Women Aviators (14 page)

Acts of sabotage against the WASPs were common on some airfields, particularly Camp Davis in North Carolina. WASPs found sugar in their planes' gas tanks (which clogs the engines); their tires blew out, radios stopped working, and planes quit in mid-air. When Lorraine Rodgers had to bail from her plane, investigators found that her rudder cables had been cut. The WASPs learned to befriend the mechanics and check their own planes before takeoff.

In the beginning, few people outside the military knew about the WASP program. Then media coverage started to grow. It was often negative, like when
Time
magazine called the WASPs “unnecessary and undesirable,” even though the accident rate of the WASPs was only 9 percent compared to 11 percent among male pilots. Even with the Army Air Forces recommendation to admit the WASPs as members of the military, Congress voted against it.

As the tide turned in the war, an end to the conflict seemed evident. Rumors began circulating that the WASPs would be disbanded. The rumor became fact when the WASP program was canceled on December 20, 1944. Vi Cowden later explained, “When the men came back, they wanted their jobs back. So they deactivated us.” Many of the former WASPs were unable to get flying jobs after the war ended.

Some WASPs refused to give up on recognition. They had served their country, and some had died in service for their country. Thirty-three years later, Congress voted to give the WASPs veteran's status, retroactive to their initial service. In the Senate, the vote was unanimous. On November 23, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed a bill into law:

Officially declaring the Women Airforce Service Pilots as having served on active duty in the Armed Forces of the United States for purposes of laws administered by the Veterans Administration.

Just as surprising as how long it took for the WASPs to be recognized was the fact that that no branch of the military accepted female pilots until 1974 or later. The first to do so was the navy, which admitted six women to the US Naval Flight Training School. The first to graduate was Commander Barbara Allen Rainey.

The navy's first combat pilot was Lieutenant Kara Spears Hultgreen. She was killed in 1994, when the left engine of her F-14 stalled during an attempt to land on the USS
Abraham Lincoln
about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of San Diego.

Later in 1974, the army began training female helicopter pilots. The first woman army pilot was Second Lieutenant Sally D. Woolfolk, who primarily flew UH-1 Huey helicopters.

Women were admitted to the Air Force pilot training program in 1976, navigator training in 1977, and fighter-pilot training in 1993, the same year that American women were first allowed to fly in combat. The 1976 program graduated 10 women, including Captain Connie Engle, who went on to become the first woman to fly the T-41 Mescalero and T-37 Tweet aircrafts solo. She was also the first woman to lead a two-ship formation.

Both the Air National Guard and the Coast Guard had their first female pilots in the late 1970s. It took the Marine Corps a little longer; Major Sarah M. Deal became the first female Marine Corps pilot in April 1995.

According to the Department of Defense in 2011, the air force has the greatest percentage of women on active military duty: 19.1 percent. In 2005, for the first time in the history of the Air Force, a woman was allowed to join the legendary highperformance jet team, the Thunderbirds. Two years later, for the first time in naval history, a woman commanded a fighter squadron. All branches of the US military restricted women military aviators until January 2013. At that time, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta issued a directive lifting all restrictions of women in combat. All military branches must submit a plan for integrating women by May 15, 2013, and integration must be complete by the beginning of 2016.

J
ACQUELINE “
J
ACKIE”
C
OCHRAN KNEW
women pilots could make a difference. In 1939, she wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt suggesting that women pilots be trained in order to free male pilots for combat roles. Eleanor Roosevelt was no stranger to the skills of women pilots. She had been a friend of Amelia Earhart's, whom she had often talked to about women flying. Roosevelt recommended that Jackie talk to General Hap Arnold.

General Hap Arnold headed the US Army Air Forces, which focused on military flying and eventually became the US Air Force. He asked Jackie to study the women pilots in Great Britain. She took 25 female pilots to Great Britain to train with ATA. She also demonstrated how women could be of service when she became the first woman to ferry a bomber across the Atlantic Ocean.

While Jackie was in Great Britain, Nancy Harkness Love established the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) through the Ferry Command of the Army Air Forces. Nancy picked the 25 best women pilots to ferry military planes throughout the United States.

General Arnold asked Jackie to return in 1942 to begin a women's flight-training program. The Women's Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) began in November when the first 28 recruits of the WFTD arrived in Houston to begin training. At the same time, Nancy Love's WAFS pilots flew their first mission—transporting Piper Cubs from Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, to Mitchell Field in Newcastle, England.

In February 1943, the Houston WFTD School closed, and all recruits for the program were required to report to Sweet-water, Texas. West of Dallas and Abilene, Sweetwater was dry and dusty and boasted a resident population of rattlesnakes. But it was also the location of Avenger Field, a training base for the Army Air Forces.

