Walking on Air (21 page)

The first program of its kind, the TCPTP got a great deal of national attention. Phoebe's school was visited by representatives from the army and navy and members of the Bureau of Air Commerce. That December, President Roosevelt unveiled his own program to provide a boost to civil aviation by funding pilot training for college students. Though it was ostensibly aimed at stimulating the flagging private aviation industry, many recognized the program's potential for national defense. Critics charged that the president's real purpose was to build up aviation for war. Indeed, he did little to dampen that criticism, telling the National Aviation Forum that “hardly another civil activity of our people bears such a direct and intimate relation to the national security as does civil aviation. It supplies a reservoir of inestimable value to our military and naval forces in the form of men and machines, while at the same time it keeps an industry so geared that it can be instantly diverted to the production of fighting planes in the event of national emergency.”
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The federal Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 transferred responsibility for nonmilitary aviation from the Department of Commerce to a new independent agency, the Civil Aeronautics Authority. Under that agency's purview was the new Civilian Pilot Training Program, codified in the Civilian Pilot Training Act of 1939. Training began with the government paying for a 72-hour ground school course followed by 35–50 hours of flight instruction at
facilities located near thirteen participating colleges and universities; 330 students between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five were selected for the first class.
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Modeled after the TCPTP, the program had three major differences from the one in Tennessee: ground school courses were offered in colleges rather than public schools, the minimum age of participants was increased from sixteen to eighteen, and the ratio of women to men fell from 20 percent to 10 percent.
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By the end of the first year, 9,350 men and women were being trained at 435 colleges and universities. Overall, approximately 2,500 women were CPTP trained before America entered the war.
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After Pearl Harbor, the CPTP became the War Training Service (WTS).
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From 1942 until the program ended in the summer of 1944, students continued to take college courses and private flight training, but all students were now required to sign agreements to enlist in the armed forces upon graduation. Once this took effect, women were automatically excluded. A number of women protested this development and Eleanor Roosevelt asked Robert H. Hinckley, assistant secretary of commerce and director of the Civilian Pilot Training Program, for an explanation. He noted the necessity to concentrate resources on training men for combat, adding “If, or when, the time comes when trained girls are needed in non-combat work to release men for active duty, that will be a different situation.”
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In 1938, as she taught her ground school in Memphis, Phoebe was still struggling to try to secure a job in Washington. She tried again with a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt asking to be appointed as the third member of the Air Safety Board.
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The first lady passed the request on to her husband, who responded: “She should have some job in the bureau tho [
sic
] I fear not this one.” The president followed up with Edward J. Noble, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Authority. Noble suggested he had found a possible position for her as assistant chief of the Flight Information Section. The description of the job made it clear that this would be strictly paper shuffling: preparing periodical bulletins, collecting and disseminating data on airport and navigational facilities, compiling weekly notices, and the like. Further, the position paid only about $3,000, a considerable cut from the $5,600 salary she earned in 1935. After the president forwarded this suggestion to Dewson, she dropped a note to the first lady saying that she had decided not to share this letter with Phoebe.

It might make her feel worse than the fact that others were preferred ahead of her for the Board. I really am enthusiastic about her for the
Board. She is keenly interested because of her husband's death in an air plane crash (when he was not piloting), because she has grown up in the industry, and because by nature she is sensible, practical and undramatic. From my experience a good woman does any group of men executives good. But I am not pressing you.

The first lady attached a note to her husband to Dewson's message reading simply “What about this? ER.” The president passed it to Secretary Early with the message, “Will you take this up with the Chairman of the Air Safety Board and see if they can use Phoebe Omlie anywhere? FDR.” A reply from the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) administrator Clinton Hester asked James Rowe to look into the situation, asserting, “We have held up filling this position for several weeks in order that Mrs. Omlie might be considered should she be interested and should the President see fit to issue an executive order [in order to bypass a civil service exam] which would permit the appointment.” When Rowe responded, he addressed his remarks to Secretary Early. The Air Safety Board cannot use her, he wrote, because “1. she has no civil service status and 2. their work is mostly field work at accident crashes and is too tough for a woman.” He reiterated that the lower-paying position at Flight Information was still available. Otherwise there was no position for her “unless the president directs the authority to create a position.” FDR forwarded this reply to his wife along with a memo responding to that final point. “Sorry but I cannot possibly make an exception. I have had many similar cases in the past.”
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Attempting to eliminate at least one of the detriments to a Safety Board appointment, Phoebe took the civil service exam for senior air safety investigator and scored an 89 (including the widow's preference).
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She appealed to her senator to help. In September 1940, Senator Kenneth McKellar wrote to the first lady about his concern that Phoebe's talents and experience had been overlooked. “[B]ecause aviation is more or less a profession for men, many people charged with policy making in our government do not know the vast experience and accomplishments of Mrs. Omlie.” Given that the Civil Service Commission had informed him that “she heads one of their examination lists for aeronautics,” he felt certain that if Mrs. Roosevelt would speak with the chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board or the assistant secretary of commerce, that a position could be found. The first lady wrote to both Harlee Branch at the Civil Aeronautics Board and Robert Hinckley at Commerce to urge them to find a position for Phoebe Omlie.
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Phoebe, frustrated with trying to search for a federal job from Memphis, returned to Washington in mid-January 1941. Thanking the first lady for her kindnesses, Phoebe reported that Harlee Branch had been “very nice in trying to work me in with their safety division,” but she had been told that their appropriation was so limited that such a place would have to be financed by Commerce.

