Alexander offered her a way to get a feel for his plane that would benefit them both. He was trying to sell the P-35 to the US Army Air Force. It loved the design but had some trepidation on account of its complexity; the engineering developments that excited Jackie demanded pilots have special training, and the AAF preferred simplicity. Hoping to salvage the sale, Alexander asked Jackie to make the demonstration flight at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. He knew that if a woman with no pursuit training could fly his plane, the army brass would accept that it wasn’t overly complicated. The demonstration would double as Jackie’s proof she could handle it in an air race.
When the pair got to Wright Field, medical officer Captain Harry Armstrong expressed his very different opinion. He told Jackie that a woman had no business flying a plane that was considered complicated for male pilots, which only strengthened her determination. She committed Alexander’s lightning-fast introduction to the controls to memory, then repeated his cardinal rule: “Don’t play around up there. Just take the plane up, fly it level, and bring it back down.” As the plane was new to her, he wanted to protect her life as much as his reputation.
Thus Jackie found herself sitting in the cramped cockpit of a plane she had never flown taxiing along a makeshift grass runway lined with military personnel. The sky overhead was filled with low clouds, meaning visibility would be bad to boot. In her heart of hearts, she wanted nothing more than to postpone the demonstration flight until after she’d had a chance to test it without an audience, but she knew that wasn’t an option, so she took off. In the air, she followed Alexander’s advice to the letter, flying a modest, level profile for just twenty-five minutes before lowering the gear to prepare for her landing. The moment she did, the rudder pedals started to vibrate under her feet. Alexander had warned her it could mean the gear wasn’t locked, in which case she’d make a crash landing right on the plane’s belly. Keen to avoid such a disaster, especially with an audience, she pulled the plane up to gain altitude and lined up for a second attempt. But again, the pedals shook as soon as she lowered the gear. Low on fuel, she had no choice but to land. She braced for the impact as she brought the P-35 down as slowly and gently as she dared, but no impact came. Instead, she was amazed to feel the wheels hitting the grass.
Alexander was thrilled. Jackie’s flight had preserved his good standing with the Army Air Force, and he was more than willing to have her fly one of his planes in the Bendix. Harry Armstrong, too, had to retract his earlier objections. He was impressed by Jackie’s command of the airplane, so much so that he offered to introduce her to the work he and his colleagues did that went hand in hand with flying. While pilots like Jackie proved new airplanes were safe from an engineering point of view, doctors like Harry made sure those pilots stayed healthy.
The medical side of aviation was inextricably linked to pilots pushing their planes in pursuit of new records. While Jackie was focused on flying fast, other pilots were looking to fly higher than anyone else, so high the very environment was a hazard. Below 10,000 feet, a pilot can breathe just fine, but any higher and the air becomes so thin she can’t get enough oxygen with each breath. Without sufficient oxygen, the body shuts down. First, the vision blurs, then darkens around the edges as everything takes on a gray tone. Then fatigue sets in, followed in short order by impaired motor functions. A pilot could succumb to hypoxia without realizing anything was wrong, almost always with fatal consequences. Giving pilots a way to take oxygen with them to these higher altitudes would keep them alive, and this was what Harry’s colleague William Randolph “Randy” Lovelace II was working on. The thirty-year-old physician just three years out of Harvard Medical School was a licensed pilot himself, now holding the rank of first lieutenant in the Army Medical Reserve Corps. Working at the Aero Medical Laboratory at Wright Field with doctors Walter M. Boothby and Arthur H. Bulbulian, he was tackling the problem of hypoxia by developing an in-flight oxygen mask pilots could wear while flying. Jackie was pleased to meet Randy and learn about his research. She wasn’t looking to fly above the clouds just yet but knew the day would come when she would need exactly the kind of system he was working on.
