Jackie Cochran and the orphan from Sawdust Road who became the fastest woman alive

Jacqueline Cochran holds more speed, distance, and altitude records than nearly any pilot in history — and she started life without a pair of shoes. Born around 1906 in the sawmill towns of northern Florida, she grew up in foster homes, worked in a cotton mill at age eight, and clawed her way from poverty to the cockpit of an F-86 Sabre breaking the sound barrier at 47 years old. Along the way, she founded the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program that put over a thousand women in military cockpits during World War II.

From Sawdust Road to the Sky

Jackie Cochran wasn’t even her real name. No one is entirely sure of her birth year because no one was keeping careful records. She grew up in crushing poverty along roads literally made of packed sawdust between pine trees and shacks in northern Florida and southern Georgia. She didn’t own shoes until she was eight years old — the same age she started working at a cotton loom. By ten, she was sweeping floors in a beauty shop.

She fought her way out through nursing, then the cosmetics business, where she discovered a natural talent for sales. By her mid-twenties she had moved from Pensacola to New York City, working high-end beauty counters and circulating among the wealthy elite — a world unimaginable to the girl from Sawdust Road.

Three Weeks to a Pilot’s License

At a dinner party in 1932, financier Floyd Odlum changed the course of aviation history with a simple suggestion. When Cochran mentioned wanting to start a cosmetics company and needing to travel the country quickly, Odlum told her she ought to learn to fly.

Three weeks later, she had her private pilot’s license. She trained at Roosevelt Field on Long Island — the same field Lindbergh departed from in 1927 — and soloed in roughly four days. Her instructor later said she was the most naturally gifted student he had ever seen.

Conquering the Bendix Trophy

Within two years of earning her license, Cochran entered the Bendix Trophy Race, one of the most prestigious cross-country air races in the world. In 1934, flying against seasoned male pilots, her engine failed over Arizona. She didn’t finish. She came back the next year, and the year after that.

In 1938, she won. Flying a Seversky P-35 pursuit plane from Burbank, California, to Cleveland, Ohio, she beat every man in the field and set a new transcontinental speed record. By 1939, she held more speed, distance, and altitude records than any pilot in the world, regardless of gender.

Building the WASP Program

When World War II arrived, Cochran recognized what military leadership couldn’t or wouldn’t admit: America was going to need pilots desperately, and hundreds of qualified women could fly but had no path to serve.

She pitched General Hap Arnold, commanding general of the Army Air Forces, on recruiting women pilots to ferry aircraft, tow gunnery targets, and test repaired planes — freeing male pilots for combat. When Arnold hesitated, Cochran went to England in 1942 and recruited American women to fly with the British Air Transport Auxiliary, where they proved themselves flying Spitfires, Hurricanes, and Wellingtons.

Arnold gave the green light. The Women’s Flying Training Detachment was established at Howard Hughes Field in Houston, then moved to Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. Cochran ran the program with exacting standards and a brutal washout rate. In 1943, her program merged with Nancy Love’s Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron to form the WASP.

More than 1,000 women earned their wings through the program. They flew every aircraft in the Army Air Forces inventory — B-17 Flying Fortresses, B-26 Marauders, P-39 Airacobras, P-51 Mustangs, and even the B-29 Superfortress. When male pilots were refusing to fly the B-29 due to its engine fire problems, Cochran sent her women up in it specifically to shame the men back into the cockpit. It worked.

The Cost of Service Without Recognition

Thirty-eight WASP pilots died serving their country. Yet Congress refused to grant them military status. When a WASP was killed, her family had to pay to ship the body home. There was no flag on the coffin. No military honors.

Cochran fought for their recognition for decades. It was not until 1977 — thirty-three years after the program was disbanded — that President Carter signed legislation granting WASP veterans full military status.

Breaking the Sound Barrier

On a day in 1953 at Edwards Air Force Base, Cochran climbed into a Canadian-built F-86 Sabre jet. Her friend Chuck Yeager, who had broken the sound barrier six years earlier, flew chase in another Sabre. They climbed to 45,000 feet over the Mojave Desert, and Cochran pushed the nose over into a dive. The Mach meter crept past 0.9, past 0.95, and the needle jumped beyond Mach 1.0. The sonic boom rolled across the desert floor.

Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier. She was forty-seven years old — a woman born in a world of kerosene lamps and mule carts, now flying faster than the speed of sound eight miles above the earth.

Mach Two and Beyond

She wasn’t finished. In 1964, at age fifty-eight, she flew a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter to Mach 2 — twice the speed of sound — setting new women’s speed records at 15,000, 25,000, and 35,000 feet. At that point she held more speed records than any living pilot, not just any living woman pilot.

Her career achievements read like fiction. She won the Harmon Trophy, the highest award for aeronautical achievement, fifteen times. She was the first woman to make a blind instrument landing, fly a bomber across the Atlantic, fly a fixed-wing jet across the Atlantic, and land on an aircraft carrier. She was the first pilot of any gender to fly above 20,000 feet with an oxygen mask.

The Businesswoman Behind the Aviator

Through all of it, Cochran ran Jackie Cochran Cosmetics, a successful business she built from nothing. She would fly to a board meeting in the morning and set a speed record in the afternoon. She married Floyd Odlum — the man whose dinner-party advice launched her flying career — and they remained together until his death in 1976.

The Person Behind the Records

Those who knew Cochran described her as tough, demanding, and stubborn. She feuded with Nancy Love over credit for the WASP program and had a temper that could, as aviators put it, peel paint off a hangar wall.

But she was fiercely loyal to her pilots. Every WASP who went through Sweetwater knew Cochran would fight for them in Washington. When her pilots were killed, she wrote the letters home personally. She remembered names and faces.

Chuck Yeager, not a man given to easy praise, called her one of the greatest pilots he ever knew.

She kept flying into the late 1960s, even after receiving one of the earliest pacemakers. When the FAA grounded her for it, she fought the ruling, won her medical back, and returned to the sky. She died on August 9, 1980, at her ranch in Indio, California, in the desert not far from the dry lakebeds where she had chased Mach numbers. She was approximately seventy-four — her exact birth date still uncertain.

Key Takeaways

Jackie Cochran rose from extreme poverty in the sawmill towns of Florida and Georgia to become the most decorated pilot — male or female — of her era, holding more speed, distance, and altitude records than any contemporary.
She founded and directed the WASP program, which put over 1,000 women in military cockpits during WWII, flying every aircraft in the Army Air Forces inventory.
She was the first woman to break the sound barrier in 1953 and reached Mach 2 in 1964 at age fifty-eight.
WASP pilots were denied military status for 33 years despite 38 women dying in service — a wrong Cochran spent decades fighting to correct.
Her fifteen Harmon Trophies remain a record for aviation’s highest individual achievement award.

Primary sources: Cochran’s autobiography The Stars at Noon*, Doris Rich’s biography, and the Jacqueline Cochran papers at the Eisenhower Presidential Library.*