First female combat pilot

Born on 21 March 1913, Sabiha Gökçen, one of the adopted daughters of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first President of Turkey, enrolled in the Military Aviation Academy in Eskisehir in 1936 and undertook training at the First Aircraft Regiment there. She flew fighter and bomber planes becoming the first Turkish, female aviator and the world’s first, female, combat pilot. During her flying career, she achieved some 8,000 hours, 32 of which were combat missions.