Fly Girls Read online

  Cornelia Fort had grown up on her wealthy family’s estate near Nashville, Tennessee. As a young girl, the long-legged, wildly curly-haired Cornelia was a daredevil. She sometimes stood on her pony’s bare back while riding and liked to roughhouse or play Tarzan with her three older brothers. When she got older, she hated having to “fuss and carry on” about her appearance, though she learned to be a proper “Southern belle.” She dressed well, played golf and tennis, and always displayed the good manners her parents insisted on. There wasn’t much room in a Southern belle’s life for adventure, and as Cornelia finished school, she decided she had to break away.25

  One afternoon in early 1940, a friend dating a pilot asked Cornelia to come along for a plane ride. Cornelia had never flown but figured it might be fun to go up. Before the little plane reached cruising altitude, Cornelia Fort was in love with flying. By the time the plane landed, she knew she had to get a pilot’s license. She thought the only thing better than flying as a passenger would be flying as a pilot. By fall Fort had her pilot’s license, and a few months later she qualified as an instructor. She knew about the women flying for the RAF in England and had no doubt American women could do the same thing if they were allowed to. In the meantime, she started applying for flight instructor jobs anywhere and everywhere, though she was afraid no flight school would hire a woman. When an offer came from a flight school in Colorado, Cornelia accepted despite her mother’s misgivings. She moved to Fort Collins and got to work as the only woman instructor in a government-sponsored pilot training program there. Before long she had another offer to work as a flight instructor, at a school where she would have more hours, more students, and more time in the air. And she’d still be part of America’s push to prepare for a possible war by training men who might be needed as pilots. She didn’t hesitate. In September, Cornelia boarded a ship for Hawaii and the kind of opportunity she’d dreamed of.26

  • • •

  Shortly after sunup on that December morning in 1941, Cornelia met her regular Sunday-morning student for his lesson. He would solo soon, and she had him take the small plane up and down several times to hone his takeoff and landing skills. Then, before heading back to the airport, she told him to fly a bit higher.

  The student was at the controls and handling the plane well when Cornelia spotted a military airplane heading in their direction—not too unusual, since the civilian airport was right next to the military base at Pearl Harbor. That’s where the US Pacific fleet of a hundred ships and other watercraft was based. It was also home base for nearly four hundred military planes. On a normal Sunday morning, though, military planes weren’t typically in the air. Something didn’t feel right about this particular plane.

  I jerked the controls away from my student and jammed the throttle wide open to pull above the oncoming plane. . . . He passed so close under us that our celluloid windows rattled violently, and I looked down to see what kind of plane it was. . . . The painted red balls on the tops of the wings shone brightly in the sun. I looked again with complete and utter disbelief.

  Cornelia recognized those red balls as the emblem of the rising sun—the symbol on the Japanese flag.

  I looked quickly at Pearl Harbor, and my spine tingled when I saw billowing black smoke. Still I thought . . . it might be some kind of coincidence. . . . For surely, dear God . . .

  Then I . . . saw formations of silver bombers riding in. I saw something detach itself from a plane and come glistening down. My eyes followed it . . . and . . . my heart turned over convulsively when the bomb exploded in the middle of the Harbor.27

  Bullets hit another civilian plane just behind Cornelia as she sped toward the landing strip. Once on the ground, she and her student ran for the safety of the hangar. She tried to tell her fellow pilots—all men—that the Japanese had attacked, but they only laughed. “I was damn good and mad that they didn’t believe me,” she said later. Just then a mechanic raced in and announced, “That strafing plane . . . killed Bob Tyce.” Tyce, the airport manager and Cornelia’s friend, was dead, and Cornelia’s announcement was no longer a joke.28

  Japanese forces had attacked the United States. Over thirty-five hundred American military personnel were dead or wounded. Battleships, cruisers, and destroyers had been sunk or badly damaged. And over three quarters of the four hundred American military aircraft at Pearl Harbor had been damaged or destroyed. It would take time to assess the disaster, and most Americans wouldn’t hear what had happened for at least a few hours. But Cornelia knew right then that her country was at war.

  The next morning, Fort went back to the plane she’d been flying, found it full of bullet holes, and suddenly understood how close she’d come to being killed. She realized that her family back in Tennessee had to be worried about her, but she had no way to tell them she was okay. Only military cables were going out of Hawaii for the time being. All she could do was wait and worry about her family worrying about her.

  In Washington, DC, the next day, Franklin Roosevelt spoke to a joint session of Congress.

  Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

  By “a date which will live in infamy” Roosevelt meant no one would ever forget the evil done on December 7, 1941. Relations between Japan and the United States had been strained during the 1930s as Japan took over land in China and Southeast Asia. In 1940, Japan had joined Germany and Italy in the Axis alliance and the tension increased. By late 1941 the American military was aware of the threat of a Japanese attack somewhere in the Pacific. Any attack would be terrible. But Japan chose to begin its attack without warning at a time and place sure to result in the greatest possible damage and loss of American lives. Other attacks followed.

