Jackie immediately felt that the Orenda engine was more powerful than anything she’d ever flown. She also felt that the cockpit was uncomfortably hot.
“This cockpit is burning me alive!” she called to Chuck over the radio.
Closing the distance between them, Chuck could see that someone had inadvertently turned her defroster on. It was heating the cabin in an attempt to dispel nonexistent ice.
The smell of gasoline soon flooded Jackie’s cabin. Mixing with the sweaty heat, she started to feel nauseated. Chuck calmly instructed her on how to shut down the heater and guided her to a landing so technicians could make sure there was nothing else wrong with the Sabre. The checkout revealed nothing. The plane was in perfect order, though it now smelled horrific. Unable to stomach the sweaty odor, Jackie sprayed the cockpit liberally with her perfume and climbed right back inside. Chuck shook his head and laughed; he would have preferred the gasoline to perfume so overpowering that the cockpit smelled like a French whorehouse.
Jackie only had one other incident during her familiarization flights with the Sabre. On a high-speed run, she and Chuck flew low over a nearby farm. The sound of their jets spooked the chickens, making them all run to one side of the paddock, where more than 130 were smothered to death. The farmers filed a complaint with Edwards AFB and asked that the flight path be changed so no more chickens had to die. Jackie just wondered why dead chickens seemed to keep popping up in her career.
On May 18, one week after her forty-seventh birthday, Jackie arrived at Edwards Air Force Base on another clear and crisp morning. She opted for a simple flight suit rather than the pressure suits she had been wearing; she figured if the boys didn’t wear them, she didn’t have to, either. Again she switched her white knit cap for a helmet as she climbed into the Sabre, then she closed the cockpit. Alone in the now-familiar jet, she took off with Chuck on her wing. Together the pair headed south, turning back just before the Mexican border, rising higher into the sky. Flying over the Ranch, Jackie hoped Floyd might be outside to see the contrail of ice crystals she left in her wake, but she was far too high to be seen from the ground. By the time she neared Edwards, she reached her peak altitude of 45,000 feet. Flying that high, there was nowhere to go but down.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jackie noticed that the blue sky had turned nearly black. Tearing her eyes from her instruments, Jackie looked out the canopy window to marvel at the sight. It was barely noon, but she could see the stars. For a brief moment, she felt how small she was in her little jet plane, and felt as though she were teetering precariously on the horizon close to the gates of heaven. For a moment she was entranced, but soon realized she wasn’t there to stargaze. Forcing her focus back into the cockpit, Jackie put the Sabre into an S-dive.
In an instant, she was losing altitude so fast the needle on her altimeter was a blur, but it was the machmeter she was focused on. She called the numbers to Chuck over the radio.
“Mach .96….97….98…”
She was in the turbulent transonic zone. The air passing over her wings was traveling faster than sound and the air underneath them was not. Air molecules couldn’t get out of the way of her plane fast enough so she slammed into them. Her right wing dipped as it dug into this compressed air, then the plane lurched, and the other wing dipped as she fought to keep it level. Then she felt the nose try to tuck under as though the plane wanted to loop over itself, but she held it steady with all the strength in her hands.
“Mach .99…”
Even with a helmet and radio in her ear, she could hear the plane rattling.
“Tell me what you’re feeling,” Chuck called as he dived alongside her. Jackie vaguely registered that she could see the shock waves rolling over the canopy; she told Chuck it looked almost like a delicate film of water trailing off the window. Then, without warning, the turbulence stopped. The shock waves disappeared. The rattling was replaced by an unearthly silence. She was through the sound barrier; the turbulent air and shock waves were behind her and the noise couldn’t catch her. For a fleeting moment, Jackie felt a spiritual connection with something greater than herself. She didn’t feel scared, just confident and keenly aware of the plane’s every movement.
