Fly Girls Page 2

  Nancy Love with her plane, circa 1930.

  CHAPTER 2

  Preparing for War

  Jacqueline Cochran understood more about aviation than most people could imagine. She was an accomplished pilot who owned her own plane, and in 1938 she won the Bendix Trophy Race by flying from California to Ohio faster than any other pilot, man or woman. Cochran was only the second woman to achieve the title—Louise Thaden, with copilot Blanche Noyes, won in 1938—and Cochran’s win made news.

  Cochran made news again in March 1939 when she set an altitude record for American women flyers by reaching thirty-three thousand feet. That achievement left her with a terrible headache for days because of the changes in oxygen and pressure, and a temperature of sixty degrees below zero. But Jackie Cochran craved adventure and added the altitude record to the pile of trophies and awards she’d accumulated when she wasn’t busy running her very successful cosmetics business. She liked being busy, loved flying, and basked in all the attention.

  Dashing around the country didn’t keep Jackie from hearing the same news of war in Europe that everyone else did. Unlike many Americans, however, she believed the United States could not and should not ignore the conflicts there. Cochran and President Franklin Roosevelt had almost nothing in common, but they agreed that it was past time to build America’s military, especially the Army Air Corps. And if Americans were pulled into another war . . . well . . . Jacqueline Cochran wanted to use her skills and brains for something bigger than collecting trophies.

  Like Hap Arnold and FDR, Cochran thought about how long it took to build planes and knew a bit about how long it took to train pilots. She came up with a plan to help. And once Jackie had a plan, another woman pilot said, “She’d figure out a way to get what she wanted.”8

  Long before she learned to fly, Cochran had learned determination—some people called her stubborn. Growing up in rural Florida, she didn’t have much money or schooling, but she made up her mind very early that she was going to be somebody. As a teen, she learned to style hair and then moved to New York City. She’d given herself an interesting life story by then—and the name Jacqueline. Much better than the Bessie she’d grown up with, she thought. Always beautifully dressed and oozing confidence, Jackie landed a job with a very expensive hair salon, and by the early 1930s she had a list of rich and influential customers. But what she really wanted was to be her own boss and become one of those rich and influential people herself. She decided to start a cosmetics company.

  In the days before social media or television, people trying to sell something like a new beauty product traveled to individual salons around the country. They’d demonstrate the product and try to convince salon owners to use it and offer it for sale. Jackie knew so much travel wasn’t going to be easy. And she faced plenty of competition and an economic depression. None of those obstacles stopped Cochran. At an elegant Miami dinner she explained to the wealthy businessman sitting next to her what she had in mind. Floyd Odlum liked her business idea but said that if she wanted to make money in such a difficult economic climate, she’d “need wings.” Traveling by air would allow her to cover far more territory than most other salespeople did, he told her. “Get your pilot’s license.”9

  Just weeks later Cochran had her pilot’s license and a new passion. As she put it, “When I paid for my first lesson, a beauty operator ceased to exist and an aviator was born.”10

  Jackie continued to work on building her business and also began competing in air races. Within a few years Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics was successful, Jackie and Floyd were married, and Cochran was collecting flying prizes, flying titles, and flying records one on top of the other. In 1938 she won the Harmon Trophy as the world’s outstanding woman pilot of the year (a men’s trophy was awarded as well). She won the Harmon again in 1939, this time with an additional honor: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt presented the trophy to Jackie at a ceremony in Washington, DC.11

  Cochran didn’t hesitate to point out her aviation accomplishments (as of 2017, Cochran still held more speed, distance, and altitude records than any pilot before or after her—man or woman), but she faced criticism for boasting. Men could brag a bit; women shouldn’t. Jackie said she was the best anyway. Yet she recognized there were other very capable woman pilots too. As the threat of war in Europe grew, she considered what they could offer if the United States became involved. Jackie believed women could do a dozen noncombat flying jobs that military pilots were doing on bases in the United States, freeing hundreds if not thousands of men for combat flying. But she faced criticism for saying that, too.

  Cochran got nowhere when she wrote to the military about her idea. She wasn’t surprised. Women could be strong and independent, but they didn’t do military things. During the Great War, women who wanted to volunteer to fly for the army were told no. Military leaders rejected the idea again in the early 1930s. Such a thing, one said, was “utterly unfeasible” since all women were “high strung,” which means “nervous.”12

  In late September 1939, about three weeks after Europe fell into war, Cochran wrote another letter saying such a plan “requires organizing in advance.” Waiting for a war to begin made no sense. Cochran didn’t send her letter to the military this time. She didn’t even send it to the president. Instead she sent it to the First Lady, knowing Mrs. Roosevelt would remember meeting her earlier in the year.13

  Eleanor Roosevelt was a strong supporter of women’s rights and equality, and she had a big audience. She traveled and spoke everywhere, had her own radio program, and wrote a daily newspaper column. Cochran got an encouraging response from Mrs. Roosevelt, though both women knew only the military could make the decision.

