On the morning of December 7th, 1941, Cornelia Fort was a young flight instructor at Pearl Harbor, up in the air with a student. She saw aircraft approaching with the red sun of Japan painted on their wings. She couldn’t understand what was happening until one of them opened fire on her. She grabbed the controls, dropped down, and landed as fast as she could.
Two days later, they found two other civilian planes washed ashore, their pilots shot down and killed. A woman who lived in Honolulu that morning woke to gunfire and the sound of bombs. She walked onto her balcony and watched a bomb fall on Kaimuki, a little Oriental community on one side of the city. Flames rose and houses burned.
She couldn’t make out the planes well enough to identify them, so she went back inside and turned on the radio. The announcers were shouting that Japan had attacked. She remembered it as the beginning of a very scary day. The world was at war.
In Europe and the Pacific, enemy aircraft dominated the skies, and America’s male pilots were being sent overseas for combat duty. That created a critical shortage of pilots at home. With the production of military aircraft more than doubling after Pearl Harbor, the armed forces needed people to test and ferry the new planes to departure points. Two famous female aviators, Jacqueline Cochran and Nancy Harkness Love, separately proposed using women pilots for the military.
In the 1940s, the idea of women flying United States military aircraft was unheard of. But with the demand for combat pilots urgent and the test and ferrying shortage severe, the military finally had to consider training women to pilot military planes. On September 10th, 1942, General Harold H. George, commander of the Air Transport Command, announced the creation of the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, the WAFS, with Nancy Harkness Love in command.
The original 28 female pilots became the first women to fly for the US military. To be considered, a woman needed a minimum of 500 hours of flying time, a commercial license, and a 250 horsepower rating. Because not enough women held those qualifications, General Hap Arnold, commanding general of the US Army Air Forces, authorized Jacqueline Cochran to form a second program. The Women’s Flying Training Detachment was established to train women pilots for the ferrying division.
The required flying time started at 200 hours but was gradually reduced to 35. These young women were truly breaking the mold. They found a way to get their licenses so they could qualify for the WASP. Eleven months into the training programs, General Arnold decided to consolidate resources and expand the flying duties of all women pilots.
On August 5th, 1943, the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron and the Women’s Flying Training Detachment merged into the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots, with Jacqueline Cochran as director and Nancy Harkness Love as executive of the Ferrying Squadron. The WASP program was born. Twenty-five thousand American women applied, many still in their teens, others in their fifties. They came from all walks of life, from chorus girls to farmers’ daughters, from all parts of the country.
They were all volunteers, brave civilians willing to perform unique military jobs to contribute to the war effort. According to General Hap Arnold, the country could not have won the war without them. Out of the 25,000 volunteers, only 1,830 were accepted, and of those, only 1,074 completed the training. Becoming a WASP required extensive Army Air Forces training.
Houston, Texas was the first training site, but training soon moved to drier Sweetwater, Texas, where Avenger Field became the first women-only military flying school in the world. For the women who arrived, it was an exciting time. They had been told what to expect, but the thrill of being there and meeting so many people who shared the same purpose was overwhelming. The primary thing was that they were all there for one reason: the love of flying.
The living conditions were rough. Six cots filled each bay, with a latrine holding two sinks, two commodes, and two showers. Twelve women would try to get ready at six in the morning. They learned to put their zoot suits, the coveralls, on over their pajamas, go to mess for breakfast, and then come back for the battle of the latrine.
It was completely different from civilian life. But the camaraderie was fantastic. The women in each bay grew very close because they didn’t know if they’d be alive the next day. They started flying Stearman biplanes and were issued old men’s GI coveralls, because there had never been women in the Army Air Corps before.
Everything issued to them was made for men. They were up every morning at six for four hours at the flight line, four hours of ground school, an hour of marching, an hour of exercise, and anything else the instructors could give them until ten at night. It was exactly like the cadet training for men, except the men didn’t need a license or any flying experience to enter. Although all these women were experienced pilots, training was not easy.