* * *
That day came in the summer of 1938 as Jackie began her preparations for that year’s Bendix in earnest. Her star was rising; she’d come in third in the Bendix the previous year, and weeks afterward set her first international speed record on a closed three-kilometer course at an air meet in Detroit. Then she set another speed record flying from New York to Miami. These flights, combined with the positive media attention she was bringing to the world of aviation, earned her the prestigious Clifford B. Harmon trophy in 1937, recognizing her as the country’s most outstanding aviatrix. Officially holding court with the best pilots in the world, Jackie was sure this was her year to add a Bendix win to her name. She doubled down on planning every single detail of the flight.
First, as per race rules, she renewed her transport license. Then she worked out her route. She plotted detailed maps of four possible courses that took advantage of every beacon, radio station, and beam between Burbank and Cleveland in case she had to rely on instruments; she would pick her course at the last minute after a final weather check. Her challenge was that none of the routes gave her any wiggle room if she came up against bad weather. Going through a storm was dangerous, but going around one would kill her time. Her best choice was to try to fly above the weather—or at least the worst of it—and stay on the same heading, which meant flying above 10,000 feet and risking hypoxia. She needed that high-altitude oxygen system. She had her own doctor write a note to Harry Armstrong and Randy Lovelace, and to her delight learned that their mask was ready. Randy, keen to get some in-flight data, got Trans World Airlines to lend her a completed version of his system.
On August 16, with the race two weeks away, she sent all her information to the race officials. Her accompanying cover letter outlined all of her records, her awards, and an advisory that her new cosmetics line would be on sale in the fall. The letter ended with a stern warning forbidding anyone associated with the race to release her official image before the event. If she won, she would use the image for paid endorsements.
The last piece of her Bendix puzzle was the plane. She’d bought a brand-new one for the race, but it was still under construction. In its absence, she practiced on a similar model at the Seversky factory on Long Island. She also practiced flying in and out of the Burbank airport at night without floodlights or landing lights to get used to the runway. The way the gear folded up demanded she turn off her lights first, so if she left without them on she could fold the gear up that much faster, maximizing her time with the plane in its most aerodynamic configuration.
With a week to go before the race, Jackie’s P-35 came out of the factory with a leak in the fuel system. While mechanics repaired the problem, she sat in the cockpit memorizing the exact location of every switch and dial until she knew the panel blindfolded. She knew her plan inside and out, too. She would fly at 16,000 feet with a slightly less than fully opened throttle; according to designers, this was ideal for optimal performance of her 1,200-horsepower engine. She chose to take off around three o’clock in the morning again, risking fog to take advantage of the crisp night air that would give her the most power out of her engine to get her fuel-loaded plane off the ground. If everything went perfectly, she would land in Cleveland with twenty gallons of fuel left over. Those twenty gallons were her only safety buffer. Floyd knew her plan, too. He knew her rate of fuel consumption and what checkpoints she would cross and could use both as a way to track her progress since she wouldn’t be able to talk to him en route.
Alexander himself flew her plane from Long Island to Burbank for the race, setting a male cross-country speed record in the process. With everything fixed, Jackie added the finishing touch. She painted her race number, 13, on the side of the plane two and a half feet tall. She was ready to fly the Bendix.
* * *
There were fewer r
acers this year, and Jackie was the lone female entrant, but the crowd gathered to watch the Bendix planes take off was as large as ever. Jackie sat in her P-35, fueled and ready at the end of the runway. The weather bureau said storms were traveling northward from the Gulf of Mexico so she was planning to follow the route that would keep her far enough south to miss the worst of it on her way to Cleveland. Packed into the cockpit she had a thermos of hot coffee, her makeup bag, and Alexander’s leather coat; he’d insisted she take it as an extra defense against the cold she’d meet at her cruising altitude. Alone in the dark, she focused on the electric lights at the far end of the runway for a moment before opening the throttle. She felt her engine’s power and responsiveness as she gained speed racing down the runway, and at 3:13 in the morning, her wheels lifted off the ground. She quickly folded up the landing gear as the cheering crowd watched her plane disappear into the night sky. Her time had officially started.