A split second later, the stillness was replaced with the sound of rattling metal and rushing air as Jackie pulled the Sabre out of its dive at 18,000 feet and slowed to below the speed of sound. The heavy air closer to the ground pressed on her plane as though trying to rip it apart as the drag slowed her further. Then she did it again. She flew high enough to see the stars then dove through the sound barrier. She would have gone a third time, but she was running low on fuel.
Jackie landed to hearty congratulations from the other pilots and ground staff at Edwards. Though she’d just become the first woman to break the sound barrier, she was disappointed to learn that no one on the ground had registered her sonic booms. Unwilling to let the day end without a record of her achievement, she refueled the Sabre and got right back up in the sky to break the sound barrier again, this time taking care to make sure she was at the right point for everyone at Edwards to hear her boom.
* * *
Five days later, Jackie took on the flight record that had started her foray into jet flying: the 100-kilometer closed course.
Setting up for a record run had taken a lot of planning. Floyd helped design the course. Rather than picking a point fifty kilometers away and flying a straight path with a slow turn at one end, he found that if she passed over twelve pylons arranged in a circle she could stay in a tight turn the whole time and fly the course faster. So Jackie had the pylons installed in an area that, as per regulations, was free of power lines and property lines. She planned to fly in a thirty-degree bank about 300 feet above the desert floor. To make sure she didn’t cut any corners, two observers were stationed at each pylon as well as at the start line. Those official observers were backed up by two cameras stationed 1,200 feet from the course and four feet off the ground to capture the moment she passed over each checkpoint; the photographs could be used to correct the time based on the plane’s position with known landmarks if there was some dispute. In the air were two official observation planes with sealed barographs on board just like the one in Jackie’s plane: two backups to her official instrument. There were also two Fédération Aéronautique Internationale judges on hand armed with automatic electric timers.
Leading the group was Charles S. Logsdon, the FAI’s chairman of the Contest Committee. Floyd was there, manning one of the sighting devices so he could find his wife in the sky. Randy was behind a sighting camera, too, as interested in Jackie’s record as her medical data. Chuck was also stationed at a sighting camera, with nothing left to do but watch his student. They all waited in the hot desert sun. Most hid under hats or the shade of a tarpaulin while Chuck opted simply to take off his shirt. No one could leave their post. Jackie had enough fuel on board for two flights around the course. She was going to come at it fast, and they had to be ready.
The quiet desert day was broken by the sound of the Orenda engine in the distance. Then Jackie appeared, a blur in the sky tearing toward the course. After so many practice flights, the controls felt natural in her hands as she maneuvered the plane from checkpoint to checkpoint. She shattered Jacqueline Auriol’s record; her official time was 675.471 miles per hour, 166.226 miles per hour faster than the French flyer. For the second time that month, Jackie landed to cheers and accolades from the test pilots at Edwards.
Jackie’s time flying in the California desert ended with a small celebratory dinner in her honor. Place cards featuring a picture of the Sabre told everyone where to sit. The guest list included test pilots and their wives, including Chuck and Glennis Yeager, as well as Randy and Mary Lovelace and Lyndon Johnson. Jackie dined at the head table with Floyd before a floral centerpiece also in the shape of the Sabre.
The weeks of high-speed flying left Jackie emotionally thrilled but physically in pain. Every time she’d shot toward the desert fl
oor then pulled the plane up sharply, she’d felt the g-forces on her body but hadn’t known how much damage she was doing to her insides. The complication from her teenage appendectomy, the scar tissue in her abdomen, had come back to haunt her. Her high-speed flying had pressed her intestines in the perfectly wrong way that left her digestive tract adhered to that scar tissue. At first, Jackie felt some painful cramps, but when they didn’t go away, she knew it was more serious. She needed Randy to operate and break down the adhesions, something he’d done for her once before. Telling Floyd she was visiting one of Randy’s patients so he wouldn’t worry, she flew herself to the Lovelace Clinic, where he operated on her once more.
