Laura Ingalls (aviator)

Laura Houghtaling Ingalls (December 14, 1893 – January 10, 1967) was a pilot who won the Harmon Trophy. She was arrested in December 1941 and convicted of failing to register as a paid German agent.

Early life

She was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 14, 1893 to Francis Abbott Ingalls I and Martha Houghtaling (1865–19??). Martha was the daughter of David Harrison Houghtaling of Kingston, New York, who was a descendant of Jan Willemsen Hoogteling, who arrived in New Amsterdam on May 9, 1661.

Regarding her mother, Laura wrote: "My mother, partly through ill health, was extremely emotional and without adequate self-discipline; spoiled by her parents who thought she was wonderful and could do anything. Brilliant along certain lines, she possessed the trait I find most exciting in the American character, viz. the ability to hurdle difficulties and achieve the reputedly impossible. I grew up under such influence."

Sibling

Her brother was Francis Abbott Ingalls II (1895–1978) who was also born in Brooklyn. Francis registered for the draft while he was attending military school in Tuxedo Park, New York as a private in the infantry. He was an officer in both World War I and World War II. Francis married Mabel Morgan Satterlee (1901–1993) on September 19, 1926. Mabel was the daughter of Herbert Livingston Satterlee and Louisa Pierpont Morgan, the daughter of J. P. Morgan.

Aviation

Her most well-known flights were made in 1934 and earned her a Harmon Trophy. Ingalls flew in a Lockheed Air Express from Mexico to Chile, over the Andes Mountains to Rio de Janeiro, to Cuba and then to Floyd Bennett Field in New York, marking the first flight over the Andes by an American woman, the first solo flight around South America in a landplane, the first flight by a woman from North America to South America, and setting a woman's distance record of 17,000 miles.

Aviation records

• Longest solo flight ever made by a woman at 17,000 miles
• First solo flight by a woman from North to South America
• First solo flight around South America by man or woman
• First complete flight by a land plane around South America by a man or woman.
• First American woman to fly the Andes solo

Timeline

• 1893-12-14 – Was born
• 1928-12-23 – Soloed on Roosevelt Field, Mineola, Long Island
• 1929 – Enrolled in Universal Flying School at Lambert–St. Louis Field in June
• 1929 – Obtained Limited Commercial license from Department of Commerce in September
• 1930-04-12 – Obtained Transport license from Department of Commerce
• 1930 Graduated from Universal Flying School Transport course with score of 98, was only girl in the School
• 1930-05-04 – Established women's loop record in a D.H. Gipsy Moth over Lambert–St. Louis Field – 344 loops. Previous record was 47 loops
• 1930-05-26 – Bettered first loop record at Muskogee, Oklahoma by making 980 consecutive continuous loops in 3:40 in her D.H. Gipsy Moth
• 1930-08-13 – Established world barrel-roll record for men and women of 714 rolls over Lambert–St. Louis Field in her D.H. Gipsy Moth
• 1930 – Won third place Women's Dixie Derby from Washington, D.C. to Chicago, Illinois winning $800 in August and September
• 1930 – Established first women's transcontinental round trip record between Roosevelt Field and Grand Central Air Terminal, Glendale, California and return. Time 30:25 to California; 25:20 on return flight to Roosevelt Field. Airplane: D.H. Gipsy Moth in October
• 1934 – Was granted 3rd Class Radio Telephone license with authority to use code (call letters KHTJQ) in January
• 1934-02-28 – Took off from North Beach Airport, Jackson Heights, New York in Lockheed Air Express for flight to South America
• 1934-03-08 – Took off from Miami for Havana, Cuba. Crossed the Caribbean Sea to Mérida, Yucatán. Continued down through Central America to France Field, Cristóbal, Panama
• 1934-03-13 – Flew non-stop from France Field, Cristobal, Canal Zone to Talara, Peru, a distance of 1296 miles – 460 miles over water. Continued down the West coast of South America to Santiago, Chile
• 1934-03-21 – Crossed the Andes at an altitude of 18,000 feet through the Uspallata Pass between Santiago, Chile and Mendoza, Argentina
• 1934-04-17 – Arrived in Trinidad and Tobago
• 1934-04-22 – Arrived in Miami, Florida
• 1934-04-25 – Arrived Floyd Bennett Field, New York completing 17,000 mile flight

• Same article under Timeline, also "L-100 TriStar, The Lockheed Story, Ingells, Douglas, Aero Pub, pg30

Activities as a German agent

In December 1941, Ingalls was charged by a grand jury with failing to register with the government as a paid Nazi agent, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938. She had been receiving approximately $300 a month from Baron Ulrich von Gienanth (Ulrich Freiherr von Gienanth), the head of the Gestapo in the US, and, officially, second secretary of the German Embassy in Washington. During the trial it came out that von Gienanth had encouraged Ingalls's participation in the non-interventionist America First Committee, a significant embarrassment for that organization.

Ingalls had been arrested in late September 1939 for violating White House airspace, but was released within hours, after a flight in which she dropped anti-Lend-Lease pamphlets over Washington, D.C. from her Lockheed Orion monoplane. Following the defeat of France, she approached von Gienanth with the idea of a solo flight to Europe, where she would continue her campaign to promote the Nazi cause. Von Gienanth told her to stay in America to continue her work with the America First Committee, for whom she gave popular speeches in which she derided America's "lousy democracy" and gave Nazi salutes. He praised her oratory skills. She had made a careful study of Mein Kampf, on which she based many of her speeches, as well as pamphlets by Hitler such as My New Order and Germany and the Jewish Question, and Elizabeth Dilling's books The Roosevelt Red Record and The Octopus. She expected Hitler to win the war; in April 1941, she wrote to a German official, "Some day I will shout my triumph to a great leader and a great people... Heil Hitler!" After the German declaration of war on December 11, 1941, she went straight to Washington to receive a list of contacts from von Gienath, and was arrested a week later.

At her trial, the FBI testified that they had kept her under surveillance for several months. Ingalls was sentenced to eight months to two years in prison on February 20, 1942. She was transferred from the District of Columbia jail to the West Virginia Women's Reformatory in Alderson, West Virginia, on July 14, 1943, after fighting with an inmate. She was released on October 5, 1943 after serving 20 months.

Prison had not altered her views, however. A few months after her release, she stated her opinion of the Normandy landings:

This whole invasion is a power lust, blood drunk orgy in a war which is unholy and for which the U.S. will be called to terrible accounting. . . . They [the Nazis] fight the common enemy. They fight for independence of Europe—independence from the Jews. Bravo!

After her probation ended, in July 1944 Ingalls was arrested at the Mexican border. Her suitcase contained seditious materials, including notes she had made of Japanese and German short-wave radio broadcasts. She was prevented from entering Mexico, but was not prosecuted. Ingalls applied for a presidential pardon in 1950, but her application for clemency was rejected by two successive Pardon Attorneys. On the latter occasion, the reply stated that Ingalls had been of "special value of the Nazi propaganda machine".

She died on January 10, 1967, in Burbank, California, aged 73.