Women Aviators

by Karen Bush Gibson

  In the 1930s, Willa joined the Challenger Air Pilots Association, an aviation group created by Cornelius Coffey and John Robinson in Chicago. They had to teach themselves to fly because no one else would, due to their race. They also built the first airport for African Americans in Chicago. Harlem Field was located on the southwest side of Chicago. The city’s airports, like its neighborhoods, were segregated at the time. Cornelius was not only a pilot and certified flight instructor, but he was also one of the best aviation mechanics in the Chicago area.

  Willa took flying lessons from Cornelius and received her own private pilot’s license in 1938. A year later, she had her commercial license, making her the first African American woman to hold both regular and commercial licenses. After marrying, Cornelius and Willa started the Coffey School of Aeronautics. Willa taught flight and ground school and also held a Master Mechanic Certificate.

  Willa wasn’t the only female African American pilot in the 1930s. There was also Janet Harmon Bragg. Like Edna Gardner Whyte, Janet was a nurse who loved to fly. With her income from working as a nurse, she bought an airplane for the Challenger Aero Club, of which she was the first president.

  Janet was the first African American woman to earn a full commercial pilot’s license, but it was a struggle. On her first flight test, the examiner indicated that she gave a perfect flight, but he wouldn’t give her a commercial license because of her race and gender. Although she eventually received her commercial license, she couldn’t get a job as a pilot. Janet volunteered to assist during World War II, both as a pilot and a nurse, but she was refused for both because of her race. She was also turned down by the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs).

  Willa continued to face discrimination both as an African American and as a woman. People from her own neighborhood thought her flying was shameful because she was a woman. Willa could do nothing but shrug her shoulders and go on. But both Janet and Willa also served as role models for other African American women interested in flying.

  In 1939, Willa was instrumental in forming the National Negro Airmen Association of America. The purpose of the organization was to promote African Americans as aviation cadets for the US military. So far, the government had refused admitting African Americans into programs such as the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP), created in 1938 to train pilots in case the United States became involved in the war in Europe and the Pacific. As director of the Coffey School of Aeronautics, Willa pushed for black pilots to be included in programs like the CPTP. The military eventually chose the Coffey School as one of six African American schools to be part of the CPTP. Willa soon became the CPTP coordinator for Chicago.

  Not long after, Willa and Cornelius began specializing in training pilots and mechanics for wartime and after the war. They taught many of the famous Tuskegee Airmen at their school and at the Air Corps pilot-training program at the Tuskegee Institute. Dorothy Layne McIntyre was one African American who received a pilot’s license through the Civilian Pilot Training Program at her college in West Virginia, where she studied bookkeeping. During World War II, Dorothy taught aviation mechanics.

  Willa was appointed a lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol in 1941. She was the first African American woman to serve as an officer. She and her husband developed CAP Squadron 613 through the school. She also coordinated war-training service for the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA). Her efforts led to the integration of African Americans into the military. She taught aviation at both the Coffey School and at Chicago-area high schools.

  Willa’s idol was Bessie Coleman, so she organized an annual memorial flyover above Bessie’s grave, a tradition that continued for many years.

  After being instrumental in desegregating the US military in 1948, Willa returned to teaching high school. In 1972, she was appointed to the Women’s Advisory Board of the Federal Aviation Administration. Her last flight was at age 86; she died of a stroke three years later.

  Women like Willa and Janet Bragg worked on changing attitudes about African American pilots. Their efforts helped African Americans of both genders in aviation, and their legacies live on. Eleanor Williams became the first certified air-traffic-control specialist in 1971. Betty Payne joined the air force after college. When she heard they were planning to admit women for pilot and navigation training, she signed up for the first class and received her navigator’s wings on October 12, 1977. Patrice Clarke-Washington became the first African American woman to become a captain for a commercial airline (UPS) in 1994.

  LEARN MORE

  “Civilian Pilot Training Program” on National Museum of the US Air Force website, www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=8475

  “Willa Brown” on Women Fly Resource Center website, http://womenaviators.org/WillaBrown.html

  “Willa Brown Chappell” on Aviation Museum of Kentucky website, www.ket.org/trips/aviation/chappell.htm

  PART III

  Wartime and Military Flying

  Airplanes were first used for combat during World War I. Although there were capable women pilots in the United States, none was allowed to participate in military flying. In Europe, however, female pilots from Russia and France did fly during wartime.

  The world’s first female combat pilot, Princess Eugenie M. Shakhovskaya of Russia, flew reconnaissance missions for the Russian tsar in 1914. This cousin of Tsar Nicholas II had received her aviator’s license in 1912. Princess Eugenie was granted the rank of ensign in Russia’s first aerial squad—and executed maneuvers against the Germans.

  By the time World War II had started, even more qualified women pilots were available, but the United States and Western European countries refused to allow women to fly in combat. Pilots such as Nancy Love and Jackie Cochran knew the capabilities of women pilots. At the very least, they felt they should be able to free up the male pilots for combat flying.

