Fly Girls Page 6

  Lieutenant Fleishman couldn’t do anything about the size of the zoot suits, but he helped the trainees with more than marching. He believed in the WFTD program. When a new group of women arrived for training in February 1943, he told them they were “part of an experiment which will do more to advance the cause of equality for women than anything that has been done so far.”63

  In the fog, rain, and mud of the Houston airfield, he taught the women how to survive the army. “There is a simple directive about Army life,” he said. “ ‘If the Army can dish it out, I can take it.’ ” Fleishman told them how important that attitude was. “If . . . it should develop that women can’t take it,” he said, “it might affect the whole program. . . . You will have to stick out your chin and show them.”64

  • • •

  By then the military’s need for more pilots was clear, and Cochran was asked to double the number of women in her training school. Changes had to be made. The WAFS and WFTD were combined and became the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Cochran would continue to run the training center in Texas, and Love would stay with the ferrying squadron in Delaware.

  The training center was moved four hundred miles northwest from Houston to Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. And while applicants to the training school still had to have a pilot’s license, the flight time requirement was reduced from seventy-five to thirty-five hours (men entering the same training needed no pilot’s license and no flight time at all). The Wasps remained civilians, though they still expected that eventually Congress would militarize them like other women’s auxiliaries. But the trainees were working too hard to think much about it.

  On the day the Houston pilots transferred their trainer planes from the old field to the new, residents of Sweetwater took picnics and went to watch. Some made bets about how many planes being piloted by women would crash, bets no one made about planes piloted by men. Those betting against the women were disappointed. A hundred planes left Houston, and a hundred planes landed smoothly at Avenger Field.65

  Ann Baumgartner had been accepted for WASP training in January 1943. She’d meant it when she promised to help the war effort as she returned from England to the United States in 1939. She’d found a job with a medical research company in New Jersey and hoped to connect her premed education with the war effort. One afternoon Ann went to the roof of her office building to get some fresh air and saw a plane come through the clouds and across the Manhattan skyline. “Imagine . . . looking at the world stretching away around you,” she thought. She would learn to fly.

  “I had read about the . . . women pilots in England,” she said, and later remembered thinking, “I just might be able to join them if I could fly an air ambulance.”66

  Ann took a trial flight and knew immediately she was made to be a pilot.67 Several months later she got her license and started working toward the two hundred hours needed for a commercial license. She was close to that two hundred hours in September 1942 when she read Eleanor Roosevelt’s column supporting the use of women pilots in the war effort. Then she learned about the Army Air Forces’ plan for such a program. She was soon on her way to Avenger Field in Sweetwater.

  • • •

  At the time, Sweetwater was known for its rattlesnakes, tarantulas, black widows, and scorpions, as well as constant dusty wind and temperatures over one hundred degrees a good part of the year. In 1943, Sweetwater also became known as the home of the only all-women air base ever.68

  Ann settled into a barracks close to the training center, which was more convenient than the living arrangements in Houston, though not terribly comfortable. The women wrote home about “chewing dust” and “Texas dust in their teeth.”69 Roommates took turns throwing telephone books at the two-inch-long roaches that ate holes in their robes and slippers. They learned to check their boots for scorpions before putting them on each morning. But most didn’t think to check their pant legs, until one trainee was stung as she got dressed. In a lot of pain and frightened at being poisoned, she went to the emergency room. She was “lucky,” the nurse told her. Sweetwater’s scorpions had poisonous and nonpoisonous seasons. Her sting was only miserable, not deadly. Yet she felt stung again when she got back and found her bunkmate charging the other trainees a dime to see the attacker, now trapped in a glass jar.70

  Locusts descended on the training center too. They worked their way under sheets, got into women’s hair, and were so thick on the runway, planes skidded on them as they landed.71

  On some nights the intense Texas heat kept everyone from sleeping in the stifling barracks, so the women took their small cots into the yard between buildings to find a breeze. Some of them also found a rattlesnake or two curled up with them when they woke. Others got up covered in crickets. The choice between sleeping with critters or sleeping in unbearable heat was a tough one.

  There was another entirely different kind of pest to deal with at Avenger as well. A surprisingly large number of military pilots had “engine trouble” near Avenger and asked permission to make emergency landings—more than a hundred in the first two weeks after the Wasps arrived. The sudden rash of problems turned out to have nothing to do with engines and everything to do with the flyboys, as military pilots were often called. These men simply wanted to see the women pilots up close. Jackie Cochran made it clear that only true emergencies should result in unscheduled landings. It was irresponsible to report fake emergencies.

  No one suggested that because a few men flying for the military were irresponsible, all military pilots were irresponsible. Such a suggestion would be unfair. Cochran recognized, though, that attitudes were different for her women. Fair or not, one bad apple was very likely to spoil the whole program.

