On Tuesday, November 30, 2021, Joséphine Baker entered the Pantheon, to join the great figures in the history of France. At the evocation of her name, one naturally thinks of the music hall artist, of the resistance against Nazi oppression, of the anti-racist activist. It is less well known, Joséphine Baker was also an aviator, which opened the doors to the Free French Air Forces.
It was on a French school biplane, a Caudron C.270 Luciole that Joséphine Baker learned to fly in 1935. A dream that she had cherished for a long time, after learning to drive 10 years earlier. On May 11, 1935, the press echoed it widely. On the front page of the newspaper The morning, a short article informs readers that “Miss Joséphine Baker took her first flying lesson at Guyancourt aerodrome, which has now disappeared to the west of the capital. “
The news will be widely reported in the press. “How much I prefer the plane to the car “, she exclaims. His instructor, a certain Mr. Demay, noted his sense of the air, his early mastery of the aircraft.
“All the movements necessary for her takeoffs and landings came to her as if spontaneously, by reflex … She had the instinct of the air, the direction of the wind.”
A few months later, Joséphine Baker obtained her pilot’s license from the French flying club in 1935. And it was not a star’s whim, but a real passion. Josephine Baker flies whenever she has the chance.
Then war breaks out. Josephine Baker chooses to stay in France and fight against Nazi Germany. She joined the Resistance. The music hall artist, adored by the whole of France, becomes a secret agent in the service of French counter-espionage. In danger, she was exfiltrated by Free France, and naturally joined the ranks of the Free French Air Forces, shortly after meeting General de Gaulle in London. She will serve at the rank of second lieutenant as IPSA, that is to say Air Rescue Pilot Nurse.
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Returning from a mission at the end of World War II, she is the victim of an accident. The Caudron C.440 Goéland of the Free French Air Forces on board which it took place, crashed off the French coast.
The occupants of the plane owe their survival only to a battalion of Senegalese skirmishers who saw the accident and rushed to save them. Two of them will perish in their heroic act. Josephine Baker will never touch a handle again.
It is obvious that Josephine Baker entered the Pantheon for her spy activity in the Resistance and for her fight against racism. But she was also the first female aviator to join the saints of the French Republic. Neither Saint-Exupéry nor Roland-Garros, despite repeated requests, had access to it.