ABSTRACT

This chapter talks about the rhythm of flying, and explores what happens when that rhythm is broken. It discusses the mobile and embodied interactions of 1920s women pilots with particular rhythms, those of their flying and of their aircraft engines. The chapter shows how women's aerial mobilities were shaped by rhythms and arrhythmias, because, as Tim Edensor and Julian Holloway put it, Rhythm is intimately associated with movement, and therefore understanding rhythms is part of understanding mobilities. In the case of early women pilots, arrhythmias in flight often demanded immediate action. To achieve the desired responses in the heat of the moment that practice, in pilot training, involves repeated simulation of crisis situations, with the hopes that such repetition will indeed make the desired response to arrhythmia automatic. Ruth Nichols, for example, detailed how she relied on her training when engine arrhythmia struck.