WOMAN PILOTS

Hokitika Guardian, 21 July 1936, Page 2

WOMAN PILOTS

IDEAL AT HIGH ALTITUDES. LONDON, July 18. Women will make ideal pilots, for air-mail flying at high altitudes, and will be specially- w r ell equipped, physically, to fly bombing aircraft which, in any future war, will maintain immense heights to escape searchlights, guns and aeroplanes. This, at all events, is the conclusion reached as thp result of research that is the first of its kind ever conducted. ! . One of the. chief .points proved by the experiments c’arried out by Russian scientists is that the physical qualities of women render them far less sensitive than men to the effects of highaltitude flying. Russian doctors and nerve specialists flying in big lhachines equipped as aerial laboratories have been studying the reactions of women under various conditions. It has been shown that a wdiiian’s delicacy of touch and her quickness and lightness of movement give her an immense advantage' in handling such a sensitive machine as the modern aeroplane. Data have been obtained from a number o| flying schools and the facts which emerge are that women not only make careful and attentive pupils, but that, after they have learned to handle an aeroplane, they are. not prone to such early periods of overconfidence as are said to be characteristic of many men.