Women Aviators (15 page)

Jackie was disappointed, although she was the first civilian woman ever recognized with the US Distinguished Service Medal. She was also the only woman from the United States to be an eyewitness to Japan's surrender in the Philippines (the US military was fairly strict about keeping women out of the war zone, but Jackie knew enough important people to be an exception to the rule); she then entered Japan after the war and was the first American woman allowed to do so. She later witnessed the Nuremberg trials in Germany.

When World War II ended, Jackie returned to air races and setting new records in the 1950s and 1960s. She set some of these records while she worked as a test pilot for Northrop and Lockheed. She set eight speed records in a row in a Northrop T-38. Then a few years later, she set three more speed records in a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter jet. During that time, she flew more than 1,429 miles per hour (2,300 kilometers per hour), the fastest a woman had ever flown.

In the 1970s, Jackie began having serious problems with her heart. She needed a pacemaker, which would prevent her from continuing the type of flying she was doing. She did her best to adjust to life without flying. But when her husband died in 1976, her health went downhill. She died on August 9, 1980. Services were held at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Jackie Cochran won more than 200 awards for her flying. She holds more speed, altitude, and distance records than any other pilot—male or female. Jackie Cochran, a 14-time winner of the Harmon Trophy, awarded to the best female pilot of the year, made her mark on aviation.

Jackie didn't go to college; she never even finished high school. She learned by listening and asking questions. She believed that with hard work, she could accomplish anything. Perhaps, most of all, she learned to reinvent herself. She went from being a poor, uneducated, barefoot child to becoming the successful owner of a cosmetics company and then one of the best pilots the world has ever seen. Jackie Cochran's life is a true rags-to-riches story and a shining example of how anything is possible.

“
Y
OU CAN'T FLY,” THE
doctor told her. But Violet Cowden, often known as Vi to her friends, knew he was wrong. She could and did fly any chance she got. She knew what the doctor really meant was that she didn't meet the height and weight requirements for the Women's Airforce Service Pilots. At five feet, two inches and 92 pounds, she was two inches too short and eight pounds too light.

“Give me a week,” she said.

She began eating a diet of fattening food to gain weight, which was more difficult than it sounded. Right up until she got on the scale again, she was stuffing food down. Someone told her to eat several bananas and drink a lot of water before getting on the scale, so she did.

In anticipation of the doctor's verdict, Vi fluffed up her hair and tied a scarf on her head. With all her might, she stood up as straight as she could. Holding her breath, she waited.

“How did you do it?” he asked.

Vi showed him her stomach, distended with all the water she had been drinking. He laughed, but then he signed her physical examination form. She had passed.

Why was it so important to Vi to be a pilot? It's all she had ever wanted to do. Vi may have been tiny, but her courage and will to succeed were gigantic.

Violet Clara Thurn was born on October 1, 1916, in a three-room sod house on a South Dakota farm. One of her first memories was watching the hawks fly. “I want to be up in the sky with the birds,” she told her family.

She attended a country school about a mile and a half from home. Her father believed in the importance of an education, so he made sure his children never missed a day. When the weather was nice, Violet and her siblings would walk. When it snowed, their father would attach a sleigh to the horses for the ride to school and heat up rocks to keep their feet warm for the journey.

The high school was farther away—four miles. During the winter months, Vi had to stay in town, working for her room and board. Once, when she was a senior in high school, a barnstormer landed his Cessna nearby. The Depression was in its midst and money was tight, but Vi's boyfriend paid five dollars for her to take a ride.

After graduating from Black Hills State University, Vi's first job was teaching first grade in Spearfish, South Dakota. One day,
she and a friend went to the small airport where the friend's husband was taking flying lessons. Vi decided right then and there that she would too. She approached the teacher, Clyde Ice, and told him she wanted to learn to fly. He looked at her and grinned. “Come on. I think you'll make a damn good pilot. Let's go.”

Vi earned $110 a month from her job, and her flying lessons cost her $10 a month. She didn't own a car or even know how to drive one, so she rode her bicycle six miles to the airport in the mornings for her lessons. Then she would ride her bicycle back and get ready to teach her first graders. At night, she returned to the airport for ground school. She didn't quite realize how important flying was to her until one particular day when she came to school.

“Did you go flying this morning?” one little boy asked her.

“Why, yes, I did. How did you know?” Vi asked.

“Because you always look so happy after flying.”

Vi earned her pilot's license and flew single-engine planes with small motors, such as Aeroncas and Cubs. After Pearl Harbor was attacked, Vi tried to volunteer for the Civil Air Patrol but never received a reply. She had started training for a navy program, the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), when she got a telegram. It instructed her to report for the fourth class: Vi was one of the 1,830 accepted for the WASP program. The program had been moved to Sweet-water, Texas, and Vi was a member of Sweetwater's first class of WASPs.

Recruits had to pass 23 weeks of ground school, physical training, and military flying. They had to know subjects such as math, physics, and meteorology. And they had to pass classes in map reading, navigation, engine repair, Morse code, and military regulation. In short, the women underwent the exact same training that the men did.

Each day, Vi and the other women were up by six in the morning. One semester, she had ground school in the morning and flight training in the afternoon. The next semester, the order was reversed. Vi started her training in a 150-horsepower Fairchild PT-19. As she progressed through the training, she moved up to more powerful airplanes, such as the BT-13 Valiant and the AT-6. She practiced night flying, for the first time ever, in an AT-17 Bobcat.

One day, a male colonel overheard Vi telling a classmate that the flight training wasn't that hard. He decided to give her something to groan about and had her do five evaluated test flights in five days. Vi said that when it was over, she was a basket case.

As civil service employees, the trainees had to pay for their own clothing, food, and lodging. Vi's flight suit was a man's size 44 that she wore throughout her service. After her first solo flight on March 5, 1943, she was commissioned in the WASPs.

Vi graduated from training in August 1943. When Jackie Cochran gave her the silver wings, Vi vowed that no one would ever take them away from her. (When pilots finished training, they were awarded their wings, a pin that would go on their uniform. Cochran fought to make certain that the 1,074 women pilots who graduated from her program were awarded silver wings.)

Vi was assigned to Air Transport Command at Love Field in Dallas, Texas. She continued training in Brownsville, Texas, with four male pilots, learning to fly pursuit planes in an AT-6. In pursuit planes, pilots couldn't see ahead of them; they had to look out the sides to see where they were going. In the beginning, the instructor wouldn't let her fly. But when he made a bad landing and tried to blame it on her, she finally spoke up to defend herself. The next day, he let her fly—and had to admit that she knew was she was doing.

In World War II, WASPs flew planes to different destinations. Vi was one of 114 pursuit pilots assigned to pick up planes and deliver them to military airfields in either Newark, New Jersey, or Long Beach, California. Her favorite plane was the P-51, which was known for its speed and fuel capacity and was used to guard bombers during missions. Military historians say that the P-51 was a big part of winning World War II. Vi even delivered the Tuskegee Airmen's first P-51.

Like most of the WASPs, Vi worked every day of the week and flew in all kinds of weather and conditions. When the male pilots began coming home in late 1944, they wanted their jobs back. Vi and the others WASPs went to the airlines for jobs. They were told they were qualified, “but we can't give you the job because you're a woman.”