  In 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. While civil flying opportunities were curtailed by the war, there remained a need for pilots to deliver mail and dispatches and transport people during wartime. The greatest need was in ferrying military planes to the squadrons of the Royal Air Force. The demand was so great that it was suggested that women pilots assume ferrying duties, but many in Great Britain found the idea ridiculous.

  Commercial pilot Pauline Gower was determined to bring the idea to reality, however. On January 1, 1940, Pauline was allowed to put a group of eight women pilots to work by ferrying small trainers called Tiger Moths. And thus the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was born.

  As the war progressed the next year, the demand for ferrying fighter planes and bombers was greater than what the male pilots could accomplish. Ferrying duties for the women increased to cover other military aircraft. Great Britain’s proximity to Germany made ferrying planes dangerous. Being shot out of the sky was a very real possibility.

  Pauline was able to add more women pilots to the ATA. There were not only mixed (male and female) ferrying pools but also all-female ones. Foreign pilots were recruited by the ATA too. American pilots were the largest group of foreign members of the ATA, including a group of 25 women brought by American pilot Jacqueline Cochran. One of the pilots that Cochran recruited was her friend, Helen Richey, the first woman to train army pilots and fly a commercial airliner. The ATA, composed of 166 women and 1,152 men, delivered more than 300,000 aircraft during the war.

  Although the United States hadn’t declared its intentions in the war yet, it did start the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) to provide pilot training. At its start, the CPTP allowed one woman to be trained for every ten men. Within two years, however, women were banned from the program.

  The United States entered World War II when Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941. Through the efforts of women such as Jackie Cochran and Nancy Love, women pilots could aid the war effort through flying organizations like the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP).

  Approximately 25,000 w
omen signed up, although many weren’t eligible. Women pilots were required to be at least 5 feet tall and between the ages of 21 and 35. A high school education was also necessary, in addition to at least 200 hours of flying time. The number of flight hours was gradually reduced, while the height requirement was increased. In the end, 1,830 candidates were accepted, and 1,074 women completed the program.

  According to WASP pilot Violet “Vi” Cowden, WASPs did 80 percent of all US flying from 1943 to 1944. They flew more than 60 million miles (96 million kilometers) in every type of military plane. Besides delivering aircraft to military airfields, other duties included towing targets, flight instruction, and testing planes. It was a seven-day-a-week job.

  WASPs. Courtesy of the US Air Force

  Thirty-eight WASPs died in service, beginning with Cornelia Fort, who died on March 21, 1943. She was on a ferrying flight when a male pilot clipped the wings of the plane she was flying. Fort was the first woman pilot to die in the line of duty for the US military. Gertrude Tompkins Silver disappeared while on a mission flying a P-51 to California. After an extensive search, the army ruled that she was missing and presumed dead.

  Acts of sabotage against the WASPs were common on some airfields, particularly Camp Davis in North Carolina. WASPs found sugar in their planes’ gas tanks (which clogs the engines); their tires blew out, radios stopped working, and planes quit in mid-air. When Lorraine Rodgers had to bail from her plane, investigators found that her rudder cables had been cut. The WASPs learned to befriend the mechanics and check their own planes before takeoff.

  In the beginning, few people outside the military knew about the WASP program. Then media coverage started to grow. It was often negative, like when Time magazine called the WASPs “unnecessary and undesirable,” even though the accident rate of the WASPs was only 9 percent compared to 11 percent among male pilots. Even with the Army Air Forces recommendation to admit the WASPs as members of the military, Congress voted against it.

  As the tide turned in the war, an end to the conflict seemed evident. Rumors began circulating that the WASPs would be disbanded. The rumor became fact when the WASP program was canceled on December 20, 1944. Vi Cowden later explained, “When the men came back, they wanted their jobs back. So they deactivated us.” Many of the former WASPs were unable to get flying jobs after the war ended.

  Some WASPs refused to give up on recognition. They had served their country, and some had died in service for their country. Thirty-three years later, Congress voted to give the WASPs veteran’s status, retroactive to their initial service. In the Senate, the vote was unanimous. On November 23, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed a bill into law:

  Officially declaring the Women Airforce Service Pilots as having served on active duty in the Armed Forces of the United States for purposes of laws administered by the Veterans Administration.

  Just as surprising as how long it took for the WASPs to be recognized was the fact that that no branch of the military accepted female pilots until 1974 or later. The first to do so was the navy, which admitted six women to the US Naval Flight Training School. The first to graduate was Commander Barbara Allen Rainey.

  The navy’s first combat pilot was Lieutenant Kara Spears Hultgreen. She was killed in 1994, when the left engine of her F-14 stalled during an attempt to land on the USS Abraham Lincoln about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of San Diego.

  Later in 1974, the army began training female helicopter pilots. The first woman army pilot was Second Lieutenant Sally D. Woolfolk, who primarily flew UH-1 Huey helicopters.

  Women were admitted to the Air Force pilot training program in 1976, navigator training in 1977, and fighter-pilot training in 1993, the same year that American women were first allowed to fly in combat. The 1976 program graduated 10 women, including Captain Connie Engle, who went on to become the first woman to fly the T-41 Mescalero and T-37 Tweet aircrafts solo. She was also the first woman to lead a two-ship formation.

