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AVIATION IN THE FEMININE

The XXth century woman was the woman who managed to overtake the
barriers that had for centuries guarded the male misogyny which had led the world.
Fragile, sensible, but endowed with a powerful interior force, women have proved that
they are capable of performance in any field.
The history of the Romanian aviation marks within its pages those courageous
girls’ names, which have become legendary, in a fascinating and inaccessible world:
air flight!
At the beginning of the XX th century, Elena Stoenescu Caragiani was a young
adolescent, who being a student at the High school in Tecuci used to read books on
the geographic discoveries, and admire Traian Vuia’s and Aurel Vlaicu’s achievements
in the field of aviation. She decided to attend the courses of the Pilots School in
Bucharest, determined to overtake the prejudices of her time. ”Why aviation above all?
Could you not think about any another riskless job?’’; these were but a couple of
questions that expressed the bewilderment and prejudices of the people around, and
above all the indignation of the leadership staff of the Air League, “who used to
consider piloting and flying taboo subjects for women”.
As a result, she was refused the awarding of the pilot licence when she
graduated, after passing the examination, on the grounds that “women do not have
the necessary abilities and reflexes that the air flyers are required”. It was in 1913,
when Elena Stoenescu Caragiani was determined to make her way towards the blue
heights. She left for Paris, and as a sequence of the attended examination the
International Air Federation awarded her the pilot licence and the flyer badge.
She who was the first Romanian flyer, and among the first in the world, worked
for the French civil aviation, professing in France and the U.S.A., and being called “the
air amazon”. Still, in her own country, she had to face the old obtuseness; she was
refused the right of professing, even under the circumstances of war. Being generous
and modest, she agrees to serve her country as a nurse. In 1922, this bright destiny,
Elena Stoenescu Caragiani faded out due to a ruthless disease.
The way had been opened, and many a bold women would want to turn the
fancy dresses into overalls. That is what Virginia Duţescu would do in 1935, at a time
when “everybody took aviation as something dangerous and out of common”. Virginia
gave up her husband and her career as an actress, in favour of flying. The artist
discovered the beauty of the highly dangerous air acrobatics which she would perform
skilfully, being unfailing at the air meetings. It was she who was the first Romanian
flyer who performed acrobatics.
She was a pilot instructor between 1938 and 1940, whereas during the hard
years of war, she could be found belonging to the famous ”White Escadrille”.
Smaranda Brăescu belonged to the same young flyers generation. She had a
needy and lacking affection childhood, which she spent at the Boarding School of the
“Elena Doamna” Asylum in Bucharest, which tempered her character.
In 1928 she renounced to becoming a teacher of Drawing and would rather go
to attend the “ Heineke” Parachutism School, at “Shroder & Co” in Berlin. There
followed years of hard work and inner struggles to outrun obstacles, such as the
accidents in 1929 and 1930. In 1931, on Pipera, she acquired the world women record
for 6000 metres. She was awarded the “Golden Cross” of the Aeronautics Virtue
decoration. In 1932, after training herself in the U.S.A. she achieved the performance
of 7233 metres in California, which was an absolute world record.
Smaranda Brăescu is also one of the courageous women flyers of the ”White
Escadrille”, who, together with Mariana Drăgescu and Eliza Vâlcu, were to be found in
Trecin, Czechoslovakia, at the end of the second world war.
The legendary ”White Escadrille” saved over 1500 wounded during the second
world war. It was founded in 1939 at the initiative of flyer Marina Ştirbey, member of
the Romanian Red Cross, who induced the leadership of the Association to purchase
two four-placed airplanes and two stretchers for the transportation of the patients. It
was for these airplanes that devoted themselves to this noble cause, and for Nadia
Russo Bossie, Virginia Thomas, s.a. as well.
From among all these, Mariana Drăgescu, aged 97 nowadays, stands for the
proof of the legend of the interwar aviation. Her saga begins in 1934, when, without
her family’s knowledge, she chose to attend the courses of the Bucharest Pilots
School, thus becoming the eighth air flyer in Romania. War ending, she would still
work in the aviation service untill1948, taking part in the medicine transportation
campaign to Moldavia, during the typhoid fever epidemics. She was a flyer instructor
in Ghimbav, until 1950. After that, because of the neglection of the aviation by the
democratic political leadership, Mariana Drăgescu has to accept a secretary job at a
polyclinics belonging to the Transport Ministry. In 1981 there has been founded the
“Women Pilot Federation of Europe”, to which Mariana Drăgescu was appointed as a
representative of Romania.
In 2099, the mass media was to inform about a “cross-generations’ meeting”:
Mariana Drăgescu and Simona Maierean, a 24 years old young lady who achieved
the performance of being the first woman to fly a MIG-21 Lancer, in March, 2009.
Simona Maierean belongs to the post 1989 new wave flyers. She was born on
April, 17, 1984 in Suceava County. She attends the courses of the “Henry Coanda” Air
Force Academy in Brasov, between 2003-2007. She improves her skills at the Air
Force Application School in Bodoc, and starting 2008, she gets to 95 Air Base in
Bacau where she is still working nowadays.
In 1989, 19 (nineteen) young ladies graduated the Aviation Institute. Nowadays
it is only two of them that are still in the system: Captain Commander Liliana Tănasă
and Captain Commander Liliana Toader. In 2006, Nicoleta Ciocan and Angela
Ciubotaru graduated the Air Force Academy, and in 2007 Simona Maierean and
Lavinia Ghiniţă. For the school-year 2009-2010 there are allocated 10 places for girls
at the Academy.
Another real success of the feminine aviation is represented by Carmen
Bugean. She achieved a well-deserved place in the competition against men. She has
a 1300 flight hours record. She is the single woman escadrille commander in the
military aviation. She flies a Puma Scott Helicopter.
In the marine aviation women can also work as well as men. In 2005, there
were received the first three R.A. I. helicopters. Cristina Hoştină is a flight controller
and she talks about her job passionately: ”There are many skills required to perform
this job. You need to have a space eyesight, good psychic self-control, to take the right
decision in a short time. You may not be wrong in this job… There are no differences
between men and women and I believe there must not be any at all anywhere in the
army either.”
“Women conquer the air being at the control column of the line airplanes.”, was
what a journal has recently informed us. It was speaking about Andreea Litescu, 24
years old, a co-pilot on a Boeing 737 at Blue Air company. She confessed that she
had flown a helicopter for the first time when she was 20 years old. The feeling is hard
to be described in words. All it is about is enthusiasm mingled with the fear not to
make the slightest mistake… When she does not go hiking on the mountains or flying
a plane at a 900 km/hour speed Andreea is just a common girl… she smiles when the
talk turns to the representatives of the opposite sex, saying that “she had come
several times to face unwarranted ideas, as well as some male’s fear when standing
in front of a mighty woman.”
It is but a century of the feminine in the aviation, a century of struggle to
conquer the blue heights on one hand, and of defeating prejudices on the other; a
century in which the woman flyer managed to impose herself as a man’s equal by
perseverance and tenacity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Nicolae Balotescu, s.a. – “Istoria aviaţiei” (“The History of Aviation”), Editura


Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică, Bucureşti, 1984
2. Constantin Veroiu, Dumitru Crăciun, “Icarii din Carpaţi’’ (“The Ycars of the
Carpathians”), Editura Scrisul Românesc, Craiova, 1986
3. Mariana Drăgescu, “Pilot în Escadrila Albă” (“White Escadrille Pilot”), “Magazin
istoric”, Serie nouă - Septembrie, Octombrie, 1991
4. Ramona Ionescu, “Femeile pilot în aviaţia militară” (“Pilot Women in the Military
Aviation”); “Ziarul de Bacău’’ (“Bacau Daily Newspaper”), 18 martie 2009
5. Ibidem - “Întâlnire între generaţii în aviaţia militară feminină” (“Cross-Generation
Meeting in the Women Military Aviation”), 14 aprilie 2009
6. *** “Singura femeie comandant de escadrilă în aviaţia militară‘’ (“The Only Woman
Escadrille Commander in the Military Aviation”), “Radio România Actualităţi’’, 5
martie 2009
7. *** “Femei în aviaţia navală” (“Women in the Navy Aviation”) “Telegraful” (de
Constanţa) (“Constantza Daily Telegraph”), 12 martie 2009
8. “Femeile cuceresc aerul la manşa avioanelor de linie” (“Women Conquer the Air at
the Control Column of the Line Airplane”), (“Daily Event”) “Evenimentul Zilei” nr.
5523, 11 ianuarie 2009

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