  • • •

  In Boston another experienced pilot, named Nancy Love, was also thinking about war and women pilots. Nancy was a member of the Ninety-Nines, a club for women flyers whose first president had been Amelia Earhart. The club, founded in 1929, was named for its original ninety-nine members. By 1939 over four hundred women pilots belonged. (Today thousands of women around the world are members of the Ninety-Nines.) Nancy had earned her pilot’s license at sixteen, had a degree from Vassar College, and worked as a pilot for the company her husband, also a pilot, had started. She and other women pilots had even been hired by the federal government to go across the country convincing local officials to paint their towns’ names on distinctive rooftops as navigation points for pilots, since planes didn’t have radar in those days.

  In early 1940, Nancy wrote a letter to Colonel Robert Olds, then head of the Plans Division of the Army Air Corps. Love knew there were many piloting jobs to be done outside of combat and that women could fly as well as men in those jobs. She already had a list of names ready, names of women she knew to be “excellent material.”14 However, Olds didn’t need more pilots in the Army Air Corps in 1940—he needed more planes. Still, he didn’t completely reject Love’s idea and kept her letter on file in case the situation changed. Any final decision, though, would have to be made by the Army Air Corps chief of staff, General Hap Arnold.

  How Planes Fly

  Airplanes are large, heavy objects. A plane’s weight will always pull it toward Earth. But a plane’s wings are designed to produce lift. When the plane is moving, the shape of the wings forces more air over the wing than under it. This creates greater pressure beneath the wing than above it, causing the plane to move upward against the force of gravity. Think of an umbrella on a windy day. If it is held straight, the wind can cause it to rise upward. This is lift—different from what happens when the umbrella is held at an angle and the wind blows it inside out.

  The plane’s size will always create drag, or resistance to moving forward through the air.  The plane moves forward because the propellers cause the air in front of them to flow faster than the air behind them. This shifts the air pressure, just as the wings do, but creates forward instead of upward lift, called thrust. The plane is propelled (some scientists say it is pulled, others sa
y pushed) forward as long as the thrust is greater than the drag.

  A plane’s controls allow the pilot to steer the aircraft by tilting the plane so that one wing is higher than the other. This causes a banked, or curved, flight path. The rudder—somewhat like a paddle—is hinged to the rear of the vertical section of the plane’s tail and keeps the plane’s nose in line with the banked flight path. High winds or turbulence makes maintaining a smooth path difficult.

  Nancy’s suggestion didn’t get any farther than Jackie’s had. For one thing, Hap Arnold agreed with Olds that what the Army Air Corps needed was more planes, not more pilots. And while he believed there were a lot of skilled women pilots out there, he wasn’t convinced a “slip of a young girl” could fly an enormous bomber or transport plane, especially in bad weather.15 Arnold had experience flying those heavy planes and knew the foot pedals a pilot used to operate the rudders on the plane’s tail took enormous leg strength. The control wheel or stick could exhaust the strongest man’s arms in high wind.16  Women, he thought, simply weren’t strong enough. Nancy Love disagreed and continued to look for qualified women for her list.

  • • •

  The spring of 1940 brought new crowds to the New York World’s Fair (a total of forty million people attended before it was over). Yet the fair seemed to lose some of its glitter with the news that Nazi armies had invaded Denmark and Norway in April and crashed through Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands in May. In early June, France fell to German forces, and Great Britain almost lost an entire army trapped on the French coast at Dunkirk as the Germans advanced. Thankfully, most of the 350,000 men were rescued at the last possible minute. Even so, Hitler was sure the British would give up any day. Newly elected prime minister Winston Churchill, who sounded like he’d swallowed gravel and looked like a big-bellied bulldog, stood firm. “We shall never surrender,” he told the world. But how?

  Allies Versus Axis

  By 1939 the world had broken into two camps. Germany, Italy, and Japan were called the Axis and had support from a small number of other countries. The world’s democracies, led by Great Britain, France, and eventually the United States, as well as another sixty nations, were known as the Allies. The Soviet Union or USSR (today’s Russia was the largest part of the USSR) was a communist country but also joined the Allies against the Axis and played a major role in winning the war.

  Churchill admitted that a staggering number of lives would be lost in the struggle. Already tens of thousands of British men were dead. Ann Baumgartner would soon get the news that her cousin Geoffrey was one of them—killed at Dunkirk. Eventually her two uncles would be killed as well.17 For many Americans, the horror of what was happening in Europe began to sink in.

  Churchill managed to inspire confidence in the British people, who wondered if their small island nation could possibly defeat the Nazis. The prime minister insisted that somehow Britain would “carry on the struggle, until . . . the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”18

  Canadian and some Australian pilots were already flying with the British Royal Air Force (RAF). Help with ground forces would follow. But neither Canada nor Australia had a large population or vast industries. President Roosevelt knew exactly what the prime minister was saying. The “New World, with all its power and might” included the military and industrial strength of the United States. Britain needed that power and might. Fast.