  September 11, 2001

  The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was the deadliest attack ever made on American soil until September 11, 2001. On that day terrorists hijacked four US passenger planes and used them as weapons of mass destruction. They crashed the planes into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The last plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after its passengers fought successfully to keep the terrorists from hitting their target—thought to be the Capitol in Washington, DC. The attack resulted in nearly three thousand deaths (just under twenty-five hundred people died in the attack on Pearl Harbor).

  Americans had reacted to the attack on Pearl Harbor with shock, grief, anger, and fear of further attacks. They also felt strong determination to defend the United States and its values. Americans sixty years later reacted to the attacks of 9/11 in very similar ways. And just as people who were alive in 1941 never forgot the attack on Pearl Harbor, those living on 9/11 will remember that day for the rest of their lives.

  Roosevelt told Congress about the American territories Japan had attacked in the hours after Pearl Harbor—Guam, the Philippines (an American territory at the time), Midway, and Wake Island. He admitted that the United States had never faced such a serious threat. Even so, his voice was calm and strong as he asked Congress for a declaration of war: “With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph.”

  Less than an hour later Congress voted almost unanimously to declare war on Japan.

  Like Cornelia, Roosevelt had known as soon as he heard the terrible news from Hawaii that the United States was at war. But the nation faced more than a war against Japan. Because Japan was allied with Germany and Italy, FDR had to prepare Americans for a two-front war. They would be fighting Japan throughout the Pacific region and, at the same time, fighting Hitler’s and Benito Mussolini’s forces in Europe and North Africa. The task was enormous.

  On Tuesday, December 9, as families like the Forts waited for news of their loved ones in Hawaii, millions of people gathered around radios at home or at neighbors’ houses. Thousands more stood
on sidewalks in front of stores that sold radios, or hovered in bars or restaurants. The president was going to speak, and Americans everywhere were desperate for news and reassurance.

  Eight in ten adults across the country—just about everyone—listened to the president that evening. They were terrified. What if the Japanese kept attacking? Should they gather canned foods? Arm themselves? Send children away from the big cities and coastlines for their safety, as the British had done?

  “My friends,” Roosevelt began. This was the way he always started his fireside chats, as his informal radio talks were called. His voice alone calmed people. He told listeners to get maps of the world so they could follow along while he explained the attacks and the losses. Then he talked about enormous changes coming to American life. There would be shortages of all sorts of goods, he said, and rationing to make sure people all over the country had necessities. Every able man was needed in the military. “It will not only be a long war, it will be a hard war,” he said. Roosevelt had trusted Americans to manage bad news during the Great Depression. Now he trusted them to manage even worse news. His words and tone assured people across the country that each of them could make a contribution.

  Every single man, woman, and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history . . . .

  The lives of our soldiers and sailors—the whole future of this Nation—depend upon the manner in which each and every one of us fulfills his obligation to our country . . . .

  We are going to win the war . . . .

  Germany and Italy declared war on the United States just days later. Arguments about neutrality and isolation, the size of the military, the number of tanks or planes a factory could produce—all evaporated. Nearly everyone recognized that their country was at war, its very existence at stake. The United States suddenly needed the biggest military on Earth. The military needed more ships, tanks, and planes than all three Axis nations had yet produced or would ever produce. Recruiting, training, and equipping hundreds of thousands of men for such a military had to be done at lightning speed.

  Despite Roosevelt’s confidence, a nagging doubt hung in the air. The United States was now one of the Allied powers, and the Allies—Britain, France, China, and many others—were losing the war. Was it possible for America and its allies to defeat the Axis? One member of the Roosevelt administration said yes, the war could be won. But only “if this nation produces more and faster than any nation has ever produced before.”29

  • • •

  The first step was to build powerful armed forces. Congress had moved to increase the number of men in uniform soon after the war had started in Europe, but far more soldiers, sailors, and marines were still needed. There were just under two million members of the US military at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. A year later that number was nearly four million. By 1945 over twelve million Americans were in military service—about 9 percent of the population. (Today less than 0.5 percent of Americans serve in the military.) But putting men in uniform was only a start. Wars aren’t won with soldiers alone. Those soldiers needed weapons, food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. They needed trucks, tanks, planes, ships, and more.

  The country scrambled to mobilize industry and civilians, in addition to the military. At first the nation pushed forward slowly, then faster and faster like the huge wheels of a locomotive. Roosevelt was right. Every person had a job to do in stoking the nation’s engine and keeping it going.

  The government asked farmers to plant bigger crops to feed the troops. Anyone with a yard was encouraged to start a so-called victory garden to grow some of their own food. Children helped with the gardens and pulled their wagons from house to house, collecting tin, rubber, and even cooking grease to be recycled into war materials.

