“The girl realized that she must make a landing as soon as possible, and that was when she reached Culmore, Ireland, a tiny place five miles from Londonderry. She landed in a field, scaring a team of plow horses, who had never before seen a woman landing after a trans-Atlantic flight. She went by automobile to Londonderry, and there received the rousing welcome that was due her. “Europe entertained her royally. She was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross; she was received by the Prince of Wales; she was partied and banqueted. And through it all she kept her poise, and modestly accepted the acclaim that was showered upon her. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, but not only that, she had set a new speed record for the North Atlantic Ocean, flying a distance of 2,026 miles in about thirteen and a half hours. She had at the same time broken Ruth Nichols’ long distance record for women, which had been set at 1,977 miles from Oakland, California, to Louisville, Kentucky. “Ruth Nichols has a habit of setting records. She started to fly at about the same time that Amelia Earhart started, and has kept nip and tuck with her, except for the fact that proposed plans of hers to fly the Atlantic have not as yet been carried out. She was graduated from Wellesley College, and was a member of the Junior League, which rates her pretty high in the social scale, but her overwhelming desire for adventure and pioneering, led her, as it led Amelia Earhart, to choose aviation as her profession. Ruth Nichols held the long distance record for women until it was broken by Amelia Earhart. She holds the altitude record for women, though, and broke the altitude record for Diesel engines in 1932, at a height of over 21,000 feet. “Elinor Smith was, in a way of speaking, born in an airplane cockpit. Her father was a pilot; Elinor made her first flight as a passenger at the age of eight; took over the controls at twelve; and made her first solo flight at fifteen. She was so small that her head did not reach over the top of the cockpit, and the other pilots called her ‘the headless pilot.’ It was a funny sight to see a plane land gracefully on a field apparently with no one to guide it. Then out would pop Elinor, a grimy little girl, covered with grease from the motor, and with a cheerful grin on her impish face. It was Elinor, who at seventeen, set the women’s solo endurance record by staying in the air alone for 26 hours and 21 minutes. Elinor should do great things in aviation. She knows her planes inside and out; she’s had the opportunity such as no other woman has had, to learn the technicalities of aviation when she was young that she absorbed them as part of herself. Elinor Smith is one of the most popular women in aviation now.