Almost as soon as she reached her cruising altitude, Jackie felt something pulling her to one side. It had to be the wing tanks. Hoping to balance her fuel load, she switched from the belly tank to those in the wings in an attempt to drain them first, then put the issue from her mind. Crossing into Arizona, the predicted storm appeared, and her planned altitude of 16,000 feet put her right in the thick of it. “The soup,” she called it. It was so thick she couldn’t get radio reception. Clamping the pipe stem from the oxygen tank between her teeth, she focused on breathing through her mouth as she settled in for an instrument flight. Eyes darting between compass, altimeter, and artificial horizon, checking her attitude and engine performance, she gradually climbed to 23,000 feet to try to rise above the storm, but the lower temperature only added a layer of ice to her windshield. Between two bad options of flying blinded by weather or by ice, she opted for the former; if the clouds broke, at least she’d be able to see. She brought the Seversky back down into the storm.
Two exhausting hours later, Jackie realized she didn’t quite have her balance problem licked. The wing tanks should have been draining at the same rate to keep her fuel load level and her center of gravity balanced, but her instruments showed the right wing was still heavy and pulling her into a bank. Fighting it took all the strength in her hands and arms. She tried switching to the belly tank again, then back to the wing tanks, but it didn’t work. Without warning, the plane gave in to the pull of the overloaded right wing. It fell into a spiraling dive sending Jackie, blinded by the storm, straight toward the ground.
Luckily, she knew her way around the cockpit by feel. She got her bearings on the controls, then muscled the plane into a shallow dive and pulled out of the spin. Recovering her lost altitude, she was now certain that the right wing wasn’t draining and quickly devised a solution. If she flew at an angle with the empty left wing below the full right one, she could force it to drain. Flying in a bank like that set her off course, but there was nothing else she could do. And so she entered into a sort of acrobatic flight, dipping her left wing to drain the right fuel tank then switching to the belly tank to feed the engines while she leveled out and recovered her heading. It was a demanding routine on a slightly less straightforward flight path, but it worked.
Though this curving flight path was physically demanding, flying through the storm left the cockpit so cold Jackie’s feet felt like blocks of ice on the rudder pedals, and a leak in her oxygen tube had left it painfully frozen to her face. Without taking her eyes from the instrument panel, she reached down for her thermos of coffee only to find that the top was missing. Flying as high as she had been, the change in atmospheric pressure had blown the lid right off, leaving her hot drink as cold as she was. She put it aside in favor of some lozenges to keep her throat from getting dry.
Hours later, the clouds finally cleared. Jackie looked down and recognized the Mississippi River by the jetties and landmarks she knew on the banks. She was within five miles of dead center on her course, only slightly north of her ideal flight path as she began to descend for landing. Passing over Grand Lake St. Marys in Ohio, Cleveland was in view.
At the airport, official timers heard the roar of her powerful engine over the dull buzzing of the smaller planes flying nearby. They rushed to the whitewashed line on the tarmac, clocking the exact moment her wheels flew over it as the moment her race ended. One judge waved a checkered flag as a signal. The 120,000-strong crowd in the stands roared as Jackie’s silver plane rolled past them to a stop, but that didn’t tell her anything. She had been the third to leave Burbank, which meant there were still six pilots in the air who could be making better time. But when she saw the official timer driving out to meet her with hordes of photographers and journalists in his wake, she knew it could only mean one thing. The other pilots weren’t flying fast enough to beat her time, no matter how close they were to the airport. She had won the Bendix.
Officials congregated around her plane. Photographers followed, their cameras poised to capture the victor the moment she stepped out of the plane. Jackie wasn’t going to let it be a bad one. With the crowd around her plane growing, Jackie pulled her makeup bag into her lap and, ignoring disgruntled looks, combed her hair and touched up her lipstick. I don’t care what they think, she said to herself. No matter how hard the trip, I’ve got to look my best. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
The moment she opened the canopy, the furor was just as she had expected. She posed for photographs. She shook hands with Vincent Bendix as cameramen captured newsreel footage of the victorious landing. It was the fame she dreamed of, but there was only one person she wanted to see. She had landed late and knew Floyd would be worried.
