Marcelle Choisnet

Her father worked for SNCF, France's national state-owned railway company, and the family were not well off.

[1] She was a second lieutenant in the French Air Force in 1940-1942 but left the military after a period of training in France and Morocco.

[3][4] After the Second World War, Choisnet achieved a number of national and international female gliding records, thirty French records and eleven world records, in the categories of time, distance and altitude, whether in both single or double seater gliders.These included:[4] In 1951, Choisnet was awarded the Lilienthal Gliding Medal, the first woman to receive the award from Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), based on the votes of delegates to the annual International Gliding Commission.

Choisnet married a fellow pilot, Jacques Gohard, and was sometimes known as Marcelle Choisnet-Gohard.

[6] Marcelle Hélène Choisnet died in a gliding accident at Chartres on 14 July 1974.