In June, a Las Vegas pilot named Lauren Nicholson Scott and her copilot Rebecca Carroll won an all-women's, long-distance competition called the Air Race Classic. Scott dedicated her win to her aunt, Mary Webb Nicholson.
Nicholson was one of 25 American women who flew for Great Britain’s Royal Air Force in World War II. Several of their stories are told in the book, Spitfires: The American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger During World War II. Written by Becky Aikman, it came out in May.
Scott said she was surprised, delighted and "a little bit shocked" to take first place, because it was the first time she'd competed since 1996, when she was still a student at Purdue University — and she also won that year. "I thought, 'What are the chances that I'll win this thing again?' But I really just wanted to compete," she said, adding that she and Carroll just strived to fly a "clean" race, meeting all the technical challenges involved in this kind of flight.
Scott's family is filled with aviators and aviation-industry workers, including her children, siblings, and parents. Her aunt, Mary Web Nicholson, taught her father to fly and serves as a source of great inspiration to Scott.
"Unfortunately, she did pass away in the war, and so I never got an opportunity to meet her," Scott says, reflecting on Nicholson's legacy. "From what I know, she was a typical Nicholson. So she was a woman of faith, very devoted to her church and to God. She played piano for her church and majored in music as well. And she was also a very hard worker, very smart, disciplined, but kind of quiet and not showy."
Nicholson was a ferry pilot for the Royal Air Force during World War II. They were responsible for delivering new planes to the front lines and returning planes that needed maintenance to the manufacturer. The missions were inherently dangerous, illustrated by Nicholson's fate. A plane she was ferrying from the factory to a military base developed an oil leak, causing the engine to seize and the propeller to detach. Amid poor weather conditions, Nicholson struggled to find a safe landing spot and crashed the plane into a barn, in the process diverting the plan away from people on the ground.
"She really loved flying, which I can completely relate to," Scott says, "and for the time that she found herself in, she had incredible courage just to be flying as a woman. But she did such a good job of it that she earned the respect of her peers and had this amazing opportunity to pursue what she loved. And then on top of that, the patriotism that she showed and being able to lay down her life and really use her gifts that she had been given to benefit the allies and to try to help promote peace, that's just incredible."
Guest: Lauren Scott, airline pilot