  Even after interviewing every applicant carefully, both Cochran and Love put rules in place to make sure their programs’ reputations were safe—rules that men did not have at all. In Sweetwater each barracks had a housemother, the way college dorms at the time did. The women weren’t allowed to smoke in town, though men and many women smoked everywhere at the time (people didn’t know yet that cigarettes cause cancer and other diseases). Trainees were told to dress modestly and nicely when off base and not to socialize too much. Aside from a few eye rolls, the women generally went along. The stakes were high and their focus was on graduating and getting into the sky. But Avenger Field was soon known as Cochran’s Convent.72

  • • •

  The program was extremely demanding, and not every woman who started WASP training finished. Some had family emergencies or chose to quit. That was the one advantage of being civilians—the women could resign if they wanted to. Unfortunately, some washed out, meaning they failed and were forced to leave, everyone’s biggest fear.

  Overall, the women’s washout rate was about one third, the same as men in military pilot training.73 But a few classes had far more than the average number of failures. In one case twice the average number of trainees washed out, and the women suspected they were being judged differently from the men. Ann Baumgartner wrote, “It seemed as though we were judged on the very way we walked, moved, and thought.”74

  It was possible that some check pilots wanted to be combat pilots, resented their assignments, and took their frustration out on the WASP trainees. It was also possible that a few check pilots were embarrassed to see women flying as well as they could. “Why the heck do [they] have to be afraid of us?” complained one Wasp.75 A few women felt some sympathy for them, since “one day they were supermen and all of a sudden the next day the girls were doing it.”76

  Regardless of the reasons, it became obvious that a small number of instructors failed women unfairly. Both men and women in pilot training found washing out devastating. But for a woman to wash out knowing she was as good as anyone else was too much. And when at least one woman with excellent skills suspected she washed out because she wouldn’t let her instructor kiss her, it was time to do something.

  A review board appointed to investigate confirmed t
he women’s suspicions. Some check pilots were intentionally targeting women for failure or getting back at the women who refused to date them. (Today this kind of behavior is called sexual harassment and, in the workplace, is cause for being fired.) The board made changes so trainees who failed with one instructor could train for a short time with another instructor before being washed out. That slowed unearned failures from instructors like Captain Maytag. He’d gotten his nickname from the popular washing machine because he washed out so many Wasps.77 He might not have faced punishment for his behavior, but if he was angry about not flying combat missions, he would have to find another way to show it.

  • • •

  Long hours, hard work, lots of studying, sore muscles, and a common love of flying built bonds among the women. Many made friendships that lasted the rest of their lives. When each pilot soloed for the first time, the others dunked her in the wishing well—a twenty-foot-wide, round, shallow pool where pilots often tossed coins for good luck. The women passed the time spent waiting for the weather to clear or a plane to be ready by playing cards. And, like regular military units, they made up new lyrics for familiar songs they could march to.

  “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” became “We Were Only Foolin’ ” and started, “When we go to ground school we’re as happy as can be.” Other songs included “Yankee Doodle Pilots” and “Zoot Suits and Parachutes.” A college fight song turned into “Buckle Down, Fifinella.” The songs’ lyrics were funny and spirited and, sometimes, a bit rude. The Wasps loved them. The earliest classes started a WASP newspaper with articles about flying, movie reviews, and war news. Other classes kept it up. And once the people of Sweetwater got used to the idea of women trainees at Avenger, they invited them into their homes for Sunday dinner and welcomed them to the town pool in the blistering summer heat.

  Most Wasps thought Avenger Field was the most desolate place they’d ever seen when they first arrived. Later they realized that they’d miss seeing Fifinella greet them each time they returned to Avenger.

  Many official army units had mascots—cartoon figures of some sort that informally identified and were said to take care of the unit. The Wasps weren’t military, but they, too, had a mascot—Fifinella. Fifinella was a female gremlin created by Roald Dahl in his first children’s book, The Gremlins. Dahl had joined the British Royal Air Force in 1939 as World War II began. He knew the tales British airmen told about impish creatures who played tricks and sabotaged their planes. Dahl started writing stories about gremlins and fifinellas (female gremlins) as he recovered from serious injuries after his plane crashed in the Sahara. When his stories were published, Walt Disney suggested an animated film based on The Gremlins. The film was never made, but Disney did release the story as a book with illustrations by an animator at Walt Disney Studios. Those illustrations included drawings of Fifinella, or Fifi.

  The Wasps asked Disney for permission to use Fifi as their mascot. Disney, who had developed mascots for many military units, agreed. The women thought of Fifi as nice rather than naughty, a protector of sorts. She welcomed everyone who entered Avenger Field with a smile on her goggled face. Class after class of women—eighteen classes in all—smiled back. Despite the hard work, discomforts, and fatigue, the Wasps at bases all over the country had reason to smile. As Betty Jane Williams explained, “The ability to do something you love and to do it at a time of need for your country–nothing is better than that if you have much patriotic blood in your system.”78

  • • •

  Ann Baumgartner and her classmates certainly felt that way when they walked across the stage at their graduation at Avenger Field. Jacqueline Cochran gave each of them silver wings, wings she had designed and paid for herself, since the military wouldn’t provide them to the nonmilitary WASP. These women were ready. According to one graduate, they all had “the love of flying, of patriotism, and also the spirit of adventure.”79 Like all the women who finished training and graduated as Wasps, they would need those traits when they got to their assigned bases and started their real work.