After many weeks I had a talk with Mr. Hinckley. He had me talk with Mr. Brimhall, who referred me to a Mr. Wright who informed me that he had just come over from the Census Bureau and would have to take the matter up with Mr. Hinckley …. I talked with one of the assistants in the office of Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones. He asked me to submit a short resume of my career. After this I was informed that Mr. Jones was impressed and would take the matter up with Mr. Hinckley.

After spelling out the run-around she had received, Phoebe concluded with a plea. “As I have devoted the last four years in writing and working out the original public aviation instruction legislation for Tennessee (which did not carry a salary) I must make connections where I can be on a payrole [
sic
] … Will you advise me?” Mrs. Roosevelt immediately posted a short note to Secretary of Commerce Jesse Jones: “Phoebe Omlie tells me that her case has been brought to your attention. I do not know what you can do, but I do think she should have consideration because of the work which she has done.”
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Apparently this time the pressure worked. In February 1941, Phoebe was appointed as senior private flying specialist assigned to the Research Division of the Civil Aeronautics Administration to coordinate all aviation work done by various agencies of the federal government.
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Shortly afterward, the president met with Phoebe and told her that he was particularly concerned about the paucity of trained ground personnel to service planes being readied for war.
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She was immediately put in charge of the Aviation Ground Servicemen's Training Program, a position for which she was highly qualified, given her mechanical knowledge, her familiarity with airport management, and her experience setting up aviation schools and writing curricula. Her job was to systematize the efforts of the CAA, the WPA, and the Office of Education in establishing a 1.5-million-dollar defense training program to provide specialized training for airport ground personnel in skills required by expanding civil and military aviation. She was charged
with inspecting 250 key airports around the country as potential training sites, as well as outlining the appropriate courses of instruction. Working with the Office of Education, Phoebe designed and established a ninety-day course of study that included airport safety practices, reading blueprints, airport management, care of equipment, fuel facilities, cleaning planes, clerical work, and the numerous other jobs around an airport that did not require highly skilled aviation mechanics. Although the leader of the program was a woman, the trainees were limited to men.
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“It's a program that's urgently needed,” she said. “As the number of airplanes increases, the demand for ground personnel becomes greater. In civil aviation it is estimated that at least nine ground men are needed to keep one pilot in the air. Military aviation requires a much larger ground crew per pilot.”
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Phoebe spent eight weeks setting up 120 schools in thirty-eight states. After the initial program to train 5,000 men in the first year and a half was organized, Phoebe served as the CAA's technical advisor and liaison with the schools. Ultimately the program was expanded to 620 schools that graduated 9,000 mechanics and ground personnel for the war effort.
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In May, she was again in the air, traveling over 20,000 miles to establish flying schools to teach primary aviation around the country for the CPTP program. Among the schools she got up and running was one at Tuskegee, Alabama, “the first of its kind for negroes.”
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As all able-bodied men were being drafted for war and the need for trained pilots significantly increased, the Civil Aeronautics Authority predicted a critical shortage of flight instructors. The CAA press spokesman Charles E. Planck expressed grave concern that the CPTP programs and civilian schools that were training pilots for the army might have to cease operations. “Draft boards continue to draft civilian instructors into the foot army or else, with threat of draft, the instructors volunteer for the Air Transport Command, get into airline cargo carrying, or into some branch of service aviation. If draft boards cannot be dissuaded, women are going to have to fill the breach.”
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W. McLean Stewart, director of the War Training Service, concurred: “The Army is going to take every qualified man between the ages of 18 and 37. Every possible man must be released for the service, and from the standpoint of the manpower problem alone it makes sense to use women instructors when we can.”
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This discussion of women flight instructors occurred at the time when women in many capacities were stepping up to aid the war effort, volunteering for war industry jobs, or joining the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). The Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), the
predecessor of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), had begun training female pilots for noncombat missions in support of the Army Air Forces.
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Percy McDonald also saw “no reason women could not be trained so that they could be used in the training of pilots, both as ground and flight instructors.”
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Without waiting for the federal government to do something about it, he and the Tennessee Bureau of Aeronautics decided to act. Before making their proposal, though, the bureau cautiously investigated the possible “psychological reactions of young student fliers towards women instructors.” They interviewed students at aviation schools that used them and found that “especially new students react very favorably under the patient guidance of women. The fear of altitudes and speed in the air is more quickly overcome [with a woman instructor].” The TBA was satisfied that their survey supported their own conclusions that “there is a definite place that women can take in the all-out war effort in the training of needed personnel in divisions of our aviation training schools when specialized aeronautical knowledge is required.”
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In 1942, McDonald persuaded the CAA to loan Phoebe Omlie to the state in order to establish an experimental program to fully train ten women flight instructors with the anticipation that the program would serve as a pilot project for later adoption by the Civil Aeronautics Administration and the U.S. military.
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The Tennessee Women's Research Flight Instructors' School was launched in September 1942 with a spartan budget of approximately $15,000, out of which the residence, subsistence, uniforms, and equipment, including three training planes, were bought or rented. Though the CAA provided no funds, besides loaning Phoebe's services, the agency lent rhetorical support. Robert Hinckley wrote to McDonald that “women have always been the fundamental background for teaching, and I feel that when they are properly trained to teach aviation subjects then they can contribute much toward relieving man-power for actual combat flying.”
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