  Both the Air National Guard and the Coast Guard had their first female pilots in the late 1970s. It took the Marine Corps a little longer; Major Sarah M. Deal became the first female Marine Corps pilot in April 1995.

  According to the Department of Defense in 2011, the air force has the greatest percentage of women on active military duty: 19.1 percent. In 2005, for the first time in the history of the Air Force, a woman was allowed to join the legendary highperformance jet team, the Thunderbirds. Two years later, for the first time in naval history, a woman commanded a fighter squadron. All branches of the US military restricted women military aviators until January 2013. At that time, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta issued a directive lifting all restrictions of women in combat. All military branches must submit a plan for integrating women by May 15, 2013, and integration must be complete by the beginning of 2016.

  JACQUELINE COCHRAN

  Women Pilots Can Make a Difference

  JACQUELINE “JACKIE” COCHRAN KNEW women pilots could make a difference. In 1939, she wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt suggesting that women pilots be trained in order to free male pilots for combat roles. Eleanor Roosevelt was no stranger to the skills of women pilots. She had been a friend of Amelia Earhart’s, whom she had often talked to about women flying. Roosevelt recommended that Jackie talk to General Hap Arnold.

  General Hap Arnold headed the US Army Air Forces, which focused on military flying and eventually became the US Air Force. He asked Jackie to study the women pilots in Great Britain. She took 25 female pilots to Great Britain to train with ATA. She also demonstrated how women could be of service when she became the first woman to ferry a bomber across the Atlantic Ocean.

  While Jackie was in Great Britain, Nancy Harkness Love established the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) through the Ferry Command of the Army Air Forces. Nancy picked the 25 best women pilots to ferry military planes throughout the United States.

  General Arnold asked Jackie to return in 1942 to begin a women’s flight-training program. The Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) began in November when the first 28 recruits of the WFTD arrived in Houston to begin training. At the same time, Nancy Love’s WAFS pilots flew their first mission—transporting Piper Cubs from Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, to Mitchell Field in Newcastle, England.

  In February 1943, the Houston WFTD School closed, and all recruits for the program were required to report to Sweet-water, Texas. West of Dallas and Abilene, Sweetwater was dry and dusty and boasted a resident population of rattlesnakes. But it was also the location of Avenger Field, a training base for the Army Air Forces.

  Nancy Love. Courtesy of the US Air Force

  Six months after Avenger Field became the training base for the WFTD, the government decided to merge the two women pilot programs, Nancy’s WAFS and Jackie’s WFTD, into the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Jackie became the director.

  At Avenger Field, the women went through exactly the same training as the male recruits had. They trained mainly with the PT-19, but they also performed basic training with the BT-17 before advancing to the AT-6.

  Unlike many early and famed women aviators, Jackie never had the ambition to be a pilot. She hadn’t pined to be in the air when she was a little girl—she had been too busy just trying to survive.

  Born Bessie Pittman in the rural Florida panhandle, Jackie knew only her sawmill town and its cotton fields as a child. Poverty was a way of life, and sometimes she stole chickens so that her family could eat. In her autobiography, she wrote that she didn’t wear shoes until she was eight years old.

  She picked cotton at an early age; soon she graduated from that to sweeping floors and shampooing hair in a beauty salon. Along the way, she changed her name from Bessie Pittman to Jacqueline Cochran. By 13, she was cutting hair and developing her own list of customers. Although she tried nursing school, she was never comfortable with it.

  Instead, Jackie took her beautician skills to New York City in 1929, working at the popular salon called Antoi
ne de Paris at Saks Fifth Avenue. Invited to various social gatherings, she met important people. At one dinner in 1932, she met millionaire Floyd Odlum. To him, she confessed a dream of owning a cosmetics company. He advised her that flying was the best way to cover her territory during the economic depression.

  She immediately began taking flying lessons. Within three weeks, she had her license. Jackie discovered something about flying when she was in the air: it felt right. She had a certain affinity for piloting. Later, she would say, “At that moment, when I paid for my first lesson, a beauty operator ceased to exist, and an aviator was born.”

  Two days after earning her license, Jackie took off for a Canadian sports pilots’ gathering in Montreal. Flying that distance solo made her realize how much she still had to learn about flying, including instrument flying and reading a compass and maps. Navigating an airplane with only the use of the instruments was necessary if one planned on being a serious pilot.

  Tired of East Coast weather, Jackie enrolled in the Ryan Flying School in San Diego, California, in 1933. She was embarrassed about her lack of education and had an aversion to taking written tests and sitting in classrooms. She found someone to give her one-on-one instruction, and she soaked up as much as she could.

  When she finished advanced flight training, she began entering races. The first major race she entered was the MacRobertson Air Race from London to Melbourne, which carried a $75,000 prize. She planned to compete in a plane with the nickname “Gee Bee.” However, the Gee Bee was a difficult and often dangerous plane to fly. Problems with the plane’s flaps and mislabeled gas tank switches forced her to touch down in Romania. She was also forced to drop out of the 1935 Bendix cross-country race because of mechanical problems.