Jackie believed in hard work. While she was learning to fly, she was also launching her cosmetics company, Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics. Her determination paid off. By 1935, she was not only an accomplished pilot but also the owner of a successful cosmetics company. Another high point came in 1936, when she married Floyd Odlum. She also began meeting other women pilots and became friends with Amelia Earhart. Like Amelia, Jackie also served as president of the Ninety-Nines at one time.
Jackie was a very competitive person. She wanted to win the races she entered, but mechanical problems prevented her from even finishing. Her luck eventually changed. In the 1937 Bendix, she came in third overall and was the first-place female finisher. The next year, she won the whole thing—coming in before any other pilot, male or female.
In the 1938 Bendix race, she piloted a silver Seversky P-35 fighter plane, attempting to fly the 2,042 miles (3,286 kilometers) from Los Angeles to Cleveland. As she approached her destination, she had only enough gasoline in her tanks for a few minutes, but it was enough. At 2:23 PM, she crossed the finish line, winning the Bendix in 8 hours, 10 minutes, and 31 seconds. Due to her plane having a new fuel system, she was the first pilot to complete the race nonstop. She was also honored with the General William Mitchell Memorial Award, given for outstanding contribution to aviation.
Not only did Jackie begin winning races, but she began setting records as well. Many were speed records, but she also broke a woman’s altitude record, reaching 33,000 feet (10,000 meters) in 1937. She continued to break records until war broke out in Europe.
As soon as the Women Airforce Service Pilots program was fully operational, Jackie’s graduates didn’t just ferry planes to airfields. They also trained B-17 turret gunners and staff pilots, towed targets, and worked as test pilots.
In January 1944, the US War Department announced that WASP accident rates were actually lower than those of the male pilots. But when male pilots began returning from Europe and the Pacific, they wanted their jobs back. Although the WASPs had proven invaluable during wartime, the government ended the program.
Jackie was disappointed, although she was the first civilian woman ever recognized with the US Distinguished Service Medal. She was also the only woman from the United States to be an eyewitness to Japan’s surrender in the Philippines (the US military was fairly strict about keeping women out of the war zone, but Jackie knew enough important people to be an exception to the rule); she then entered Japan after the war and was the first American woman allowed to do so. She later witnessed the Nuremberg trials in Germany.
The First Woman to Break the Sound Barrier
Jackie Cochran climbed into the cockpit of a F-86 Sabre jet one day in 1953. She completed her preflight tasks and then began taxiing down the runway for takeoff. She gloried in the feeling of being up in the sky—there was nothing else quite like it. And the speed! She pushed the throttle, feeling vibrations as she flew faster. Jackie became aware of a voice coming through her headset. “You did it! You did it!” said Chuck Yeager, an Air Force pilot and good friend of Jackie’s. In 1953, he and Jackie were now a club of two. They were the only two people to have broken Mach 1, better known as the sound barrier.
When World War II ended, Jackie returned to air races and setting new records in the 1950s and 1960s. She set some of these records while she worked as a test pilot for Northrop and Lockheed. She set eight speed records in a row in a Northrop T-38. Then a few years later, she set three more speed records in a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter jet. During that time, she flew more than 1,429 miles per hour (2,300 kilometers per hour), the fastest a woman had ever flown.
In the 1970s, Jackie began having serious problems with her heart. She needed a pacemaker, which would prevent her from continuing the type of flying she was doing. She did her best to adjust to life without flying. But when her husband died in 1976, her health went downhill. She died on August 9, 1980. Services were held at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Jackie Cochran won more than 200 awards for her flying. She holds more speed, altitude, and distance records than any other pilot—male or female. Jackie Cochran, a 14-time winner of the Harmon Trophy, awarded to the best female pilot of the year, made her mark on aviation.
Jackie didn’t go to college; she never even finished high school. She learned by listening and asking questions. She believed that with hard work, she could accomplish anything. Perhaps, most of all, she learned to reinvent herself. She went from being a poor, uneducated, barefoot child to becoming the successful owner of a cosmetics company and then one of the best pilots the world has ever seen. Jackie Cochran’s life is a true rags-to-riches story and a shining example of how anything is possible.
LEARN MORE
Fly Girls (documentary), American Experience, PBS (2006)
“Jacqueline Cochran” on the National Aviation Hall of Fame website, www.nationalaviation.org/cochran-jacqueline
Jackie Cochran: An Autobiography by Jacqueline Cochran and Maryann Bucknum Brinley (Bantam, 1987)
“Jackie Cochran Biography” on the National WASP World War II Museum website, http://waspmuseum.org/jackie-cochran-biography/
Jackie Cochran: Pilot in the Fastest Lane by Doris L. Rich (University Press of Florida, 2010)
VIOLET COWDEN
Determined WASP
“YOU CAN’T FLY,” THE doctor told her. But Violet Cowden, often known as Vi to her friends, knew he was wrong. She could and did fly any chance she got. She knew what the doctor really meant was that she didn’t meet the height and weight requirements for the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots. At five feet, two inches and 92 pounds, she was two inches too short and eight pounds too light.
“Give me a week,” she said.
She began eating a diet of fattening food to gain weight, which was more difficult than it sounded. Right up until she got on the scale again, she was stuffing food down. Someone told her to eat several bananas and drink a lot of water before getting on the scale, so she did.
In anticipation of the doctor’s verdict, Vi fluffed up her hair and tied a scarf on her head. With all her might, she stood up as straight as she could. Holding her breath, she waited.
“How did you do it?” he asked.
Vi showed him her stomach, distended with all the water she had been drinking. He laughed, but then he signed her physical examination form. She had passed.
Why was it so important to Vi to be a pilot? It’s all she had ever wanted to do. Vi may have been tiny, but her courage and will to succeed were gigantic.
Violet Clara Thurn was born on October 1, 1916, in a three-room sod house on a South Dakota farm. One of her first memories was watching the hawks fly. “I want to be up in the sky with the birds,” she told her family.
She attended a country school about a mile and a half from home. Her father believed in the importance of an education, so he made sure his children never missed a day. When the weather was nice, Violet and her siblings would walk. When it snowed, their father would attach a sleigh to the horses for the ride to school and heat up rocks to keep their feet warm for the journey.
The high school was farther away—four miles. During the winter months, Vi had to stay in town, working for her room and board. Once, when she was a senior in high school, a barnstormer landed his Cessna nearby. The Depression was in its midst and money was tight, but Vi’s boyfriend paid five dollars for her to take a ride.
After graduating from Black Hills State University, Vi’s first job was teaching first grade in Spearfish, South Dakota. One day, she and a friend went to the small airport where the friend’s husband was taking flying lessons. Vi decided right then and there that she would too. She approached the teacher, Clyde Ice, and told him she wanted to learn to fly. He looked at her and grinned. “Come on. I think you’ll make a damn good pilot. Let’s go.”
Vi earned $110 a month from her job, and her flying lessons cost her $10 a month. She didn’t own a car or even know how to drive one, so sh
e rode her bicycle six miles to the airport in the mornings for her lessons. Then she would ride her bicycle back and get ready to teach her first graders. At night, she returned to the airport for ground school. She didn’t quite realize how important flying was to her until one particular day when she came to school.
“Did you go flying this morning?” one little boy asked her.
“Why, yes, I did. How did you know?” Vi asked.
“Because you always look so happy after flying.”
Vi earned her pilot’s license and flew single-engine planes with small motors, such as Aeroncas and Cubs. After Pearl Harbor was attacked, Vi tried to volunteer for the Civil Air Patrol but never received a reply. She had started training for a navy program, the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), when she got a telegram. It instructed her to report for the fourth class: Vi was one of the 1,830 accepted for the WASP program. The program had been moved to Sweet-water, Texas, and Vi was a member of Sweetwater’s first class of WASPs.
Recruits had to pass 23 weeks of ground school, physical training, and military flying. They had to know subjects such as math, physics, and meteorology. And they had to pass classes in map reading, navigation, engine repair, Morse code, and military regulation. In short, the women underwent the exact same training that the men did.
Each day, Vi and the other women were up by six in the morning. One semester, she had ground school in the morning and flight training in the afternoon. The next semester, the order was reversed. Vi started her training in a 150-horsepower Fairchild PT-19. As she progressed through the training, she moved up to more powerful airplanes, such as the BT-13 Valiant and the AT-6. She practiced night flying, for the first time ever, in an AT-17 Bobcat.
One day, a male colonel overheard Vi telling a classmate that the flight training wasn’t that hard. He decided to give her something to groan about and had her do five evaluated test flights in five days. Vi said that when it was over, she was a basket case.
As civil service employees, the trainees had to pay for their own clothing, food, and lodging. Vi’s flight suit was a man’s size 44 that she wore throughout her service. After her first solo flight on March 5, 1943, she was commissioned in the WASPs.
Vi graduated from training in August 1943. When Jackie Cochran gave her the silver wings, Vi vowed that no one would ever take them away from her. (When pilots finished training, they were awarded their wings, a pin that would go on their uniform. Cochran fought to make certain that the 1,074 women pilots who graduated from her program were awarded silver wings.)
Vi was assigned to Air Transport Command at Love Field in Dallas, Texas. She continued training in Brownsville, Texas, with four male pilots, learning to fly pursuit planes in an AT-6. In pursuit planes, pilots couldn’t see ahead of them; they had to look out the sides to see where they were going. In the beginning, the instructor wouldn’t let her fly. But when he made a bad landing and tried to blame it on her, she finally spoke up to defend herself. The next day, he let her fly—and had to admit that she knew was she was doing.
In World War II, WASPs flew planes to different destinations. Vi was one of 114 pursuit pilots assigned to pick up planes and deliver them to military airfields in either Newark, New Jersey, or Long Beach, California. Her favorite plane was the P-51, which was known for its speed and fuel capacity and was used to guard bombers during missions. Military historians say that the P-51 was a big part of winning World War II. Vi even delivered the Tuskegee Airmen’s first P-51.
Like most of the WASPs, Vi worked every day of the week and flew in all kinds of weather and conditions. When the male pilots began coming home in late 1944, they wanted their jobs back. Vi and the others WASPs went to the airlines for jobs. They were told they were qualified, “but we can’t give you the job because you’re a woman.”
WASPs. Courtesy of the US Air Force
The women pilots didn’t earn as much as the male pilots, nor were they entitled to benefits because the WASPs weren’t officially in the military. Vi worked hard on behalf of her fellow WASPs; she contacted members of Congress and had people sign petitions. Finally, in 1977, the WASPs’ work was recognized when President Jimmy Carter granted them military status, making them eligible for all the benefits war veterans were due.
When she was 89, Vi parachuted out of an airplane. A year later, she and a veteran friend participated in a simulated dogfight over a California airport. She also went paragliding and finally felt like the hawks that she used to envy.
Vi Cowden continued flying into her 90s. During her time in the WASPs, Vi had flown eight different military planes. On May 1, 2009, she got the chance to pilot her favorite plane once more; 65 years had passed since she had last flown a P-51. She flew a P-51C Mustang from San Diego to Long Beach, California, an experience she called a dream come true. As soon as she stepped into the cockpit, she remembered how flying her first P-51 felt.
In March 2010, almost 70 years after flying for their country, Vi and the other 300 WASPs who were still living received the Congressional Gold Medal for service to the United States. The Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor given to civilians, is given for outstanding acts of service to the United States.
A documentary, Wings of Silver: The Vi Cowden Story, was made about her life. She was also an active member of the Ninety-Nines and participated in a “living history” project in which World War II veterans spoke at high schools.
When Vi Cowden died at age 94, obituaries everywhere referred to her as a wartime-plane pilot. She would have enjoyed that recognition.