“Where’s Floyd?” She spoke into the crowd gathered around her. “I want some cigarettes…I’ve been smoking an oxygen pipe all the way from California and I need a cigarette for a change!” When she finally found her husband, they didn’t know who was happier to see the other.
“I’m not afraid to fly across the country alone,” she told him in a private whisper, “but with a crowd like this I’m afraid without you.” Floyd beamed at her.
Jackie’s official time was eight hours and ten minutes, but she wasn’t done flying for the day. After forty minutes of celebration in Cleveland, she was back in the air, dipping her wing in a salute as she sped off toward New York. Two hours and two minutes later, she landed at Floyd Bennett Field. Her combined flying time of ten hours and twelve minutes allowed her to add a new women’s cross-country speed record to her accomplishments that day. Jackie left her plane in New York and boarded a commercial flight back to Cleveland, where she had more than enough time to change out of her flight suit and into an evening gown for the night’s Aviation Ball where she danced with Floyd late into the night.
Jackie never found out what had caused her fuel line issues. A post-flight inspection found a wad of paper in the right wing tank was blocking fuel flow, but no one at the Seversky factory could say how it got there. Whether it was mistakenly left in the wing and was shaken loose on the flight or whether someone at the Burbank airport had placed it there was anyone’s guess.
After her Bendix win, the media crowned thirty-two-year-old Jackie the First Lady of the Air Lanes, and a boost in publicity followed. Jackie was careful to manage her image, ensuring the press used preapproved flattering pictures of her and referred to her as Miss Cochran, never Mrs. Odlum, though they were free to mention her marriage to Floyd. She also made sure every outlet knew she was an orphan; her invented origin story proved the perfect rags-to-riches narrative to capture America’s heart. Paid sponsorships came in spades. Advertisements for Kendall Oil and General Tire and Rubber boasted that the famous aviatrix used both their products in the plane that she flew in connection with her cosmetics company. She even leveraged the win into her business. “Jacqueline Cochran, the aviatrix, puts a special eye bath which she uses herself,” read the copy accompanying her ads. “It must be good because as a flyer she unquestionably realizes the importance of healthy, rested eyes.” Her line was
touted as marrying functional products and stylish packaging the way she combined her vocation and avocation. “Her cosmetics have been subjected to a severe test—the test of professional use by Miss Cochran in her years of flying.” They flew off shelves. Her story was everywhere, including the September 12, 1938, issue of Newsweek that featured Adolf Hitler on the cover.
* * *
Soldiers at military bases across the United States were starting to feel the effects of the growing unrest in Europe. As Hitler’s increasingly hostile activities became known, American soldiers were ordered to relocate for training, bringing their families in tow.
Such was the case for Lieutenant Colonel William Harvey Cobb. Harvey had been a member of the National Guard since college, and though he kept his family afloat selling cars during the Depression, he was still with the service. Every year, he packed his family—wife Helena and daughters Carolyn and Geraldyn—into the car and drove from Norman, Oklahoma, to Camp Perry in Ohio for the National Rifle Matches, a training exercise that doubled as a public demonstration and competition with other units. The older Carolyn, who preferred playing house and dressing up her Shirley Temple doll, hated this forced week of camping just to watch her father play at being a soldier. Geraldyn, on the other hand, two years younger, who preferred to be called Jerrie, loved it. Not only did she love that her father’s unit almost always won the state championship, but she also loved spending an entire week outside under the open sky with endless stars as company.
Jerrie delighted in running through the Oklahoma fields, sometimes holding an imaginary rifle like she’d seen her father doing at the Rifle Matches, flopping on her belly and rolling around in the grass. She also loved riding horses. Jerrie’s preference was for solitary pursuits that imbued her with a sense of freedom she couldn’t find with friends. Though she wasn’t shy, she had been born tongue-tied; the too-short frenulum binding her tongue to the bottom of her mouth meant words formed clearly in her mind but came out twisted, blurred, and thick when she spoke. By the time a doctor was able to fix her lingual problem, Jerrie had grown into a quiet child who firmly believed the best fun could be had alone.
Fighting for Space Page 7