“Highest is safest” was May Bradford’s motto in life.
Shattering glass ceilings in the air and on the ground, this war widow and aviation pioneer lived a giant life.
She hit the skies in the era of The Great Depression around the same time as fellow Australian aviatrix Nancy Bird Walton and America’s Amelia Earhart.
Yet, compared with her famous counterparts, May Bradford’s story has been relegated to a footnote in history.
A chance discovery while researching her family history has led Mackay woman Jennifer Perry on a quest to uncover more about Australia’s first female dual commercial pilot and ground aircraft engineer.
Jennifer Perry has been researching the history of pioneer pilot May Bradford. (ABC Tropical North: Jenae Madden)
“May was an amazing person. I cannot believe that, like so many women in our history, her story somehow disappeared,” Ms Perry said.
While tracing her family tree, Ms Perry was surprised to learn May Bradford was her grandfather’s first cousin.
Even more surprising, however, was just how much of a trailblazer she was.
May Bradford was a pioneer in the aviation industry in the 1930s. (Supplied)
Flying and fixing aircraft too
During the Interwar years, female pilots were virtually unheard of and it was only in 1927 that women were allowed to hold a pilot’s licence — 12 years after the first aero club was established in Australia.
That same year, Millicent Bryant became the first woman in Australia to gain a private pilot’s licence.
But May Bradford was determined to take it a step further.
British woman Amy Johnson was making waves in 1930 as the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia.
Overhearing a conversation in a cafe that “no Australian would have the nerve”, Ms Bradford took it upon herself to prove them wrong.
May Bradford and Jack Jones welding the all-Australian aeroplane for the England to Australia air race, circa 1934. (Supplied: Sam Hood, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales)
Recently widowed after her husband died from wounds suffered at Gallipoli, Ms Bradford had two young sons when she gained her commercial pilot’s licence, completing her training in Rockhampton and Brisbane.
“Flying is much better than motoring,” Ms Bradford said in a Sydney Morning Herald newspaper article in December 1933.
“A flight in an aeroplane has no terrors for a woman who has had a proper training course.”
Not content just knowing how to fly, Ms Bradford learnt how to repair aircraft as well.
Newspaper articles at the time said she applied for several positions in the Mascot workshops at Sydney airport before eventually getting a job as a junior mechanic.
May Bradford in the workshop. (Supplied: Sam Hood, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales)
It took her seven years to gain her engineering certificates, making her the first Australian woman to hold class A and B pilot licences, D electrical ground engineer certificates, plus an X certificate in oxywelding.
“She was really happy only when she was in overalls working on a machine until long after the clubroom’s lunch hour, or when she was away high above the clouds,” wrote SMH journalist Enid Delalande in 1937.
“‘Highest is safest’ was her motto.”
Early thrill seeker
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May Bradford’s adventurous streak was forged early in life.
Born in 1897, Ms Bradford was raised in the small central Queensland fossicking town of Rubyvale.
She spent her childhood years as an acrobat with the family Bradford’s Surprise Party Circus, traversing north Queensland in the early 1900s.
Ms Bradford went on to become a champion horse rider and in 1920 received an award from The Prince of Wales when he visited the Brisbane Show.
She even tried her hand at acting, appearing in two silent films, some of the earliest produced in Queensland.
In 1919, Ms Bradford married returned soldier Francis Shepherd and they welcomed two sons, Francis “Frank” Ray in 1921 and Henry “Harry” James in 1923.
For a time, Ms Bradford followed in her father Charlie’s footsteps in gem dealing, an occupation that later helped fund her aviation training.
The Golden Eagle
Ms Bradford kept her maiden name in her aviation career and by 1936, she’d reached her dream of owning her own plane.
May Bradford alighting from her plane after she completed one leg of the 1936 Brisbane to Adelaide Centenary Race. (Supplied)
Christened The Golden Eagle, her Klemm Eagle monoplane was adorned with a golden bird on its body and the cabin fitted out with curtains, cushions, arm rests, and book holders, and she wore a gold and black flying suit to match.
The plane could carry a pilot and two passengers and hold a cruising speed of more than 200 kilometres per hour.
A tribute to the “expert airwoman” in Rockhampton’s The Morning Bulletin in 1937 said her “machine” was the “admiration of all male pilots”.
“The engine was always perfectly clean, a tribute to her profession as a licensed engineer,” it said.
Ms Bradford was one of five female pilots to compete in the star-studded Brisbane to Adelaide Centenary Air Race in December 1936.
May Bradford, far right, with fellow female pilots Ivy Pearce and Nancy Bird Walton, the night before the 1936 Brisbane to Adelaide Centenary Air Race. (Supplied)
She experienced engine problems in the second leg but fixed the plane herself using her engineering skills.
Ms Bradford came 11th in the race won by Reg Ansett.
The Ladies Trophy went to Ms Bradford’s friend Nancy Bird Walton, who at 19 years old became Australia’s youngest female commercial pilot and became known as the “Angel of the Outback” for her work with the Royal Flying Doctor Service.
A fiery end
Ms Bradford died at the age of 39 on January 24, 1937, when her Golden Eagle collided with another monoplane and burst into flames at the Sydney aerodrome.
Her passengers Harriet Jane Coley and Ellen Latimer were also killed.
The pair had bought tickets for 10 shillings on her air taxi for a flight over Sydney Harbour.
“The fire was so intense, for some minutes it was impossible to see either the plane or its occupants,” the Morning Bulletin wrote two days later.
At her funeral, held in Sydney, three planes flew overhead, dipping low in a final salute to a gallant airwoman.
Jennifer Perry with historic newspaper clippings and letters she has gathered from May Bradford’s family. (ABC Tropical North: Jenae Madden)
“She had worked so hard to get to where she got and it was all snatched away,” Ms Perry said.
Paving the way for women in aviation today
The Australian Women Pilots’ Association was founded in 1950 by Nancy Bird Walton to assist and foster women in aviation.
National president Sarah Hume said the likes of May Bradford, Nancy Bird Walton, and Ivy Pearce paved the way for women in the aviation industry today.
“I think they’re hugely important stories to tell. We stand on the shoulders of those people,” she said.
May Bradford with two warrant officers from HMS Sussex. (Supplied: Ted Hood, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales)
Reflecting on May Bradford’s story, Ms Hume said she not only pioneered aviation but to do it as a woman was even more incredible.
“I think she would have been facing just a general societal expectation of what women did in that era … and it had nothing to do with aviation,” she said.
“There’s still a huge struggle for women today in the industry, it’s inspiring and gives a lot of people drive and motivation to keep trying in their chosen pursuit.”
Archived photo of May Bradford from the Brisbane to Adelaide Air Race in 1936. (Supplied: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales)
Almost a century has passed since women were allowed to hold pilot licences, Ms Hume said women were still under-represented in the industry.
According to statistics from 2021 from the International Society of Women Airline Pilots, female airline pilots make up 7.5 per cent of pilots in Australia.
“That’s something we are constantly trying to improve,” Ms Hume said.
“You’d argue that isn’t a good statistic today but if you think about the 1930s that number would have been much lower.”