Women in History
Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII
By Laura M. Hartman
Women in History Columnist
Ask anyone you meet on the street about the role of the American woman in World War II and more than likely you'll hear about Rosie the Riveter. It is true that over 6 million women donned overalls to work in shipyards, steel mills, lumber mills, and foundries in addition to more traditional roles in offices and hospitals.(1) But quietly, a small band of women including an actress, a nurse, a black jack dealer, a dancer, a stuntwoman and many others left home to became members of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). At the cost of personal and professional sacrifices, these women played an integral part in winning the war in the air as unofficial pilots for the United States Army Air Services.(6)
Only 31 women in the United States held pilot's licenses in January 1929. By December 1930 that number had grown to 300.(2) One of these women, Nancy Harkness Love, had been flying since she was 16. By 1936, she and her husband Robert Maclure Love were running their own business, Inter City Aviation, out of Boston Airport. In 1937 and 1938 she test piloted various aircraft for Gwinn Air Car Company. When ferrying light planes destined for allies in Europe to the Canadian border, Nancy first came in contact with the Army Air Corps' Air Ferrying Command.(3) [For more on Nancy Harkness Love, click here.]
Love was a member of the Massachusetts wing of the Civil Air Patrol, which brought her to the attention of Lt. Col. Robert Olds of the Ferry Command (later known as the Air Transport Command). He contacted her to compile data outlining how many women pilots might be capable of flying military craft.(2)
Olds was intrigued by the idea of women pilots ferrying military aircraft and shared his vision with General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold. Arnold rejected the idea, arguing that it would be better to hire qualified women as copilots for domestic airlines and thereby release men for military service.(2)
Meanwhile, Jacqueline Cochran, another American pilot, used her millionaire husband's connection to the Roosevelts to contact Eleanor with a plan to use women pilots during wartime. She presented the concept of creating a separate military corps of women pilots who would fly military aircraft domestically. The defining feature of this plan was establishing a training school that Jackie wanted to manage.(2) [For more on Jacqueline Cochran, click here.]
President Roosevelt was intrigued with her idea and arranged for Cochran to be officially appointed to research - without pay - the number of women that may be eligible for her program. With a staff of seven assistants, Cochran searched Civil Aeronautics Administration records, and compiled survey data to identify all women with a commercial pilot rating. The results confirmed that there were women pilots capable of flying any aircraft in use in the military.(2)
Cochran's results found their way to Love's mentor Olds, now a general. Olds had retained the interest in using women pilots sparked by Love, but he clashed with Cochran over her training program and all-female corps. Tensions mounted until Olds refused to allow the plan to go any further. Furious, Cochran resigned her position, and turned all her energies toward recruiting a group of American women pilots to send over to Great Britain. Before Cochran left for England, General Arnold listened to Cochran's side of the conflict with General Olds and promised she would be the first to know if there was any change in the atmosphere regarding women pilots, as he feared she would go to the Roosevelts with her complaints.(2)
As the war raged on, General Olds began to get desperate for pilots. He contacted Cochran in 1942 and shared the plans to begin hiring female pilots immediately. Unfortunately, she was heavily involved recruiting American women pilots for the British Air Force since her plan for the program in the states met with failure, and could not return to the states.(4)
By June 1942, the Army and the Navy began using women in their ranks. The newly reorganized Air Transport Command (ATC) had changed when Robert Olds left to head the Second Air Force. Brig. Gen. Harold George and Colonel William Tunner were now in command. General George genuinely needed the women pilots that Love had championed, so he took a chance, resubmitted her plan in early September and advised Love to contact potential candidates. The group would be called the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) and consisted of 25 members. Love was named director by Secretary of War Henry Stinson on September 10, 1942.(2)
Jackie Cochran returned from England the day the evening headlines announced the women's pilots program had begun with Love at the helm, and felt betrayed. She met with Arnold and displaying rage and raw political power, Cochran made it abundantly clear that she was not going to stand by while someone else ran the program she outlined to him the year before and advised him to make good on his promise. Five days later, Arnold announced the formation of a second women's program, the Women's Flying Training Detachment (WFTD), with Jackie Cochran at the helm.(2)