LEARN MORE
A WASP Among Eagles: A Woman Military Test Pilot in World War II by Ann Carl (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2010)
WASP Pilot Violet Cowden (video) on History.com, www.history.com/videos/wasp-pilot-violet-cowden#wasp-pilot-violet-cowden
VALENTINA GRIZODUBOVA
The Soviet Amelia Earhart
WHILE AMERICAN WOMEN WERE restricted to administrative flying missions during wartime, more than a thousand Russian women flew combat missions. Valentina Grizodubova was one of them.
Women had served in combat positions in the Soviet Union as early as World War I. Together, Russia and the surrounding countries were one country, known as the Soviet Union, from 1919 to 1991. Except for Turkey, which had one female military pilot in Sabiha Gokcen, the Soviet Union was the only country with women who flew in combat.
Valentina made more than 200 military flights during World War II, including bombing missions against Germany. She was promoted to colonel and served as commander of a long-range bomber squadron of 300 men.
“In my experience, girls make just as good pilots as men,” she said in 1942. “You cannot judge by appearance. I know girls so quiet and apparently timid that they blush when spoken to, yet they pilot bombers over Germany without qualm. No country at war today can afford to ignore the tremendous reservoir of woman power.”
Sometimes referred to as the Soviet Union’s Amelia Earhart, Valentina Grizodubova was born January 18, 1910 (though her birth date is sometimes listed as January 31 because her country changed to a different type of calendar after her birth). By the time Valentina reached adulthood, the Soviet Union had embraced aviation. Most women received flight training through the Society for Cooperation in Defense and Aviation-Chemical Development (OSOAVIAKhIM). By 1941, between one-fourth and one-third of all Soviet pilots were female.
Before the war, Valentina taught flying. She also tested how far she could push the altitude, speed, and distance of an airplane. Records weren’t being set only in the United States. Valentina set six world records, including a women’s long-distance nonstop flight record, which she later broke. On October 28, 1937, Valentina, together with Marina Raskova, flew an AIR-12 and established a new long-distance nonstop flight record for women.
Less than a year later, the two women, along with Paulina Ossipenko as copilot, set a women’s distance record when they flew from Moscow to Vladivostok in the Far E
ast—a distance of 4,000 miles (6,450 kilometers). They covered it in 26 hours and 29 minutes. The trio flew an ANT-37, which was a converted long-range DB-2 bomber. Valentina named the plane Rodina, which means “motherland.”
During the flight, the group relied primarily on radio signals to navigate, as the overcast skies made physical landmarks almost impossible to find. As they flew farther from civilization, they stopped receiving radio signals. They flew until they ran out of fuel and had to make a forced landing in a swamp.
For three days, no one knew what had happened to the women. Stuck in the wilderness in the rain, they chased off wild animals, including bears and even a lynx that decided to explore their cockpit. Valentina, Marina, and Paulina were finally located in marshy land near the Siberian-Manchoukuo border. They were returned to Moscow and celebrated as heroes and respected aviators; they were even awarded the Order of Lenin, one of their country’s highest honors.
Bridge of Wings
Many years later, a group of women thought it was time to re-create the flight that made Valentina Grizodubova, Marina Raskova, and Paulina Ossipenko famous. American pilots Nikki Mitchell and Rhonda Miles, both from Nashville, flew around the world in 49 days in 1998. When they landed in Moscow, they joined two Russian female pilots, Khalide Makagonova and Natalia Vinokourova, to re-create the 1938 trip across Russia to the southeastern tip of Siberia. They called their commemorative flight the Bridge of Wings tour.
The American women landed in Moscow on July 23, 1998. The next day, they met with approximately 50 survivors of the Soviet Night Witches and other groups of World War II women pilots. Four days later, the four women began their journey. Sixty years had passed since the original flight, so the women had modern tools to make the flight to the town of Osipenko a little safer. Still, the flight involved passing over glaciers and large, isolated areas of swamp. Russia is the largest country in the world, but much of it is uninhabitable. Yet at every stop, the pilots were greeted with enthusiasm. In Kazan, Russia, their first stop after Moscow, a brass band waited. As the women deplaned, they were serenaded with 1940s American big band music, including “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” In even the smallest villages, Russians turned out to greet them. In Olyokminsk, the mayor and groups of dancers were waiting.
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