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Aviatrix Jackie Cochran is the most fascinating woman you’ve never heard of
Cochran ‘was a huge force in aviation,’ space historian and author Amy Shira-Teitel says
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Jacqueline Cochran was a record-breaking aviatrix, entrepreneur and political mover and shaker who was close enough with President Lyndon B. Johnson that he refused to let her call him Mr. President.
Yet Cochran’s legacy as the first woman to break the sound barrier in 1953 and her role in the Mercury 13 women astronaut testing program rarely gets a mention.
“I can’t believe I never heard of her,” Shira-Teitel said. “She led the women’s Air Force service pilots in the second World War, was the first woman to fly to the sound barrier, saved LBJ’s life one day, was friends with multiple presidents, was just a huge force in aviation, and held more records than any pilot male or female, the world over, when she died in 1980.”