Stuck in the hospital unable to eat or drink just days after securing an international speed record was not how Jackie wanted to celebrate. After four days, she hit her breaking point. She pulled out her own nasogastric tube and intravenous line, then called her secretary to bring her a bottle of whiskey and get the car. She was going home.
Back at the Ranch, Jackie tried to keep up with the letters that came pouring in. Air force brass commended her on her flights and her determination. Jacqueline Auriol sent her congratulations and noted that the twelve turning points had indeed been a wise choice. “When preparing for a new record later on,” she wrote, “I will adopt your procedure of the twelve turning points. You are right—the gain in time should be considerable.” She also learned that her supersonic runs had earned her her fifth Harmon Trophy win, an honor she’d be sharing with Chuck, who won the male trophy.
But the standout letter was a personal note from President Eisenhower. “Your letter, congratulating me because I became the first woman to go through the sonic barrier, touched me deeply,” Jackie wrote in reply to the president. “The letter has become one of my most prized possessions. With this splurge of flying behind me, I am seriously thinking about entering politics. You may see me showing up in Congress before you are out of office.”
15About $11,300 in 2019.
16About $4,700 in 2019.
Chapter 11
Summer of 1953
“During the WASP program, many preconceptions concerning women were proven wrong. The general belief at the start of the program was that women were handicapped as pilots, due to menses.” Jackie knew it was an altogether ridiculous notion, but she also knew she couldn’t not mention menstruation in her medical report for Randy Lovelace and Walter Boothby. The doctors, both of whom saw no reason why women shouldn’t fly jets if the need arose, were keen to include a female perspective in a new manual on high-altitude respiratory physiology for the US Air Force’s School of Aviation Medicine. “This belief found no support in experience,” Jackie finished her appropriately short comments on menses. “The conclusion was that in properly selected women, menstruation is not a handicap to flying or dependable performance of duty.”
With supersonic jet flying under her belt, Jackie was the only woman in the country keeping pace with male aviators, and as far as she could tell the only real difference between the sexes was physical size and strength. Height for height, women were less muscular than men, but newer planes demanded less muscle and more skill. Hydraulic controls were becoming much more common, allowing a pilot to control her flight surfaces with small inputs from the cockpit; she didn’t need to muscle a plane through bad weather or out of a dive. In her own supersonic flights, Jackie hadn’t felt a dependence on anything physical, she just felt confident in her abilities.
Aware that her career had reached a new height and with one eye on a potential seat in Congress, Jackie decided it was time the world knew just how extraordinary she was. Taking ownership of her story in her memoirs, she knew, would cement her reputation as America’s standout female pilot and show the vulnerability voters liked in their representatives. She would, of course, maintain her orphan origin story; she’d been telling it for years and couldn’t risk being caught in the lie now. So she began to write.
I am a refugee from Sawdust Road…
* * *
Little had changed in the professional landscape for women by the summer of 1953. If women chose to work, they were expected to be secretaries, waitresses, or some other appropriately feminine pursuit. Flying was decidedly a man’s job, as Jerrie was reminded every time she applied for an open position.
“A pilot? You want to work for us as a pilot? Are you sure you don’t mean stewardess?”
Jerrie caught a glimpse of herself reflected in a glass partition. Her medium-length blond hair was styled into a loose pageboy, her plain tan dress accentuated her lean five-foot-seven frame, and though she had a slight tan, it didn’t hide her freckles. The overall effect was that she looked far younger than her twenty-two years. Instinctively, she sat up a little straighter, hoping the man interviewing her might not notice. She’d been rejected from countless small-time flying jobs and was desperate for someone to take her seriously.
“Well, why not,” the man continued with a note of resignation in his voice. “Maybe a woman pilot is what this outfit needs. It’ll be novel anyhow, good publicity—and she can double as a stewardess.”
