Born: 8 September 1902, United States
Died: 9 October 1977
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Ruth King
The following is republished from the National Archives. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Ruth Elder was a 23-year-old aspiring actress and student pilot in 1927 when Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo transatlantic flight between New York and Paris. She was inspired by Lindbergh and determined to become the first woman to make the flight. She recruited her flying instructor George Haldeman as her co-pilot for the trip and found financial backing for the flight, scheduled for just five months after Lindbergh’s.
Her plane was a Stinson Detroiter (manufactured by the Stinson Aircraft Company) that she named the American Girl. On October 11, 1927, Elder and Haldeman took off from New York’s Roosevelt Field, headed for Paris.
As told in the November 1927 issue of The National Magazine, the pair encountered a ferocious storm over the Atlantic. After fighting the winds and rain for hours the American Girl also developed an oil leak, forcing Elder and Haldeman into an emergency water landing. The pair managed to locate a Dutch oil tanker, named the Barendrecht, before splashing down and were rescued from the wings of the plane before it caught fire and sank.
During their flight, Elder and Haldeman covered 2,623 miles, setting an over-water endurance record, even though the flight was cut short before reaching their European goal. The Barendrecht delivered the two pilots to the Azores, after which they traveled to Lisbon, Portugal, followed by Madrid and Paris. Upon returning to New York City, they were honored with a ticker-tape parade and in Washington, D.C., they dined at the White House with President Coolidge and Charles Lindbergh.
As a result of her daring flight, Ruth Elder was one of the most famous women in the United States. She toured the country on the vaudeville circuit and starred in two aviation-themed feature films, Moran of the Marines (1928) and The Winged Horseman (1929), both of which are now lost. In 1930, she was an inspiration for the four-book novel series The Ruth Darrow Flying Stories, written by Mildred Wirt Benson, the first author to write Nancy Drew books under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene.
Amelia Earhart would go on to become both the first woman to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger in 1928 and the first woman—and first person since Lindbergh—to complete a solo transatlantic crossing in 1932. Earhart and Elder both competed in the heavy plane class of the first Women’s Air Derby in 1929, coming in third and fifth respectively in the air race from Santa Monica, California, to Cleveland, Ohio. The winner of the Derby was Louise Thaden, who later bested a field of male and female pilots in the 1936 Bendix Trophy Race from New York to Los Angeles. This was the second year women were permitted to race against the men, and women pilots made up three out of the top five finishers.