Violet Dunville: The Forgotten Balloonist Who Flew Through the Night

In the early 1920s, while most of Britain slept, Violet Dunville climbed into the basket of her balloon Banshee III and rose into the darkness above Hendon — bound, if the winds held, for France.

Violet was the wife of Lt.-Col. John Dunville, one of Britain's most celebrated aeronauts and a competitor in the prestigious Gordon Bennett Cup. But she wasn't just along for the ride. In a daring night ascent from the Welsh Harp at Hendon, Violet took to the skies at 1 a.m. alongside her son Captain M. Dunville and Commander Baldwin, intent on crossing the Channel. By the next morning, word came through: Banshee III had come down safely near the Belgian frontier.

This video looks at the remarkable, largely forgotten story of a woman who took her place in the basket of one of the great sporting balloons of the golden age of aeronautics — flying not as a spectator, but as a pilot in her own right.

📸 Archival photographs courtesy of the Dunville family collection and contemporary press.

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