On 11 July 1949, a seaplane carrying Jacqueline Auriol — daughter-in-law of the French President — crashed on the Seine near Paris. She was pulled from the wreckage with catastrophic facial injuries. Surgeons rebuilt her face through 22 separate operations over two years. When she emerged from hospital, she did not return to society life. She returned to the cockpit and started flying faster.

Auriol had learned to fly in 1948, just before the accident. After her recovery, she threw herself into aviation with a ferocity that alarmed even professional test pilots. She earned her acrobatics licence, then her helicopter licence, then began flying military jets at the French test centre at Brétigny-sur-Orge. She became France’s first female test pilot.

In May 1953, she broke the sound barrier in a Dassault Mystère II, becoming the second woman in history to do so — just days before Jacqueline Cochran made the same achievement in America. Thus began one of aviation’s great rivalries. Throughout the 1950s, Auriol and Cochran traded the women’s world airspeed record back and forth across the Atlantic — each shattering the other’s mark, each pushing the ceiling higher, neither willing to yield. Their competition had nothing to do with spite and everything to do with the fact that both of them simply needed to go faster.

Mach 1.75 in a Mirage

Auriol’s final and greatest record came in 1961, in a Dassault Mirage III — the same swept-delta jet that would equip French, Israeli, and Swiss air forces for decades. She flew it at 1,849 km/h: Mach 1.75. It was the fastest any woman had ever flown. She held that record until 1963, when Cochran broke it in a Lockheed F-104G. Their private race for the sky continued.

Auriol flew her last official test mission in 1963 and continued flying privately for years afterward. She wrote a memoir, gave lectures, and remained a fierce advocate for women in aviation and science. She died in Paris in 2000 at the age of 82. France honoured her with the Legion of Honour — the country’s highest decoration — and named streets, schools, and an aviation prize in her name. The woman who nearly died in a seaplane crash in 1949 lived long enough to see women flying combat jets for the French Air Force. She had done as much as anyone to make that possible.