On the morning of 30 November 1934, a small blue-and-red Caudron racer came in to land at Guyancourt, just outside Versailles. It lost speed, dropped onto the treetops of the woods beyond the field and broke apart. The pilot, reached first by fellow aviators who saw the crash, died in the ambulance on the way to hospital. She was 26 years old.

Less than four months earlier, Hélène Boucher had been the fastest woman on earth. In a single week in August 1934 she set an international speed record open to men and women alike, then pushed the women's absolute speed record to 445 km/h. French newspapers called her "la femme la plus vite du monde", the fastest woman in the world.

From first lesson to final flight, her career lasted less than four years. In that time she went from first lesson to transport pilot, aerobatic display star, Renault's racing pilot and holder of a string of world records, and France gave her a send-off no woman had received before.

From Orly Joyride to Professional Pilot

Boucher was the daughter of a Parisian architect, Léon Boucher, and grew up partly at the family property near Yermenonville in Eure-et-Loir, where as a girl she collected photographs of aviators. Her first flight came on 4 July 1930, a joyride at Orly at the age of 22. Weeks later she decided to become a pilot herself.

She learned at the Aéro-Club des Landes in Mont-de-Marsan, run by Henri Farbos, took her first lesson in March 1931 and earned her tourist pilot's licence on 21 June 1931. A year later, with 100 hours and a night flight in her logbook, she qualified as a public transport pilot. According to French Wikipedia, only Adrienne Bolland, Maryse Bastié and Maryse Hilsz had done so before her.

Money was the constant problem. Early in 1933 she set off alone in a second-hand British light aircraft on a raid to Saigon. Engine failures stopped her near Baghdad, where she was stuck for six weeks, and she came home through Egypt and North Africa as a tourist.

British Pathé newsreel from 1934 on Frenchwoman Hélène Boucher's new air speed records.

Altitude, Then Aerobatics

Her first world record came in a machine with almost no power at all. On 2 August 1933, flying a Mauboussin M.120 Corsaire with a 60 hp Salmson engine, she climbed to 5,900 metres for the women's altitude record for light aircraft. A few weeks earlier she had finished 14th in the 12 Hours of Angers race in the same low-powered type.

That autumn she turned to aerobatics under Michel Détroyat, France's leading display pilot. She trained for four weeks on a Morane 230, learning spins, rolls and inverted flight, before her first public display at the November 1933 match between Détroyat and the German champion Gerhard Fieseler. The organisers billed a second duel alongside: Boucher, pupil of Détroyat, against Fieseler's pupil Vera von Bissing.

Détroyat did more than teach. In December 1933 he lent her 25,000 francs to buy an aircraft, according to the archive letters studied by historian Laure Bouglé-Bal dit Sollier. Meeting fees of 6,000 to 8,000 francs, handled by the agency Air Propagande, began to keep her in the air.

Renault's Racing Pilot

In June 1934 the newly formed Caudron-Renault company signed her as a pilot. The contract gave her a salary, and with it access to the fastest light aircraft in France: the Rafale family designed by engineer Marcel Riffard. Renault also used her to advertise its Viva Grand Sport car.

On 8 July 1934 she flew a Caudron Rafale single-handed for the full twelve hours of the second 12 Hours of Angers. She finished second to a two-pilot crew, and on the way set the international 1,000 km speed record for light aircraft at 250.086 km/h.

Then came the big one. On 8 August 1934, at Istres, she flew a Caudron C.450, the single-seat Renault-powered racer that had won that year's Coupe Deutsch de la Meurthe. She averaged 409.184 km/h over 1,000 km, an international record in all categories, open to men and women. The previous mark of 393 km/h had belonged to Maurice Arnoux. The same day she set the women's 100 km record at 412.371 km/h.

She was still not satisfied. On 11 August she took the women's world speed record over a measured course at 445.028 km/h. Her Légion d'honneur citation later credited her with bringing six records home to France.

The Crash at Guyancourt

Her final aircraft was a Caudron C.430 Rafale, registered F-AMVB, a two-seat development of the Coupe Deutsch racers built to train pilots on something close to a racer but safer. On 30 November 1934 she was flying it on a training flight at Guyancourt aerodrome.

The press reported a loss of speed on the landing approach. The Rafale clipped the treetops of the woods near Magny-les-Hameaux and crashed. Raymond Delmotte, himself a Caudron record pilot, was among the first to reach her. Badly injured, she died in the ambulance on the hill at Satory on the way to Versailles.

The Minister of Air, General Victor Denain, came to her bedside and pinned the Légion d'honneur on her body. Military aviators mounted an honour guard through the night. France was in shock.

First Woman Honoured at Les Invalides

Her coffin was taken to Les Invalides in Paris, the resting place of Napoleon and France's military heroes. She lay in state in the chapel of Saint-Louis-des-Invalides for two days, watched over by military and civilian pilots, men and women. She was the first woman to receive the honour.

The funeral mass there drew the whole of fashionable Paris. Yet she was not buried at Les Invalides. Her body went home to the village cemetery at Yermenonville, where she was laid to rest privately with her family. General Denain declared that Hélène Boucher, who had given her life for aviation, had "entered into legend".

British Pathé footage of the funeral procession for Hélène Boucher in Paris.

The Journal officiel published her citation to the order of the Nation on 2 December 1934. Drafted by the airman and writer René Chambe, it described her as a pilot of great class who had won the most coveted records in a short time through skill and "audace réfléchie", considered daring.

The Legacy of Léno

Within months, a women's air race carried her name: the Coupe Hélène Boucher, won by Maryse Hilsz in 1935 and 1936. A new girls' lycée in Paris was named after her, as were countless streets and schools since. A 1953 film, Horizons sans fin, told her story, and in 1972 the French post office put her on a stamp with Hilsz.

Her aircraft live on too. A replica of her blue-and-red C.430 Rafale is displayed at the regional air museum at Angers, where she raced twice. And a flying replica of the C.460, sister ship of the C.450 she took to 445 km/h, was built in the United States in 2009 and bought by Renault in 2023.

The flying Caudron-Renault C.460 Rafale replica displaying at Air Legend 2026, Melun-Villaroche, 6 September 2026.

In 2019, water damage at Yermenonville town hall led to the rediscovery of her archives: hundreds of documents, her flying suit, her logbooks, and the propeller and debris of the Rafale she died in. The village now has a small Hélène Boucher museum.

She flew for less than four years. In that time she beat the men over 1,000 km, became the fastest woman alive and was the first woman to lie in state at Les Invalides.

Sources: Wikipedia (Hélène Boucher, English and French), Wikipedia (Caudron C.450/C.460, Caudron C.430 Rafale, Mauboussin Corsaire), Laure Bouglé-Bal dit Sollier, “Hélène Boucher”, Nacelles no. 12 (2022), René Chambe archive (generalrenechambe.com), This Day in Aviation, Vintage Aviation News