They had to follow strict army regulations and prove themselves at every step. The fear of washing out was constant. The women relied on each other. If someone had a problem, in ground school or in flying, they would go over it as a group.
The bond grew tighter. They all wanted to succeed. Nobody wanted to wash out. It was nerve-racking because no one knew who would be next.
You could be washed out for things that didn’t even involve flying. Caught fraternizing, you were out. Too many demerits, you were out. There was no getting around it.
On weekends, they could go into town, but there was a curfew, and being late earned demerits. Leaving the lights on too late earned demerits. Clothing not stored exactly right in the locker earned demerits. About a little less than half of each class washed out.
It wasn’t because they couldn’t fly. It was because they couldn’t learn at the speed the Army demanded. The women always felt sorry for the girls who washed out. Early on, the WASP wanted a mascot.
They found it in Fifinella, a female Gremlin character from a proposed Walt Disney movie called Gremlins. Pilots often blamed mechanical failure on Gremlins, but Fifinella was a good Gremlin meant to bring good luck. The WASP asked for permission to use her, and Walt Disney generously agreed. The official mascot was worn as a patch on flight jackets and painted on aircraft.
Flight training was tough. The Army used BT-13s to teach blind instrument flying, with a curtain covering the rear cockpit to force pilots to fly by instruments alone. Pilots who became overconfident or broke training rules sometimes suffered heartbreaking consequences. One woman remembered a day she was about to sit in the front seat of a plane when another WASP asked if she could ride with her best friend, who was in the covered backseat.
She said sure. The next thing they knew, that plane had crashed. Both women were in the hospital because they had been buzzing a tree and hit it. The wrecked aircraft was brought back to Avenger Field, and after dinner that night the women marched out in file and were made to look at it.
It was not a pretty sight. Any interest in buzzing was gone. Flight training had inherent dangers, even for experienced pilots. Janet Simpson lost her best friend in a mid-air collision.
The two pilots just didn’t see each other. Elizabeth jumped, but at 1,800 feet the parachute opened too late. The pilot in the other plane was killed instantly. It was her first experience with death.
They asked her to take Elizabeth’s belongings home, but she couldn’t. She asked them to find someone who hadn’t known her so well. They all pitched in money for the burial and to send her home to her parents. She never got a burial flag or anything.
Nothing in those days. In all, 38 WASP gave their lives during the war. Even with Fifinella as their mascot, the WASP had their share of mechanical failures and close calls. One woman remembered her first solo in the AT-6.
She was approaching the field where she was supposed to land when she saw smoke and fire coming out of the exhaust. Her first thought was that she could jump if things got bad. But then they would question her about what happened, and she might wash out. She decided to stick with the airplane.
She radioed for an emergency landing, was cleared, landed, and they found something genuinely wrong with the aircraft. She didn’t have to face washing out. Another night, around one in the morning, she took off from Avenger Field headed for San Angelo, the first leg of her trip. She flew into San Angelo, changed course, and started out when she had complete electrical failure.
It was fortunately a nice moonlit night. She decided her only option was to do a 180 and go back to San Angelo. When she got there, all the lights were out except for the perimeter lights. She buzzed the field, came around and buzzed it again, then landed.
As she taxied, a little jeep came out with a sign behind it that read, “Follow me. ” She followed it back to the flight line, where a welcoming committee waited. When she got out and stood on the wing, she heard someone say, “My God, it’s a woman. ”
Throughout each phase of training, the fear of washing out remained.
The pressure increased during check flights with male officers. One woman had a young lieutenant who had returned from combat overseas. He was acting as her final check flight. She had passed the civilian check, and now she had the army one.
They took off, and he put her through different paces. Everything was fine. Finally he said, “Well, before we go back to the base, let’s throw it into a spin. ” She said, “Sir.
” He repeated, “A spin. ” She thought, I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t. She kicked it into a spin and tried to pull it out. Nothing happened.
She dropped it and tried again. Nothing. He kept saying, “I’ve got the controls. ” She told him, “Sir, don’t you dare touch those controls.
