Susan’s story is one strictly of achievement in the end, when she obtains her license and becomes, Susan Thompson Sky Girl, she states: “I am sorry for the girls who lived in the years before flying was possible.”³⁸

In stride with Van Dyne, Burham, and Verrill’s styles, up through 1929, the majority of girl aviator narratives had been stories of achievement, covering experiences of triumph over great social difficulty (mostly financial), the obtainment of piloting skills, always ending with the ultimate reward of public recognition for a demonstration of piloting skills or an official license, any threads of mystery involved in the narrative were generally secondary elements. In 1929 a combination of dwindling public appeal, the formation of the commercial sector, and the arrival of Nancy Drew changed the role of the airborne heroine. Her ability to fly was secondary to her new duties of sleuthing. In an era without an active feminist movement, to many a young girl and woman, Nancy Drew, like the early girl aviators, was the actualization of her concept of women’s liberation. Explaining the importance of Drew, writer and professor of literature, Bobbie Ann Mason states that she was “more liberated than girls had dared imagine-as free and self-possessed as any adult. With her success, the amateur girl detective became the staple heroine, and it was a magical role if there ever was one. Sleuthing was something…radically adult; it provided the promise of something beyond domesticity.”³⁹ A sign of a new era in publishing and the development of the airborne heroine, by 1930, the flying girl narrative of achievement gave way to a rapidly advancing storyline of Drew-like adventure and mystery. Occurring at the same time the rules of aviation were changing to accommodate more planes, as well as commercial enterprise.⁴⁰As stated by the next character this essay explores, Ruth Darrow, “Planes [were] becoming as common as lost golf balls.”⁴¹

The 1930 novel, Ruth Darrow In the Air Derby also titled Recovering the Silver Trophy, by Mildred A Wirt, also a ghostwriter for the early Nancy Drew stories, successfully demonstrates the transition of achievement to sleuth. The story follows the life of a young girl aviator supported by her father Colonel F.H. Darrow, an army reserve officer stationed at Brighton. Ruth is tall and slender, ordinarily, a rather sedate person, but those who knew her best declared that she was a regular dynamo of energy.⁴² Aside, possessing attractive feminine qualities, what made Ruth extraordinary was her access to flight. At a time when women aviators struggled to gain access to training, Ruth is trained as a pilot with her father’s support and given her very own plane, the Silver Moth on her sixteenth birthday. Her story opens with a daring rescue she makes to save a pilot from his burning plane after a crash, the excitement never wanes as an amateur sleuth Ruth solves a mystery when her father’s prize trophy being offered with a ten thousand dollar purse at an upcoming air meet is stolen. The cup is a sentimental reward, embodying the history of a previous decade of piloting. It is considered priceless to Ruth and her father, who secretly desires to see his daughter’s name carved into it as a champion aviator. Ruth’s heroics are fully realized when she and her chum Jean seek out and rescue their young flight instructor, who has mysteriously disappeared, crashed, into a mountain. In the end Ruth finds and wins the prize cup, securing her own place engraved into the silver cupped annals of flight history. What is most telling about the story is that Ruth’s endeavors are made possible with the support of her father; she otherwise might not have had access to any of the necessary elements needed to become a female pilot. The message could not have been clearer to the financiers of aviation and the female fliers themselves whose forward momentum needed the coveted and scarce support.

Darrow’s adventures as a flying girl sleuth continue briefly for several more editions, however by 1934 the narrative of the girl aviator as detective disappeared on the horizon almost as suddenly as it had arrived. It is at this same moment when girl aviators are ushered out of the cockpit, their stewardess replacements more service oriented, highly feminized symbol of domesticity arrive. Canvass flight trousers, tall boots, leather jackets, silk scarves, and goggles were traded for smarter, calf bearing, and considerably more feminine uniforms accessorized with leather purses and signature hats. The airborne heroine, as girl aviator, passed the torch into the new hand of the stewardess, a transition in fiction that coincided with challenges women were experiencing in the workforce of the 1930s, the commercialization of aviation, cultural marriage trends, and the arrival and establishment of the stewardess job. It was during this period of the 1930s that major challenges were presented to women entering the workforce. Historian Barbara Harris writes, “If the 1920’s saw a slowing down of the entrance of women into the professions, the 1930’s spelled disaster. Under the impact of the depression, hostility to female employment reached new levels of intensity.”43 The aviation industry forged forward through this rough period of depression and was able to offer a special place for women in the workforce.

Unlike the girl aviator, whose story remained consistent over her twenty-year lifespan, except for her brief and final stint as a sleuth, there is a more rapid trajectory in the guises worn by stewardesses as airborne heroines. The stewardess begins her narrative existence as a young naive nurse seeking escape and excitement, transforms herself into a sophisticated woman educated by the world, and completes her existence when she is appropriated as a sexual object coveted at home and abroad. Earlier books that depict the lives of stewardesses as airborne heroines focus less on the subject and details of the career, and more on the personal life and aspirations of the young woman herself, while later narratives deal with the details of service and then capitalize on opportunities both respectable and crude offered by the flexibility of a globetrotting life. The timing and transformation of the guises worn by stewardesses as airborne heroines represent the real transformation of women in the occupation.