Grab your copy here:
While researching and writing about the WASP aviators who served in World War II, it was interesting to discover that many of those I spoke to didn't know that women pilots flew war planes during that era. A few had heard of the British women ferrying pilots, and even fewer knew of the women who flew for the Soviet Union combat missions.On American soil, women pilots weren’t militarized, so their contributions came under the umbrella of civilian pilots. Even before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a pilot shortage as the US was frantically building and sending aircraft across the Atlantic to support the Allied forces. Two women, Nancy Harkness Love and Jacqueline Cochran, worked tirelessly to propose solutions to fill the pilot shortage. Their vision included establishing a women’s pilot organization that would ferry planes from the manufacturers to airfields, freeing up the men to train and prepare for combat missions.
Beginning in 1940, Nancy Love persisted in her agenda at home while Jacqueline Cochran headed to England to join the British ATA Civilian Ferry Pilot Program that allowed women to ferry planes as part of the war effort.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and after the US declared war on Japan and the Axis powers, over 100,000 men and women enlisted in the military. Eventually 50 million of 132 million Americans became employed in the war effort, working for the government, and women entered the workforce as never before.
Nancy Love had a remarkable vision—one she didn’t give up on. Her perseverance and leadership became the catalyst to demonstrating how women could be integrated into and valued in the Army Air Forces as pilots. Nancy wanted to see female pilots given opportunities to serve their country, and though her vision did not become widespread in the 1940s, with persistence, she became a trailblazer.
Starting in 1940, Nancy Love waded through nearly two years of setbacks before Colonel William H. Tunner approved her idea of hiring women pilots to ferry planes for the Ferrying Command, a division of the Army Air Corps—picking up the planes at the manufacturing plants, then delivering them to air bases around the country, plus other ferrying duties. This filled in the gaps that male pilots created when they left to fly combat missions.
When Nancy Love’s program was finally approved in 1942, the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) quickly filled with twenty-eight hand-selected women pilots, who were called the Originals. These women came from various backgrounds, but all were well-qualified to transition to the larger planes and bombers coming off the assembly lines.
Jacqueline Cochran, returned from Europe, headed up the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD), which trained and qualified additional women pilots to join the Women’s Ferrying Program. By August 1943, the WAFS had increased to over 225 women strong. That same August, Love’s WAFS combined with Cochran’s WFTD to become the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots). See: https://cafriseabove.org/nancy-harkness-love/
During the nearly sixteen months of the WASP Program, more than 25,000 women applied for training. Of those, 1,879 candidates were accepted into the Training Program, which was moved from the Houston Municipal Airport to Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. Only 1,074 women successfully graduated. See: https://www.army.mil/women/history/pilots.html
The WASP pilots spent 1942–1944 flying every type of combat plane and delivering 12,650 aircraft to seventy-eight different bases throughout the nation while logging in more than 60 million flight miles.
Women became the backbone of the progression of the war and the eventual Allied victory. They worked in factories, building aircraft, and as airplane mechanics at Army Air Corps bases. Thanks to the persistence of Nancy Love and Jacqueline Cochran, women ferried the war planes from the manufacturing floors to the airbases, where women also worked as instructors for male pilot trainees. In addition, women flew the towing targets for male combat pilot training, and they tested out planes with mechanical issues.
Nancy Love firmly believed that if women didn’t learn to fly multiengine war planes, it would create a bottleneck between the production line and ferrying the planes to the airfields. She took it upon herself to set the example that women could fly the larger, more complex aircraft. She qualified on virtually all the Army Air Force’s combat aircraft, including the P-51 Mustang, P-38 Lightning fighters, C-54 transport, B-17 Flying Fortress, Consolidated B-24 Liberator, and the B-29 Superfortress. Nancy became the trailblazer for many of the WASP pilots and future pilots who would follow in her footsteps. See: https://cafriseabove.org/nancy-harkness-love/ and https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/nancy-harkness-love/
With the war coming to an end and male pilots returning home, authorities viewed the need for a women pilots as obsolete, and the 1944 push for the WASP to militarize was
Nancy’s belief in herself and other women pilots never faltered. Through many setbacks of family tragedy, a world war, constant obstacles and roadblocks to earn trust for women pilots, and health challenges, Nancy continued to push forward, soaring higher in order to make the path smoother for female pilots in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment