Hilder Florentina Youngberg Smith (August 10, 1890 – January 11, 1977) was an aerial acrobat, parachutist, and pioneer aviator. She was one of California's first female pilots and the first woman to fly an airplane from

LAX Los Angeles International Airport , commonly referred to as LAX (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary international airport serving Los Angeles, California and its surrounding metropolitan area. LAX is located in the W ...

. Hilder was a member of a flying aerial team called The Flying Sylvesters.

Biography

Born to Swedish parents Andrew G. Youngberg (1853-1935) and Frida A. Flard (1853-1963) on August 10, 1890, as Hilder Florentina Youngberg. She married James Floyd Smith on May 11, 1907. Together they barnstormed thru southern California for five years with the Flying Sylvesters. In the summer of 1912, Hilder and Frank Shaw helped Floyd built his own airplane, Floyd added dual controls to fly with Hilder. They had two sons Sylvester Smith (1908-1919) and Prevost Vedrines Smith (1913–1991) aka Prevost Floyd Smith. In 1919 at age 11, Sylvester was tragically killed by a car in Chicago. Glenn L. Martin needed a female parachutist to jump into the opening ceremonies of the new Los Angeles Harbor. Hilder had never jumped before but made a deal to jump twice if she could use Martin's airplanes with flight lessons from her husband. In April 1914 she made two parachute jumps using a static line chute. On her second jump climbing from a Glenn Martin piloted airplane correcting for drift on a windy April 1914 day, Hilder, a non-swimmer, was startled by seeing the Los Angeles bay below. Reaching for the cockpit rail, she slipped tumbling from the airplane twisting the parachute lines. Quickly untangling the chute lines, Hilder inflated her chute just in time, landing on the beach. Watching the near disaster, her spouse

Floyd Smith Floyd Robert Donald Smith (born May 16, 1935, in Perth, Ontario) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey centre and coach. Biography Smith grew up in Galt, Ontario, playing junior hockey with the Galt Black Hawks. He made his National Ho ...

vowed to redesign the Broadwick static line parachute to safely operate away from the airplane. Hilder's inspiration spurred Floyd to develop and patient the first

freefall In Newtonian physics, free fall is any motion of a body where gravity is the only force acting upon it. In the context of general relativity, where gravitation is reduced to a space-time curvature, a body in free fall has no force acting on i ...

or modern parachute. On June 10, 1914, with flight instruction from her spouse, Hilder Smith made her first solo flight in Martin's airplane. In 1916, with passenger Adele Mosteri, she became the first female pilot to fly out of Bennett's bean field, which became

. Hilder Florentina Smith died on January 11, 1977, in La Mesa, San Diego, California. She is buried at the

Portal of Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation The Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation is in Los Angeles, California. The shrine is a structure of marble, mosaic, and sculpted figures and is the burial site for fifteen pioneers of aviation. Designed by Kenneth A. MacDonald Jr. an ...

in California.

References

External links

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Hilder Florentina Smith
at BillionGraves {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Hilder Florentina Burials at Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery Members of the Early Birds of Aviation 1890 births 1977 deaths American women aviators Parachuting 1914 in aviation Aviation history of the United States Aviation pioneers People from Galesburg, Illinois American skydivers 20th-century American women 20th-century American people

Biography

See also

References

External links