  • • •

  Throughout the summer American newspapers reported on the terrible battle being fought in the skies over England. Night after night German planes dropped bombs on British cities, destroying buildings, bridges, and railroads, and killing innocent civilians. The RAF scrambled to defend the country against the German bombers. Young British pilots with little training and even less sleep risked everything to keep Germany from forcing Britain to surrender. The losses were unthinkable, but the British pilots had an advantage. Their fighter planes were faster and more maneuverable than the German bombers. Finally Hitler had to admit that his plan to bomb the island of Great Britain into submission wasn’t going to work. He would have to find a new strategy. For the time being, at least, Britain’s pilots and planes—its airpower—had saved the British nation.

  In the United States, meanwhile, Congress acted to increase the size of the army. At the time, the US Army had less than two hundred thousand men. It was smaller than the armies of at least fifteen other countries.19 Congress passed a conscription act—what we usually call the draft—allowing the government to require young men to join the military. Roosevelt signed it into law. FDR also met with leaders of industry about how factories might shift from producing cars and washing machines to making tanks and military aircraft. The luxuries those industries were finally selling again after ten years of the Depression would have to wait.

  Roosevelt couldn’t force businesses to plan for a war that didn’t exist yet. But he could ask questions and encourage industry to ask itself those questions. How long would it take to convert an auto plant into a tank plant? Could a factory making women’s silk stockings make silk parachutes instead? Might bacon grease lubricate machine parts if other oil couldn’t be found? And how could the United States, which had declared neutrality at the start of the war in Europe, help protect democracy in a world that dictators were determined to conquer?

  • • •

  In March 1941 both Jacqueline Cochran and General Hap Arnold attended a White House aviation awards luncheon in Washington, DC. Jackie was always ready to promote her ideas and took advantage of the opportunity to talk to General Arnold about her proposal for women pilots. Though Arnold still believed the United States had enough male pilots, he knew Great Britain was using women to ferry planes from factories to bases. They were doing well and he was rethinking his opinion of women pilots. The United States was about to start sending new bombers to England to replace those being lost in battle. Arnold suggested to Jackie that she go there, see how the British women’s program worked, and maybe even recruit American women to join the British.20

  For Jackie, it was a step in the right direction. In June, Cochran arrived in London in a bomber she’d flown across the Atlantic Ocean. As the lead pilot in command of an all-male crew, she proved a woman could, in fact, fly a heavy plane over long distances. Getting into the air hadn’t been easy, though. “Red tape and sexist insinuations stood mountainously in my way,” she said later.21 While she was preparing in the United States, the officers in charge had insisted she take off and land over and over to prove she could manage a big plane. They didn’t care that she had set seventeen aviation records. Even after all the testing, the men ordered a male pilot to land the plane in England because Jackie had mentioned that her arm was tired after all those landings in one day.22

  Those men probably didn’t think they were discriminating or being sexist. It was the way they’d thought for their whole lives. But on the day Cochran and her crew were to head for England, she found the pilot’s window smashed and the oxygen system tampered with. Someone was so opposed to a woman piloting a big plane, he was willing to resort to sabotage.23 Though Jackie and the crew were delayed, she wasn’t about to quit.

  Soviet Women Fly in Combat

  The Soviet Union, one of the Allied powers, established three all-women flying squadrons during World War II. Pilots, crew, technicians, mechanics—all were women. And all three squadrons flew combat missions. The most famous squadron was the 588th Night Bomber Regiment—called the Night Witches by German forces. They flew some thirty thousand nighttime bombing missions against German forces.*

  Once in England, Cochran discovered that British women were flying every kind of military plane from factories to bases just as men were. Moreover, when German bombers appeared, the women raced for the tarmac and into danger as fast as the men. Their job was to get as many planes as possible off the ground to protect them from bombs. Those planes weren’t armed, so all the women could do was d
odge the air battle until it was safe to land and hope they weren’t hit. Sometimes hope didn’t work, and Jackie realized those women had more courage than most people ever would.

  Cochran began recruiting top-notch American women pilots to join the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). She was honest with them about the dangers and discomforts they would face. They’d have no heating, no warm water, and poor food, in addition to being shot at. That didn’t scare the women off. At least in England, they could aid the war effort. As one American woman who wished she could join Jackie said, “Flying is my only talent and one which is in great demand now.”24

  In the meantime, Nancy Love hadn’t given up on her plan to recruit women pilots either. Quietly she continued searching aviation records for women with impressive flying experience. She hoped to find women with enough skill and time in the air to adapt to military planes very quickly. They needed to be ready fast if war came to the United States. And Love was certain it would.

  The USS Shaw explodes during the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

  CHAPTER 3

  No More Choices

  On a beautiful Sunday morning in early December 1941, Cornelia Fort left her apartment in Waikiki, a neighborhood on the beach in Honolulu, Hawaii. It was a short drive to the nearby airport where she worked as a flight instructor and pilot for tourists who paid to see the Hawaiian Islands from the air. Not many women did that kind of work, and some people let Cornelia know it wasn’t proper work for a young lady. She didn’t mind. Cornelia loved flying and was used to doing things her own way.