  The Kellogg Company stopped making cornflakes at some factories and started making K rations, the packaged food soldiers in the field relied on. A women’s corset factory could use a lot of its technology and fabric to make grenade belts. A toy factory could manufacture compasses.30 In Cornelia Fort’s hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, a shoe factory started making combat boots, and a feed bag company retooled to make sandbags. It was the same everywhere. No one was going to be able to buy a new washing machine or lawn mower or bicycle for a very long time.

  In 1941, American automobile plants had produced 3.5 million cars. At the start of 1942, President Roosevelt issued an executive order—a power that presidents can use widely when the country is at war—ending automobile production completely. All the steel, rubber, and factory space were needed for military production. What about people looking for a new car or new tires? They were out of luck until the war was over.31

  The Great Migration

  Over 90 percent of African Americans in the United States lived in the rural South in the early 1900s. Most were poor and lived with harsh segregation laws (known as Jim Crow laws) and frequent violence, including many lynchings, or hangings. During World War I industry grew in the cities of the North, Midwest, and West. Thousands of black families left the South to take jobs in those growing industries. This movement, or migration, of black families continued after the war when cotton crops across the South failed. Industry expanded again during World War II, and even more blacks left the South to find jobs. By 1970, when the Great Migration ended, over half of the nation’s African American population lived outside the South.

  How fast could those automobile plants change their production? How many airplanes and tanks could they produce? How quickly?

  General Motors started building tanks, trucks, airplane engines, and guns. Chrysler built fuselages (the part of a plane where people sit and cargo is stored). A Ford automobile at the time had about fifteen thousand parts, but a bomber needed well over a million. Yet Ford’s Willow Run plant in Michigan geared up to send a new B-24 bomber off the assembly line every hour, twenty-four hours a day, with all million-plus parts in the right places.32

  For the first time, industrial production in the United States went on all day and all night, with workers coming and going in three shifts. Americans were amazed at what their country could do in full gear, while the Axis nations—Italy, Germany, and Japan—were alarmed at the speed of American production. In Great Britain, Winston Churchill felt a sense of great relief to see the New World’s “power and might” at work. Another British politician had told Churchill the United States was like “a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.”33 Apparently, that was true.

  Millions of young men joined the military, many of them men who had worked in those all-important factories and mills. At the same time, factories and mills needed thousands more workers than ever before. Where would they come from?

  Women in the Workforce

  World War II changed the American workforce. As men joined the military and new factories opened to produce war goods, the need for workers grew. Poor women, especially minorities and immigrants, had been employed long before World War II. Their jobs were in textile factories, clothing factories, and food production plants, and as maids, cooks, and the like. Now women of all classes, married and unmarried, were encouraged to do their patriotic duty and go to work.

  College-educated women were recruited to use their professional skills in military and government jobs. Thousands of working-class women took jobs at shipyards, in munitions plants, and on aircraft assembly lines. Those jobs paid far more than most traditional women’s jobs, though women still made much less than men. This didn’t change even when factory management discovered that, on average, women workers increased production while maintaining safety. In cities women worked as cabdrivers and bus drivers, maintenance workers, and mail carriers. In rural America they joined the Women’s Land Army to do farmwork.

  About six million women joined the workforce for the first time during World War II. The majority were married but did not have young children. Most middle-class married women remained at ho
me but spent many hours in war-related volunteer work.   All classes of working women, especially blacks, often faced resentment and discrimination in nontraditional jobs, though the government attempted to make their new roles acceptable to society. But most found their work a source of satisfaction and pride.

  African Americans and members of other minorities had been unable to find work anywhere during the Great Depression, especially in the South. Once the war started, over three million black men went into the military, though most were restricted to support roles such as maintenance and cooking rather than combat units. Others found jobs in defense plants, factories, and ports. Soon thousands of black families moved from the Deep South to the cities of the North and West in a migration that changed the country forever.

  Additionally, six million women of all backgrounds went to work, half of them for the first time.34 Poor and minority women had always worked to help support their families. But most middle-class white Americans expected women to marry young, start a family, and stay in the home. Now women of all classes and races joined the workforce, many in jobs that women had never held before.

  Many women took over positions on assembly lines and in heavy industry, work that only men had done before. Other women who had typing and bookkeeping skills went to work for the government or war-related businesses. Some carried their skills into the military once Congress made that possible.

  In 1942, Congress passed laws allowing women to enlist in the military in limited and very specific roles. No women would be drafted. The navy accepted approximately 100,000 women in the enlisted and officer ranks of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service). They worked as secretaries, accountants, doctors (nurses served in a separate corps), engineers, and more—most on naval bases in the United States. They freed 100,000 men to serve on navy ships and in other combat jobs. Women joining the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) enlisted as switchboard operators and bookkeepers. Other Wacs trained to be mechanics, bakers, and various support workers so that men who had been in those jobs could fight. Altogether, 150,000 women became Wacs and most served in the United States. Early in the war Wacs were paid less than men in similar assignments and received no retirement pay or insurance. But before the war ended, Wacs earned the same salaries and benefits as their army brothers and held the same ranks, and thousands went overseas to do noncombat military jobs. Some even died in the line of duty.