L  ouise McPhetrage (1905-1979) was born in Bentonville Arkansas. When she was young, she had her first airplane ride with a barnstorming pilot and became fascinated by aviation. In 1927, McPhetrage moved to California to sell airplanes for the D.S. Warren Company, where part of her salary included pilot’s lessons.

The following year, she earned her pilot’s license and married engineer and former Army pilot Herbert Thaden. In her first months as a pilot, Louise McPhetrage Thaden broke the women’s altitude, endurance, and speed records to become the only women to ever hold all three records simultaneously. To avoid hypoxia for her high altitude flights, Thaden rigged her own oxygen system with a welder’s tank of oxygen, rubber tubing, and ether mask. That year, she set an altitude record of 20,260 feet. In 1929, Thaden earned a U.S. Transport Pilot rating—becoming only the fourth woman to do so. She also won the first ever women’s transcontinental air race and cofound The 99s for women pilot. The organization was formed in Long Island, New York with Amelia Earhart as the first president and still exists today. In 1932, Thaden broke the endurance record again with Frances Masalis by staying aloft over New York City in the “flying boudoir” for 196 hours, refueling midair over 70 times.

Louise Thaden was one of six women hired as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) air marking pilots. In 1935, her job was to fly across the country, identify places where pilots might get lost and paint the names of those towns on barns and roads in enormous letters. This subsequently saved the lives of pilots across the country.

The following year, Thaden entered the Bendix race. It most the prestigious transcontinental aeronautical race—begun in 1931—and had just opened to women competitors. Thaden flew a Beechcraft Staggerwing with Blanche Noyes. Together they won first place and the consolation prize for the first women finishers.

Thaden broke additional speed records in 1936 and 1937 and retired from competitive flying in 1938 in deference to her children—competitions were incredibly dangerous, and she didn’t want to leave her two young children motherless. Thaden later returned to work as an aircraft salesperson for Beechcraft.

In 1949, Thaden started work for the Civil Air Patrol, slowly gaining rank until she retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1970. In 1974, she was grounded because of a heart condition that took her life five years later.

Biography provided by Brenda Mandt, The Museum of Flight