aviator and flew her plane from the family seat at Woburn Abbey to Wispers, where she had a hangar constructed in the 1930s at the same time as the large eastern wing was being added to the house. She used a nearby field as a landing strip. On 2 August 1929, she departed on a record-breaking flight of 10,000 miles from Lympne Airport to Karachi (then in India) and return to Croydon Airport in eight days. She was accompanied in her single-engined Fokker F.VII (G-EBTS, Princess Xenia, which she renamed "The Spider" for its tenacity) by her personal pilot Captain C. D. Barnard and mechanic Robert (Bob) Little. On 8 April 1930 she made her first solo flight, in her DH.60G Moth (G-AAAO). On 10 April 1930 she embarked on a record-breaking flight from Lympne Airport to Cape Town, in "The Spider", flying 9,000 miles in 91 hours and twenty minutes over 10 days, again with Barnard and Little. In 1934 and again in 1935, with co-pilot F/Lt R. C. Preston in de Havilland Puss Moth G-ABOC, the Duchess made extensive flights from Britain to the Western Sahara and Northern Nigeria. Honours In January 1918 the duchess was awarded the Royal Red Cross in the second Associate grade, for her services to wartime nursing at Woburn Auxiliary Hospital. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1928. She was also Dame of Grace of the Order of Saint John (DGStJ) and a Fellow of the Linnean Society of the Imperial College (FLS). Eponym The Lesser Striped Shrew Sorex bedfordiae is named after her. It is found in Asia, from central China to Nepal, Assam and Myanmar. Death The duchess died aged 71, in March 1937, three months before Amelia Earhart's death, after leaving Woburn Abbey in a DH.60GIII Moth Major (G-ACUR), that crashed into the North Sea off Great Yarmouth; her body was never recovered. See also List of people who disappeared at sea List of suffragists and suffragettes Notes References Further reading Bedford, John Duke of. The Flying Duchess. MacDonald. 1968. ASIN B000RY7R0U 1865 births 1937 deaths 19th-century English nobility 20th-century English nobility 19th-century English women 20th-century English women Aviators killed in aviation accidents or incidents English activists English women activists English suffragists English duchesses by marriage Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire Dames of Grace of the Order of