Women prove they have the 'right stuff' to fly

  • Published
  • By Dr. Robert Kane
  • Air Armament Center Historian Office
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., (AFPN) --  Throughout history, women have made a lasting impression on the fabric of the United States. In colonial times, women helped their husbands defend their farms from Indian attacks. During the American Revolution, women such as Mary Hays McCauly (better known as Molly Pitcher) took care of their husbands and sons in many battles. Women served as nurses, merchants, spies and even combat soldiers -- disguised as men -- during the Civil War.

More than 30,000 women served in the armed forces during World War I, mostly as nurses. Of these, 300 served as French-English telephone operators with the U.S. Army Signal Corps -- the only military where women were not nurses.

President Woodrow Wilson recognized their sacrifices by his support for the 19th Amendment in the U.S. Senate, which would give women the right to vote in 1920.

With pending U.S. involvement in the global war in the summer of 1941, the Army Air Force faced a shortage of male pilots. Gen. Henry H. Arnold, the AAF commander, asked famous female aviator Jackie Cochran, the recipient of four international and 17 national aviation awards, for suggestions. She offered to recruit female pilots as civilian pilots for the AAF to release males for combat missions.

When the AAF turned her plan down, Ms. Cochran recruited and trained American women pilots to ferry aircraft to Britain for the British. As a result, 25 American women went to Britain in the spring of 1942 became uniformed civilian pilots of the British Air Transport Auxiliary.

Meanwhile in September 1942, famous female pilot Nancy Harkness Love formed the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron with 38 pilots to fly aircraft to Britain for the Air Transport Command. The success of the WAFS program caused the AAF to revitalize Ms. Cochran's women pilot training program. The first class of her Women's Air Force Service Pilots graduated April 28, 1943, after 23 weeks of military, ground school and flying training at the Houston airport.

On Aug. 5, 1943, Ms. Cochran's group merged with the WAFS to form the Women Air Service Pilots, or WASP. WASPs, assigned to 120 bases across the United States, ferried aircraft, towed targets, flew experimental aircraft, conducted bombardier and navigational training, and transported personnel. They flew virtually every contemporary type of military aircraft, including the C-47, P-38 Lightning, B-17 Fortress, B-26 Marauder and even the B-29 Superfortress.

By mid-1944, the return of male pilots to the United States signaled the end of the WASP program, which the AAF inactivated Dec. 20, 1944. By that time, 1,074 WASPs had graduated from the program, and 38 had died in the line of duty. Many WASPs returned to private life, while others continued to fly. Some joined the Air Force Reserve with their WASP service counting as commissioned service. Few ex-WASPs made military service a career.

Unfortunately, neither the Army Air Force nor the Congress provided these women pilots with any recognition for their contributions to the allied victory during the war.

After the Air Force announced plans to train its "first women military pilots" in the mid-1970s, former WASPs campaigned for recognition as veterans. In 1977, Congress awarded them veteran status from the Air Force. In 1984, each WASP received the World War II Victory Medal, and those who had served for more than a year also received the American Theater Medal.

About 20 percent of today's Air Force is women, and serve in 99 percent of all Air Force career fields. Women pilots fly not only noncombatant aircraft such as transports and tankers, but also the F-15 Eagle, the F-16 Fighting Falcon and, most recently, the A-10 Thunderbolt II. 

Brig. Gen. Sue J. Helms, the 45th Space Wing commander at Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., is an accomplished NASA astronaut who flew on the space shuttle and made the longest space walk to date.

The women pilots of today's Air Force carry on the legacy and the motto of the WASPs, "We live in the wind and sand, and our eyes are on the stars."

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