” She dumped it a third time and pulled it out. She knew at that point that she had passed. When they got down, the lieutenant, very quiet, said to her, “Miss Chase, that was a very good flight. ” But they had been told never, ever to spin a six.
She couldn’t tell him that while they were in the air. She knew if he had touched the controls to bring that plane out of the spin, she would have been eliminated. She wasn’t going to have that for anything. She figured if she had to fly it into the ground, that was going to be it.
These young women kept breaking tradition and exceeding expectations for the right to become WASP. After graduation, one was assigned to Gunter Field in Montgomery, Alabama, as a test pilot. She also ferried and instructed. It was great.
Whether assigned to ferry aircraft, tow targets for live gunnery practice, or test questionable planes, the WASP took their jobs seriously. Wherever you were given orders, that’s where you had to go. One woman would have loved to be in the ferry command because they got to fly many different aircraft. Instead, she was stationed at Pecos, Texas, flying UC-78s and AT-17s, advanced twin-engine aircraft.
One of her jobs was engineering testing. When an airplane had an overhaul, it had to be flown in a certain manner for a certain number of hours before it was turned over to students. She also flew personnel around the country. She liked that part very much.
Another woman was stationed at Blackland Army Air Force Base in Waco, Texas, with her best friend Nancy. She asked for twin-engine planes. She actually wanted to fly B-25s, but she made the mistake of saying twin engine, and that’s what she got, AT-10s. She reported for duty the next morning and said to the captain, “Sir, I’m reporting for duty as your new test pilot.
” He said, “Jesus Christ. ” She said, “No, Betty Vincent. ” He was in shock because no woman had ever been in that hangar before. But he got her a twin-engine airplane, an instructor, and a parachute.
They gave her three hours of dual instruction, and the instructor said, “There, you’re a test pilot. I’ve taught you all I know about this airplane. ” They landed, she went into the hangar, met all the mechanics, and talked to them for hours about everything she would have to do. The next morning, there were eight AT-10s waiting to be tested.
She tested them just as if she knew what she was doing, and she did. Ferrying aircraft often meant long cross-country flights. Betty Blake told a story about ferrying a P-39 Airacobra over the farmland of Illinois. It was early morning, and she didn’t know why she looked back.
The sun was behind her. She saw black smoke pouring out of the back of the plane. She should have bailed out. She was at around 20,000 feet.
It was an awful long way to the ground. She looked down a couple of times and then back, telling herself there was a little less smoke than a minute ago. She made it to the field and landed. When they pulled the cowling off the engine, it was charred.
She never knew who protected her that day, but she was very lucky. WASPs were also assigned to help train Army ground forces by flying searchlight, radar, and strafing missions. One of the more dangerous assignments was pulling targets for live anti-aircraft practice. They were supposed to have radio contact with the gunners, who would instruct them what they wanted.
You just flew back and forth while they shot tracer bullets. If you saw one going in front of you, you got out of there real quick. The gunners were all young guys, eighteen-year-olds who had never shot those guns before. You never knew what would happen.
It was dangerous, even the slow flying with the target way out there. But you did what you could, and she loved it. She was flying. Some WASPs took damaged aircraft and flew them to the depot at Mines Field, which is now LAX, then picked up repaired aircraft and brought them back.
They delivered personnel and material, did engineering jobs, and flew slow flights to check on an aircraft if a cadet reported something wrong. These were what they called dishwashing jobs, little tasks that had to be done. But each one relieved a man for combat. That was the main goal, not to replace men but to relieve them.
With the war raging, more WASPs were assigned to ferry aircraft to both coasts for shipping to all fronts. In all, the WASP ferried over 12,000 military aircraft between 1942 and 1944, about fifty percent of every aircraft manufactured in the United States during the war. They were so short of pilots, with so many men flying overseas in Europe and the Pacific, that when they really needed planes moved and didn’t have men to do it, they finally thought, well, we’ll check a girl out in them. They’d hand you the report and everything, and you’d have to sit at home at night and study it and then go out and fly.
Sometimes they never even checked you out. You just got in and flew. One of the first WASPs killed in the line of duty was Cornelia Fort, the pilot who narrowly escaped being shot down by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. On March 21st, 1943, while ferrying a BT-13, another plane being ferried by a male pilot struck her aircraft, forcing her to crash.
As the WASPs continued to prove themselves reliable, their jobs were expanded. Some were chosen for top secret missions. By 1944, England was receiving devastating blows from German V-2 rockets. General Arnold authorized a secret mission code-named Operation Aphrodite to develop technology to fly unmanned radio-controlled aircraft and crash them into V-2 rocket launch sites.
Helen Snapp was one of the few WASPs assigned. At first, small unmanned robot planes were used. But testing larger planes required a pilot in the drone to take control if something went wrong. That was Helen’s job.
The robot plane they used most of the time was about six feet long and couldn’t carry a pilot. Then they had the PQ-8s and PQ-14s, which the women had to ride as safety pilots. They had to learn to control them in the same way as the unmanned robots. They had to learn all phases of it, and they did everything.
It was a lot of fun, but if the mother ship didn’t stay close enough, they lost control anyway. That’s why they wanted a safety pilot in there. For two glorious years, the WASP played a vital role in helping win the war, shattering the idea that women had no place in the cockpit of a military plane. They flew 60 million miles in every type of Army Air Force aircraft and on every type of non-combat mission.
Their safety record exceeded that of male pilots doing the same jobs. They were trained to pilot everything from the Stearman biplane to the B-17 Flying Fortress. A favorite of many was the single-seat P-51 Mustang. They ferried hundreds of P-39 fighters to the West Coast, where they were brought to Russia for use by the Soviet Air Force.
They trained in multi-engine aircraft like the B-25 Mitchell and the B-24 Liberator, ferried the B-17, and several trained to pilot the B-29 Superfortress and demonstrate its safety and flying abilities to male pilots. By early 1944, the Allies had critically weakened the German and Japanese Air Forces. More American pilots were surviving. The country didn’t need as many flight schools to train new pilots.
That meant pilot flight instructors in the United States were out of jobs and eligible for the walking man’s army. They looked and saw all these women flying airplanes domestically, and they decided they wanted those jobs. When General Arnold sought militarization for the WASP, complaints from male flight instructors and returning veterans caught the ears of the press and Congress. A nasty anti-WASP campaign ensued.
It was terrible. The men made fun of them and belittled them. They said women should stay at home, stay in the kitchen. The media pictured them as flighty women with a glamorous job, wasting public money on training.
What could they ever do with flying? They said all kinds of weird, horrible things. One woman couldn’t believe people actually listened, but they did. It caused a lot of problems.
She felt she had more discrimination from women than she ever did from men. The program had started as an experiment. They didn’t know if women could handle military life or the aircraft, both small and large. The women were paid by civil service, but they were promised that if the program proved successful, they would be taken into the Army Air Corps.
They even had to sign papers agreeing that when they were taken in, they would continue, so they wouldn’t take the expensive training and go home. Both Cochran and Arnold wanted the women pilots to be made part of the Army Air Forces, but Congress opposed it. In June of 1944, the House Committee on the Civil Service delivered a crippling blow. It reported that it considered the WASP unnecessary and unjustifiably expensive and recommended that recruiting and training of all women pilots end.
The women had been excited, thinking they were finally going to be taken into the Air Corps because the program was successful. Then came doubt, and finally the bill General Arnold put before Congress was defeated by only 19 votes. After proving they could handle the latest fighters and the heaviest bombers, it all came to an abrupt end. On December 20th, 1944, they were quietly and unceremoniously disbanded.
There were no honors, no veterans benefits, and very few thank yous. A group of women was at Avenger Field for the advanced instrument course when they heard Jackie Cochran was flying in that late afternoon. They were excited, thinking she was coming for a brief visit. When she landed, they went up to the flight line and sat around in a great big circle.
She told them that Hap Arnold had deactivated the group that day and that they would be deactivated on the 20th of December. Not a word was said. There wasn’t a dry eye among them. They couldn’t remember how long they sat there.
