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Laura Houghtaling Ingalls (December 14, 1893 – January 10, 1967) was an American pilot who won the Harmon Trophy.

She was arrested in December 1941 and convicted of failing to register as a paid Nazi agent, and served 20 months in prison. The Nazis had encouraged her to speak at events of the America First Committee.

Aviation

She learned to fly in 1928 at Roosevelt Field near Mineola, New York, and then continued at Parks Air College in St. Louis. By 1930 she was setting records in acrobatic flying. 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 by a woman (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

Activities as a Nazi agent

In late September 1939, Ingalls flew over Washington, D.C., in her Lockheed Orion monoplane, dropping anti-intervention pamphlets. She was arrested for violating White House airspace, but was released within hours.

Following the defeat of France in 1940, she approached Baron (Freiherr) Ulrich von Gienanth, the head of the Gestapo in the US, and, officially, second secretary of the German Embassy. She suggested that she make 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 work with the America First Committee.

Ingalls gave speeches for the Committee in which she derided America's "lousy democracy" and gave Nazi salutes. Von Gienanth praised her oratorical 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. During the trial it came out that von Gienanth had encouraged Ingalls's participation in the America First Committee, a significant embarrassment for that organization.

The FBI testified that they had kept her under surveillance for several months. She was transferred from the District of Columbia jail to the U.S. federal women's prison in Alderson, West Virginia, on July 14, 1943, after fighting with another inmate.

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.

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

References

Further reading

  • New York Times; May 4, 1930 "Laura Ingalls Makes 344 Loops in a Row; New York Flier Sets Record at St. Louis. St. Louis, May 3, 1930 (AP) "
  • New York Times; August 14, 1930 "Laura Ingalls Rolls Plane 714 Times"
  • New York Times; October 6, 1930 "Laura Ingalls Flying To Coast For Record; Aviatrix Seeking Women's Continental Mark Reaches St. Louis After Take-Off Here"
  • New York Times; October 16, 1942 "No Laura Ingalls Parole. Board Rejects Plea In Case Of German Agent"
  • Hargrave: Laura Ingalls