , from Australia via Asia and the Middle East to Cape Town in South Africa. This made her the first person ever to fly this distance of around 28,100 kilometers. The Klemm called her My Little Ship II . This aircraft was destroyed by fire in a hangar at Archerfield Airport on June 28, 1939 .

Then Maude Bonney planned a flight around the world, which could not be realized because of the Second World War . She offered her flying experience to the Australian government. After completing a business flight, she was told that there was no need for female pilots in the Australian military.

Honors

After the flight from Australia to Great Britain, she was awarded the Order of the British Empire for her flying achievements . She was a well-known figure in contemporary history in the British Empire at the time.

The British Woman Pilots' Association has held an annual award for female pilots, the Bonney Trophy, since 1933 . The international women's organization Zonta made Maude Bonney an honorary member. Shortly before death, she received an honorary doctorate from Griffith University in Brisbane . However, her name and her flying achievements are hardly known to the public these days (2014).

Aviation achievements

  • 1931 Australia's first female pilot to fly a distance of around 1,600 kilometers in one day
  • 1932 first flight circumnavigation of Australia by a woman
  • 1934 first woman to fly from Australia to England
  • 1937 first person to reach South Africa by plane from Australia

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Terry Gwynn-Jones: Lores Bonney: Australian Female Pilot (English) on historynet.com. Retrieved December 18, 2014
  2. ↑ Aviatrices - Australian women of the air ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , on australia.gov.au. Accessed December 18, 2014 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.australia.gov.au
  3. ↑ VH-UVE Klemm L-32V (English). Retrieved December 18, 2014
  4. ↑ Maude Rose "Lores" Bonney OBE. Australian Pioneer Aviatrix (1897-1994) (English). Retrieved December 18, 2014
  5. ↑ Celebrating the Australian Aviatrix Lores Bonney (English), August 2, 2012 on powerhousemuseum.com. Retrieved December 18, 2014
  6. ↑ Dawn To Dusk Awards - BWPA award winners! dated February 23, 2014 on bwpa.co.uk. Retrieved December 18, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Bonney, Maude
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bonney, Maude Rose (full name); Bonney, Lores (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian aviation pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Pretoria , South Africa
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1994
Place of death Miami , suburb of Gold Coast , Queensland , Australia