Then they simply got up and went back to the barracks. They couldn’t believe it. They had flown every single airplane the Air Force had. They had done everything the men had done, and yet they were going to be rid of them.
One woman had been about to take B-25 training, but when they found out the group was being disbanded, everyone was frozen to their bases. They thought they would be in for some time. It was a crushing blow. She felt like she was being fired because she didn’t know about the atomic bomb, didn’t know the war would soon end.
She couldn’t understand why they were being sent home. It was devastating, but they hoped for a last-minute reprieve. In October, they got the official document saying the program would close on December 20th. One woman said she never completely recovered from it.
She went on with her life, but it was like finding out a dream could be achieved, and then taken away just as easily. Two squadrons, including hers, sent a wire to the president offering their services for a dollar a year for as long as the need existed. It was turned down. They said, “No, we’ve made up our mind.
” It was a sad ending. Losing their military flying status forced them back into civilian life. Many applied for civilian flying jobs, but even with their advanced training and extensive experience, the airlines refused to hire female pilots, instead offering them jobs as stewardesses or in ground control. They found themselves grounded, their dream of continuing as military pilots shattered.
One woman said they were devastated to be let go like that, with no goodbye, no “you did a good job. ” They had none of the benefits. Other women in the service got all kinds of benefits, college, medical, everything. The WASP got absolutely nothing.
She said if she had gotten the GI Bill, it would have changed her whole life. Someone once asked her, “You got the Congressional Gold Medal. Which would you prefer, the Gold Medal or the GI Bill? ” She said, “I’ll take the GI Bill every time.
”
In the meantime, earlier classes were sending out letters, trying to find jobs and notify others. But nothing really developed. One woman wrote a lot of letters and never heard no said in so many different ways. It was understandable, because experienced pilots were coming back with a lot more time than she had.
She soon realized she would have to do something on her own. When the country started making aircraft for civilian use, she went to the distributors of both Cessna and Aeronca and asked, “Can you use my services to bring the aircraft in? ” They said yes. She gathered a few pilots and started a little ferrying business, which led to her getting a Cessna dealership.
As a way to stay in contact after deactivation, the WASP created an organization called the Order of Fifinella. Originally it helped them find jobs and organize reunions, but later it became the nucleus of their political activities to fight for veterans recognition. It all started with headlines about the first women to fly military aircraft. That upset them, because they were the first women to fly.
They organized after that, contacted each other, asked what they were going to do about it. They decided to go after their veteran status. They had their own sacrifice. They lost 38 women.
Were their sacrifices going to be for nothing? That started the drive. They wrote to congressmen, to congressmen in other states, to just about everybody. One woman learned what politicians do best: they can say no in the most polite ways.
The WASP didn’t want glory or publication. They wanted their government to recognize that they did their bit in a time of war, when the country asked for their help and they gave it willingly. That was all they wanted. In 1972, a small group of WASP who were getting ready to retire from the Air Force Reserve and Civil Service realized that their time in the WASP didn’t count toward their retirement.
They worked to get a bill introduced in Congress, but it was quickly killed when neither the Army nor the Air Force would accept jurisdiction over the women. It was clear the WASP would need to prepare for a long fight. In 1975, one woman was elected president of the WASP organization. General Arnold’s son, Colonel Bruce Arnold, had come to a reunion and said he was a lobbyist in Washington, D.
C. , and would help them get recognition as veterans of World War II, fulfilling his father’s dream. Without his knowledge and ability to contact people in Washington, one of whom was Barry Goldwater, she didn’t think they would have gotten the recognition. In March of 1975, a bill to recognize the WASP as veterans was introduced to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee by Senator Barry Goldwater.
But committee chairman Senator Vance Hartke wouldn’t allow a hearing. An identical bill in the House was also killed by chairman Ray Roberts. The WASP realized the only way to convince Congress was to prove they were military. They orchestrated a grassroots effort, forming a militarization committee to compile documentation proving their veteran status.
