First female fighter pilot
QUESTION What is known about the first female fighter pilot?
Sabiha GOKCEN, the adopted daughter of Mustafa Kemal ataturk, founder and first president of Turkey, was the world’s first female fighter pilot.
ataturk promoted female role models, granted women the right to vote in 1934 and recognised their right to divorce. he had no children of his own, and adopted eight girls and one boy.
The future Sabiha Gokcen was born in 1913 in bursa, a city in north-west Turkey. She was a 12-year-old in an orphanage visited by ataturk when she appealed for his help to attend boarding school. impressed by her ambition, he brought her back to ankara to join his family.
Nine years later, the Surname act required all Turkish citizens to choose a family name. ataturk prophetically bestowed Gokcen, meaning ‘of the skies’, upon Sabiha.
When she attended the opening ceremony of Turkey’s first flight school in May 1935, ataturk noticed she was mesmerised by the parachutists and asked if she would like to become one.
Sabiha became the flight school’s first female student. after jumping out of a plane, she was determined to fly one.
She trained at the Military aviation academy in 1936 and with the First aircraft Regiment. She flew fighter and bomber planes, becoming the world’s first female combat pilot. She flew 8,000 hours — 32 in combat flights — and 22 types of aircraft during her career.
in March 1937, Sabiha was involved in the bombing of a Kurdish revolt in Dersim province. She claimed she only bombed specific rebel targets, but we now know more than 13,000 civilians were massacred in the campaign.
Sabiha is viewed as a hero in Turkey. istanbul’s second international airport was named in her honour after her death in 2001.
Western air forces took much longer to recruit female fighter pilots. Jeannie Leavitt became the first female U.S. fighter pilot in 1993. in 1995, Flt Lt Jo Salter became the RaF’s first female fast jet pilot, flying Tornado GR1bs operationally with No 617 Squadron.
QUESTION Is it true vines from America are in most of the world’s vineyards?
iN ThE 1860s, when new plants were being brought from the New World to Europe, phylloxera, an aphid-like insect that lives on grapevines, hitchhiked to Europe on american vines.
Due to no natural resistance, the pest ravaged the European vines and almost destroyed the wine industry. This is known as the Great Wine blight.
in 1868, French botanist Jules-Emile Planchon identified the insect and named it Phylloxera vastatrix, the devastating louse. The French government offered a large reward for a successful remedy.
Suggestions included burying a live toad under each vine, watering vineyards with white wine or sea water, or applying hot sealing wax to pruning cuts.
in 1869, Gaston bazille and Leo Laliman, researchers at the Universities of Montpellier and bordeaux, discovered domestic vines from america were naturally resistant to the insect, which feeds on the roots.
it was first proposed winemakers grow american vines in European vineyards. This caused uproar as it was widely believed European vines produced superior wine.
bazille and Laliman proposed grafting the stems of European vines onto phylloxera-resistant american rootstock. There was resistance to this suggestion, not least because some experts felt the quality of the wine would suffer.
in 1881, the international Phylloxera Congress in bordeaux defined grafting as the most effective and economical solution to the vineyard pandemic.
Today, virtually all commercial vineyards in Europe’s major wine-producing countries graft native varieties on to american rootstock.
Elaine Gould, Sherborne, Dorset.
QUESTION Has anyone who has received a U.S. presidential pardon gone on to commit another crime?
ThE presidential pardon has been used extensively. Mass pardons — such as Jimmy Carter pardoning 200,000 draftdodgers in 1977 — suggest many could have gone on to commit crimes.
The framers of the Constitution gave the president the pardon power to ensure justice and, as alexander hamilton noted, ‘restore domestic tranquillity of the commonwealth’.
Early pardons were used to quell hostility towards the new government.
in 1858, President James buchanan issued a blanket pardon to thousands of Mormons, including leader brigham Young, in exchange for the religious minority accepting U.S. authority over Utah. after the Civil War, andrew Johnson pardoned hundreds of thousands of Confederate soldiers on Christmas Day 1868.
There have been some notorious recent cases. in 1981, Robert Wendell Walker Jr was pardoned by Ronald Reagan for an attempted bank robbery. in January 2002, an Oregon court tried, convicted and sentenced Walker to life in prison for the murder and dismemberment of his wife. he died that October before his appeal could be heard.
in 2001, Democrats and Republicans roundly criticised bill Clinton for a number of his last-minute pardons, in particular reprieving Marc Rich, a fugitive financier indicted for evading $48 million in taxes. Mr Rich’s former wife had donated $450,000 to Clinton’s presidential library and $70,000 to hillary Clinton’s senate campaign.
Peter Thomas, Luton, Beds.
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