EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- A world of aviation history has been made at Edwards Air Force Base, including the time a woman with not so much jet experience flew an F-86 right into the history books to become the first woman to break the sound barrier.

Though she originally had no flying aspirations, Jackie Cochran took to the sky like she was born to fly.

In an interview decades ago, she said, "I soloed the first time in 1932, and I had never seen an airplane on the ground until Saturday morning, and I soloed Monday morning."

She went on to set speed and altitude records. 

Then, in 1940, she became the first woman to pilot a bomber across the North Atlantic.  By 1943, she was directing the Women's Airforce Service Pilots Program, or WASPs, as they came to be known.  In fact, the military attributed Cochran as being the first to envision using female pilots, the need for a school to train them, and for turning it into reality.

After World War II, Cochran turned to jets. 

She became a test pilot for the Canadian manufacturer of the F-86, a company in which her husband had ownership.  She set her sights on the sound barrier, on Chuck Yeager to help her break it -- and on Edwards Air Force Base as the place to make it happen.

Christopher Ball, with Public Affairs at Edwards Air Force Base, says the significance of Edwards has to do with its "46 square miles of hard-packed clay out there, which is a perfect landing surface for an aircraft that may not have ever been tested or landed before or is in distress. The lake bed has also been the site of Chuck Yeager when he broke the sound barrier in 1947."

Dr. Elliott Haimoff, director of the documentary, "Jackie Cochran, First Lady of Flight," says some things had to happen, though, before Jackie could start training. 

"Chuck Yeager told me that back then, in like the early 1950s, it cost $10,000 per flight that Jackie Cochran had to pay just for the insurance of the flight.  Back then people bought houses for $10,000, so it was an incredible amount of money," he said.

In a later interview, Gen. Chuck Yeager, USAF (ret.), first to break the sound barrier, explained how Jackie's flight initially came together. 

"General Doolittle came out, he set me down and said, 'do you think Jackie can hack this program, cause we don't want the Air Force embarrassed you know if something happens to her.'  I said 'I think she can hack it,'" he said.

And she did.

On May 18, 1953, Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier -- at Edwards Air Force Base.

And she didn't stop there. 

Cochran went on to break more speed records well into her 50s.

"She was as good as the guys were, and being a woman, that didn't make any difference," Yeager has said.

Cochran passed away in 1980, but not before she showed the world how far -- and how high -- women could go.

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