Cochran and Love had different attitudes and approaches, but both believed that experienced women pilots could offer assistance to the war effort. Cochran wanted to administer a training program that produced women pilots for the military; Love felt she had qualified women pilots that needed minimal training. At that time, women were required to have 500 hours of flight time (50 in the past year), be a high school graduate, and be between the ages of 21 and 35. Conversely, male candidates, only needed 200 hours, three years of high school, and be between the ages of 19 and 45. She also recommended that their salary could be $250 a month, $130 less than male civilian pilots earned and that the women should be limited to flying only the smaller class of military planes.(2)
Returning to England in 1918, Low resumed her work with the British Girl Guides. In 1919, she represented the Girl Scouts of the United States of America at the first International Council of the Girl Guides and Girl Scouts in London. Retiring as president of the Girl Scouts in 1920, she was bestowed the title of Founder. (2)
Cochran was unhappy and had no qualms about expressing her opinion and pushing for what she wanted. Her efforts resulted in the restructuring and merger of the two programs in July 1943 into a single group known as the Women's Airforce Service Pilots (WASP - never WASPs as WASP was already plural) with herself as the leader.(2) Love served as the executive director of the newly formed WASP, answering directly to Cochran. She administrated six flying squadrons, trained and oversaw operational procedures. (3)
The WASP delivered 12,650 aircraft of 77 different types between September 1942 and December 1944.(3) This included the Boeing B-29 "Superfortress" that spanned 141 feet, 3 inches from wing tip to wing tip and measured 99 feet from nose to tail, with a 27-foot nine-inch high tail turret that was the height of a three-story house. When attempting to train his men on the B-29 Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Tibbets ran into an unexpected problem. It was the Army Air Forces' newest, biggest and most complicated bomber yet, and his men were putting up unprecedented resistance. Tibbets decided that the way to convince the men to fly the plane was to show that women could do it. After only three days of training, Dora Dougherty and Dorothea Moorman became his demo pilots, Dougherty and Moorman ferried pilots, crew chiefs and navigators from the bomber base at Alamogordo, New Mexico across the state. Tibbets' plan was an enormous success: after watching the women fly the four-engine bomber, the men stopped complaining about the plane. The B-29's most infamous World War II missions were the two atomic bomb drops on Japan in August 1945.(5)
WASP also flew Thunderbolt fighters, the Mustang and almost every other plane used by the Army Air Forces. In addition to ferrying as many as 10 planes a day, WASP towed targets for anti-aircraft gunnery practice, made low altitude flights to give searchlight and radar operators practice spotting them at night and test-flew jet fighters. All totaled, over 12,000 WASP flew 60 million miles and 60,000 hours.(9)(7) From 1942-1944 Over 1000 women were the first to fly military aircraft. Thirty-eight of them died in the "unofficial" line of duty.(8) After all the hours of piloting the Army Air Service planes, these women were still not seen as part of the military service.
Unfortunately, with the lack of a military commission it was impossible for women to be perceived as equal participants by their male colleagues. Love was outraged that women's civilian status exempted them from receiving any death benefits, requiring her to ask for donations to transport the WASP bodies home following a crash. Disillusioned that the program had moved too far from her original vision of women pilots serving their country, and Cochran's focus on politics and power, Love left the program. (2)
On December 20, 1944, the WASP program was officially disbanded. Full military recognition came 33 years later, when President Jimmy Carter signed a bill giving the WASP the validation and recognition the WASP richly deserved for their courageous service to our country.(8)
1.) http://www.rosietheriveter.org/faq.htm
2.) http://womenshistory.about.com/library/prm/blwaspsofwar5.htm *
3.) http://www.atalink.org/hallfame/harkness.html
4.) http://www.wasp-wwi.org/wasp/resources/WASPWWII_time.htm
5.) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flygirls/sfeature/waspsb29.html
6.) Haynsworth, Leslie and David Toomey, Amelia Earhart's Daughters, Morrow and Company, NY: 1998
7.) Yount, Lisa, Women Aviators, Facts on File, NY: 1995
8.) Fly Girls, WGBH Educational Foundation, PBS home video, 1999
9.) http://www.hill.af.mil/museum/history/nhlove.htm
*This article was written by Deborah G. Douglas and originally published in Aviation History Magazine in January 1999. Author Deborah G. Douglas is a Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow at the National Air and Space Museum. Her book, United States Women in Aviation, 1940-1985, was published by the Smithsonian Institution Press in 1990
Places to Visit
NATIONAL WASP WWII MUSEUM
WASP MEMORIALS
1819 RIVER STREET
WACO, TEXAS 76706
For questions about coming events, museum plans and the WASP, contact Director Nancy Parrish 254-710-7202.
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