  Ferrying pilots Cornelia Fort, Evelyn Sharp, and BJ Erickson sit on the wing of a BT-13 with Barbara Towne and Bernice Batten standing. Fort, seated on the left, was killed less than two weeks after the picture was taken.

  CHAPTER 6

  Ferrying for Uncle Sam

  The Allies began to make progress against the Axis early in 1943. Russia stopped the Germans in eastern Europe that February. In May, British and American forces defeated the German army in North Africa and moved to invade Italy. The Allies also got the upper hand against German U-boats in the Atlantic, allowing supply and troop ships to sail more safely to England. In the Pacific, Americans and Australians battled the Japanese on island after island in miserable, bug-infested humidity. But victories in places like Guadalcanal meant they could advance toward Japan itself.

  The US Army Air Forces spent 1943 attacking Germany from the air with American B-17 bombers flying from England across France and over Germany. The German air force—the Luftwaffe—fought back ferociously, and hundreds of Allied planes and crews were lost. Eventually American industries developed new kinds of engines and fuel systems—technology that allowed American and British fighter planes to escort the bombers over more miles without stopping. Fighter, or pursuit, aircraft were fast and maneuverable. Their mission in Europe was to protect the slower, heavier bombers from German defenses. Once fighter planes were able to escort bombers all the way to Berlin, the Allies gained control of the air. That, in turn, would eventually allow Allied soldiers to reach Germany and end the war.

  Allied Progress in Europe, 1943–1944

  Those fighter planes were crucial, and most people thought of fighter pilots the way they had thought of the aces of World War I—manly, daring, brave, skilled, and usually very handsome. It was true that fighter pilots needed tremendous skill, quick reflexes, and nerve. Fighter pilots risked their lives every time they took off, and thousands died in aerial combat. Of course, thousands of military men on ships and on the ground risked and lost their lives too. But somehow, flying fighter planes seemed more dashing, perhaps more glamorous, than any other military job. Even other pilots thought so.

  If flying fighters was the job every military pilot wanted, ferrying planes from factories to bases was the job none of them wanted. Pilots who ferried planes in the United States flew long hours from factory to military base, base to maintenance plant, maintenance plant to base. Over and over. Often tedious and lonely, often uncomfortable, never glamorous but terribly important. When a regular AAF pilot trained to fly a bomber or fighter plane or cargo plane, that’s the only craft he flew. He became an expert on one particular aircraft and might fly nothing else for a very long time. On the other hand, ferrying pilots often flew a particular type of aircraft only once or twice. Instead of becoming experts on one plane, they had to be able to fly any kind of plane, from a single-engine, open-cockpit trainer to a four-engine B-29 Superfortress bomber—all on a moment’s notice. It wasn’t unusual for ferrying pilots to keep the instruction manual for an unfamiliar plane on their laps while they flew. They had no chance to become experts on a particular plane, and that was dangerous. Each type of aircraft had a different feel, different quirks, and a different level of power. It responded differently to turbulence or wind. It took off and landed differently. But the ferrying pilots flew all types of planes, and many pilots found the constant change unnerving.

  As undesirable as ferrying was, though, the Wasps were happy to take ferrying jobs—the more the better. It was a contribution to the war effort and a challenge they welcomed. By the time they left training in either Delaware or Texas, they could fly primary, basic, and advanced trainer planes. They added to their credentials every chance they got, some pilots setting their sights on flying everything the Army Air Forces had. Before the war ended, Wasps had flown seventy-eight different kinds of aircraft. That’s an average of fourteen different types of planes per Wasp, more types o
f planes than a pilot in any other job was ever likely to fly.80

  The women were assigned to bases all over the country, from Long Beach, California, to Onslow County, North Carolina, and from Fort Myers, Florida, to Detroit, Michigan. The commanders at many of those bases welcomed them as equals. Others made it very clear they didn’t want women pilots anywhere near them, though eventually half the ferrying pilots in the United States were women. Male or female, ferrying pilots never knew from one day to the next where they’d go, what kind of plane they’d fly, or how long they’d be gone.

  Barbara Jane Erickson recalled a marathon ferrying adventure when she “made four transcontinental flights in a little over five days.”81 She gave credit to the weather, the quality of her four planes, and some luck. That may have been too humble. Not many pilots could handle eight thousand miles in such a short time, flying the kinds of planes BJ Erickson was piloting.

  Teresa James—who started flying to impress a boyfriend and then fell in love with planes instead of the boy—learned the hard way to be prepared for anything. One morning she was assigned to fly a P-47 Thunderbolt pursuit plane from New York to Indiana. She figured she’d probably fly another P-47 back to New York later in the day. Teresa delivered the first plane and got some lunch, expecting to be in New York with the second plane by late afternoon. But the operations officer in Indiana said he needed a pilot to take a P-47 to California. James agreed. She hadn’t packed to be away overnight, but a quick trip to the PX for a toothbrush would get her by as long as she didn’t spill anything on her shirt at dinner. In Long Beach, California, the next day an operations officer asked if she knew how to fly a P-51 Mustang. She didn’t, but it was a beauty of a one-seater fighter. The officer handed her an information pamphlet and told her she was flying the Mustang to Florida in the morning.