Nancy Love.
Courtesy of the US Air Force

Six months after Avenger Field became the training base for the WFTD, the government decided to merge the two women pilot programs, Nancy's WAFS and Jackie's WFTD, into the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Jackie became the director.

At Avenger Field, the women went through exactly the same training as the male recruits had. They trained mainly with the PT-19, but they also performed basic training with the BT-17 before advancing to the AT-6.

Unlike many early and famed women aviators, Jackie never had the ambition to be a pilot. She hadn't pined to be in the air when she was a little girl—she had been too busy just trying to survive.

Born Bessie Pittman in the rural Florida panhandle, Jackie knew only her sawmill town and its cotton fields as a child. Poverty was a way of life, and sometimes she stole chickens so that her family could eat. In her autobiography, she wrote that she didn't wear shoes until she was eight years old.

She picked cotton at an early age; soon she graduated from that to sweeping floors and shampooing hair in a beauty salon. Along the way, she changed her name from Bessie Pittman to Jacqueline Cochran. By 13, she was cutting hair and developing her own list of customers. Although she tried nursing school, she was never comfortable with it.

Instead, Jackie took her beautician skills to New York City in 1929, working at the popular salon called Antoine de Paris at Saks Fifth Avenue. Invited to various social gatherings, she met important people. At one dinner in 1932, she met millionaire Floyd Odlum. To him, she confessed a dream of owning a
cosmetics company. He advised her that flying was the best way to cover her territory during the economic depression.

She immediately began taking flying lessons. Within three weeks, she had her license. Jackie discovered something about flying when she was in the air: it felt right. She had a certain affinity for piloting. Later, she would say, “At that moment, when I paid for my first lesson, a beauty operator ceased to exist, and an aviator was born.”

Two days after earning her license, Jackie took off for a Canadian sports pilots' gathering in Montreal. Flying that distance solo made her realize how much she still had to learn about flying, including instrument flying and reading a compass and maps. Navigating an airplane with only the use of the instruments was necessary if one planned on being a serious pilot.

Tired of East Coast weather, Jackie enrolled in the Ryan Flying School in San Diego, California, in 1933. She was embarrassed about her lack of education and had an aversion to taking written tests and sitting in classrooms. She found someone to give her one-on-one instruction, and she soaked up as much as she could.

When she finished advanced flight training, she began entering races. The first major race she entered was the MacRobertson Air Race from London to Melbourne, which carried a $75,000 prize. She planned to compete in a plane with the nickname “Gee Bee.” However, the Gee Bee was a difficult and often dangerous plane to fly. Problems with the plane's flaps and mislabeled gas tank switches forced her to touch down in Romania. She was also forced to drop out of the 1935 Bendix cross-country race because of mechanical problems.

Jackie believed in hard work. While she was learning to fly, she was also launching her cosmetics company, Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics. Her determination paid off. By 1935, she was not only
an accomplished pilot but also the owner of a successful cosmetics company. Another high point came in 1936, when she married Floyd Odlum. She also began meeting other women pilots and became friends with Amelia Earhart. Like Amelia, Jackie also served as president of the Ninety-Nines at one time.

Jackie was a very competitive person. She wanted to win the races she entered, but mechanical problems prevented her from even finishing. Her luck eventually changed. In the 1937 Bendix, she came in third overall and was the first-place female finisher. The next year, she won the whole thing—coming in before any other pilot, male or female.

In the 1938 Bendix race, she piloted a silver Seversky P-35 fighter plane, attempting to fly the 2,042 miles (3,286 kilometers) from Los Angeles to Cleveland. As she approached her destination, she had only enough gasoline in her tanks for a few minutes, but it was enough. At 2:23
PM,
she crossed the finish line, winning the Bendix in 8 hours, 10 minutes, and 31 seconds. Due to her plane having a new fuel system, she was the first pilot to complete the race nonstop. She was also honored with the General William Mitchell Memorial Award, given for outstanding contribution to aviation.

Not only did Jackie begin winning races, but she began setting records as well. Many were speed records, but she also broke a woman's altitude record, reaching 33,000 feet (10,000 meters) in 1937. She continued to break records until war broke out in Europe.

As soon as the Women Airforce Service Pilots program was fully operational, Jackie's graduates didn't just ferry planes to airfields. They also trained B-17 turret gunners and staff pilots, towed targets, and worked as test pilots.

In January 1944, the US War Department announced that WASP accident rates were actually lower than those of the male
pilots. But when male pilots began returning from Europe and the Pacific, they wanted their jobs back. Although the WASPs had proven invaluable during wartime, the government ended the program.