Jerrie couldn’t believe it. She had just been hired as a pilot for the brand-new Trans-International Airlines. She would be flying paying customers, something unheard of for a woman. She immediately threw herself into training to prove she could keep up with the airline’s male pilots. She learned the ins and outs of the propeller-driven DC-3s she would be flying, everything from the hydraulic and electrical systems to the right way to offer guests milk with their tea or coffee. But Trans-International Airlines had some trouble pulling together enough funding to buy airplanes. Time wore on, and the pilots had to get creative to keep their jobs. Male pilots painted hangars while Jerrie worked as a typist for a dollar an hour. Finally, one DC-3 arrived. Jerrie flew it on a checkout flight, but then the airline’s financial backer pulled out, forcing the company into bankruptcy.
Deflated, Jerrie resumed sifting through the classifieds looking for any job that would bring her close to an airplane. She finally found a position at the Miami International Airport in the customer service department of Aerodex Incorporated. The good part was that she dealt more with airplanes than with customers, putting through work orders and checking up on ongoing repairs. The bad part was she never got to see the inside of a cockpit.
One October morning, Jerrie arrived at Aerodex at seven o’clock, a full hour before the office opened for the day. Her cherished quiet time among the airplanes in the adjacent hangar was interrupted by an unshaven, rumpled, and irate man staring through the office window. Behind him, she saw an airplane parked on a ramp.
“Whodyhaftaknow to get something done around here?” he snapped at Jerrie the moment he saw her.
“Perhaps I can help you, sir,” she replied, leading him into the office. “Now, what’s the problem?”
The problem turned out to be his plane, a de Havilland Beaver. He was flying it from Canada to South America, where the Colombian Air Force was eagerly awaiting its arrival; Colombia had bought the old trainer plane to build up its air power. It needed some maintenance, and every minute it sat on the ground was costing him money, which explained why he was angry, but not why he was directing it at Jerrie. Mustering her good manners, she offered to put the work order through for him first thing when the office opened. He barked a rough “thanks” then left with his sense of entitlement apparently intact. Jerrie shook off the exchange as the workday started and began tackling the mountain of paperwork on her desk.
A few hours later, Jerrie noticed that the girls in the office were tittering. She looked up to see the rude man was back, though he was clean-shaven now and wearing a pressed suit. Jerrie had to admit it made quite the difference; he was actually quite handsome with his dark, wavy hair falling loosely in front of his face, drawing attention to deep eyes that were alight with energy. She watched him walk through the room, unfazed by the stir he was causing as though he was quite used to it, and straight into her b
oss’s office. Keen to avoid another exchange with him, she busied herself with work orders, but the sudden appearance of her boss looming over her commanded her attention.
“Miss Cobb,” he said, gesturing to the rude man standing next to him, “Mr. Ford very much appreciated your putting that work order through so early in the morning. He’d like to buy you a cup of coffee.” Jerrie looked from her boss to the rude man, who was now smiling at her, the picture of civility. She began to protest, saying there was work to be done and that she simply couldn’t leave her desk, but her boss insisted. Jerrie rose from her seat, only vaguely aware of the firm but gentle arm directing her along to the coffee shop.
Mr. Ford bought her an iced tea and placed it before her on the small table before sitting down himself. Jerrie could hardly believe he was the same man from earlier. He was charming and kind as he thanked her again for rushing the work order through and apologized for his attitude. He told her to please call him Jack and asked if he might call her Jerrie rather than Geraldyn. As they talked, she learned that he was more than just a pilot. Jack Ford turned out to be the founder and owner of a company called Fleetway that ferried planes around the world from its headquarters in Burbank, California. She also learned he was having a hard time finding willing pilots. Most of the planes he transported were single-engine trainers, American planes sold to other countries to build up their air power. Experienced ferry pilots were less than keen to fly them on routes that covered oceans and mountains. Jerrie understood why: a single engine meant there was no redundancy; if it failed, the pilot had nowhere to go but down. But rather than registering the danger, she saw an opportunity.
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