Dora Dougherty Strother listed WASP accomplishments. Bird Howell Granger gathered proof the WASP had been treated as military personnel. Doris Tanner compared WASP training and compensation with that of male cadets and officers. The documentation was given to WASP, who presented it to their state representatives.
They called on representatives and senators. All the women senators were great. Barry Goldwater, who had flown with the WASP, testified for them. His role could not be overstated.
This was the father of modern conservatism, the anti-ERA senator, and he was so determined to get the WASP recognition based on his personal experience flying with them. He called in all sorts of personal and political favors. He even went so far as placing an amendment on every Senate bill just to get the WASP their recognition. To sway public opinion, the WASP talked to reporters about their military flying experiences, and newspaper articles appeared across the country.
They also had help from the Air Force and Navy, who were publicizing the new women pilots they were about to have for the first time. The WASP called those same reporters and said, “No, look. Here we are. We did it during the war.
Don’t forget us. ” It was a great hook, and they gained extra publicity. One of the most interesting stories featured the B-29 Superfortress. After test pilots were killed flying the prototype, most male pilots refused to fly the aircraft.
It was so dangerous it became known as the Widowmaker. General Hap Arnold ordered Paul Tibbets, who eventually piloted the B-29 that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, to train several WASP to fly it. They flew it around to combat bases where male pilots returning from Europe were stationed. After watching the women fly the military’s largest bomber, the men stopped complaining.
The WASP also coordinated an innovative petition drive. Dorothy Davis acquired 1,700 signatures by wearing a WASP uniform to a theater showing Star Wars and setting up a table with pictures of the WASP in action and a poster reading, “Please sign petition for veteran status for the Women Air Force Service Pilots. ” In total, the WASP gathered some 22,000 signatures from across the country. Their cause received national television exposure in November 1977 when Bernice Falk Heedu appeared as the mystery guest on To Tell the Truth.
Their lobbying began to show signs of success. On March 15th, 1977, the 95th Congress had a historic first when bill HR 5087 to recognize the WASP as veterans was introduced in the House. Congresswomen Lindy Boggs and Margaret Heckler led the fight. It was the first time every female representative in Congress joined together to co-sponsor a bill.
But passing it was still a long shot. Colonel Arnold knew they had to convince Representative Olin “Tiger” Teague of Texas. They put together an album, and the first page was a copy of one of the women’s honorable discharges from the US Air Force. It said Air Force instead of Air Corps, but it was the same thing that the speaker of the house had.
He looked at it and said, “This is exactly like mine. These women are veterans. ” One woman said they probably didn’t even need to go to Congress after that, because those honorable discharges changed the minds of all of them. To ensure the legislation wouldn’t be vetoed, Barry Goldwater made it a rider to a veterans education bill he knew would be passed.
Hundreds of WASP came to Washington in their uniforms to witness the vote. On November 3rd and 4th, 1977, the House and then the Senate passed the legislation. On November 23rd, without a single WASP present, President Jimmy Carter signed it into law. They had done in 1977 what had been done to them in 1944.
They finally were recognized as veterans of World War II. For one woman, it was gratifying that they finally got the veteran status, though it would have meant a lot more if they had gotten it while they were still in the WASP. It took another 33 years before the WASP were officially recognized for their outstanding service. On July 1st, 2009, President Barack Obama signed Bill S.
614 authorizing the WASP to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor Congress can award to a civilian group. On March 10th, 2010, almost 70 years after they served, they were finally officially honored by Congress. WASP Deanie Parrish accepted the medal on behalf of them all. All they ever asked for was that their overlooked history would someday no longer be a missing chapter in the history of World War II, in the history of the Air Force, in the history of aviation, and most especially in the history of America.
They did it for love of flying. It was such an exciting opportunity to fly all those beautiful military planes they never imagined they’d have a chance to fly. It was a wonderful experience. One woman said she couldn’t imagine her life without it.
What would her life have been? Boring. Other women who heard about what they had done found the courage to start flying themselves. And she said she would do it again and again and again.
She loved it, every minute of it.
