{"id":130728,"date":"2026-05-14T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/?p=130728"},"modified":"2026-06-25T15:11:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T13:11:23","slug":"jacqueline-auriol-frances-supersonic-test-pilot-who-broke-the-barrier-four-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/de\/jacqueline-auriol-frances-supersonic-test-pilot-who-broke-the-barrier-four-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacqueline Auriol: France’s Supersonic Test Pilot Who Broke the Barrier Four Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

On 11 July 1949, a seaplane carrying Jacqueline Auriol \u2014 daughter-in-law of the French President \u2014 crashed on the Seine near Paris. She was pulled from the wreckage with catastrophic facial injuries. Surgeons rebuilt her face through more than twenty operations spread over nearly three years. When she emerged from hospital, she did not return to society life. She returned to the cockpit and started flying faster.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Quick Facts<\/h4>
Nationality<\/td>French \ud83c\uddeb\ud83c\uddf7<\/td><\/tr>
Achievement<\/td>Second woman to break the sound barrier; five world speed records; foremost female test pilot of the jet age<\/td><\/tr>
Speed Records<\/td>5 world speed records \u2014 the last at 2,038 km\/h in a Mirage IIIR (1963)<\/td><\/tr>
Aircraft<\/td>Dassault Myst\u00e8re, Dassault Mirage III<\/td><\/tr>
Born \/ Died<\/td>5 Nov 1917 \u2013 11 Feb 2000 (age 82)<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\"Jacqueline
02.03.69 1er vol de Concorde avec Jacqueline Auriol (1969) - 53Fi1884 (cropped) \u2014 via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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 Br\u00e9tigny-sur-Orge. She became France's first female test pilot.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In August 1953, she broke the sound barrier in a Dassault Myst\u00e8re II, becoming the second woman in history to do so \u2014 and the first in Europe \u2014 just months after Jacqueline Cochran achieved it 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Mach 1.75 in a Mirage<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Auriol's final and greatest record came in June 1963, in a Dassault Mirage IIIR \u2014 the same swept-delta jet that would equip French, Israeli, and Swiss air forces for decades. She flew it at 2,038 km\/h \u2014 having already pushed the record to 1,849 km\/h (Mach 1.75) in a Mirage IIIC the year before. It was the fastest any woman had ever flown. She held that record until 1964, when Cochran broke it in a Lockheed F-104G. Their private race for the sky continued.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\n

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\n\u201cI feel so happy when I'm flying. Perhaps it is the feeling of power, the pleasure of dominating a machine as beautiful as a Thoroughbred horse.\u201d\n<\/p>\n\u2014 Jacqueline Auriol<\/cite>\n<\/div>\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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 \u2014 the country's highest decoration \u2014 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.<\/p>\r\n\n\n\n\n