Fighting for Space

by Amy Shira Teitel

  But Jackie faced continued resistance from the same men who had gone over Hap’s head to establish the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying command. Harold L. George, Cyrus Rowlett Smith, and commander of the Military Air Transport Service Lieutenant General William Tunner all agreed that women couldn’t withstand the rigors of a military flying program, and in the unlikely event they succeeded, saw no reason they shouldn’t be managed by the army. Their solution was to fold WFTD into the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) led by Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby.

  Jackie wanted nothing to do with the WAAC. She wanted military benefits for her girls, but her girls were pilots, not soldiers. The Army Air Force was under the umbrella of the army so it was barely a distinction, but she still wanted to stay close to the AAF. Long term, she knew the WFTD could help the AAF’s campaign to become a standalone service branch. She also didn’t think too highly of Oveta Hobby as a leader.

  The real issue was that the WAAC and the WFTD had very different physical and background requirements. Pilots needed far different training than did non-flyers, so managing the two groups under one umbrella would be a logistical nightmare. There was also a question of rank. According to the AAF, all pilots were officers, but the number of women in the WFTD exceeded the number of officers allowed in the WAAC, meaning all Jackie’s girls would be demoted. Jackie and Oveta would hold the same rank of colonel, but Oveta would still be Jackie’s supervisor. To avoid these problems, Jackie wanted her girls militarized directly under the AAF through carefully worded legislation that would circumvent existing language stipulating that all pilots were men.

  It had become a battle. George, Smith, and Tunner were as determined to militarize the WFTD into the WAAC as she was to keep them on civilian status until they could be their own group. The men went so far as to send a mole to Jackie for training to get inside information and chip away at her credibility. The WAAC issue, Jackie was sure, was why Hap had asked to see her.

  “How would you like your girls to become part of the WAACs?” he asked, confirming her suspicions.

  “Those girls will become part of the Women’s Army Corps over my dead body.” Jackie was livid. “Hobby has bitched up her program and she’s not going to bitch up mine.”

  “Well, it’s under consideration,” Hap told her, far more calmly. As Jackie sat seething on the other side of his desk, Hap called Oveta and set a meeting.

  The following day, Jackie sat boiling in Oveta’s office, as much from anger as from the mink coat she wore since no one had offered to take it. Jackie bristled as Oveta gushed that her seven-year-old son was “just crazy about airplanes!” before admitting she didn’t know one end of the machine from another. Oveta was ambivalent on the issue of who should command the female pilots. Since the decision wouldn’t be made at her level, she didn’t feel this discussion was worth her time. Jackie agreed, though on the grounds that no woman who thought airplanes were simply decoration should be in charge of her girls. Livid, Jackie remained firm on the point that a pilot needed to be in command of the WFTD, someone who truly understood the type of work they did. The meeting ended without any resolution, which meant for the moment the WFTD would remain an independent, civilian group separate from Oveta and the WAAC.

  As months of training passed, the WFTD thrived. In early 1943, the Army Air Force began expanding the program with the goal of increasing the annual graduation rate. The program relocated to Avenger Field in nearby Sweetwater, Texas, a proper military site where the Royal Air Force was just finishing a training program for Canadian air cadets.

  When the second batch of women pilot trainees arrived at the end of February, they joined the Army Air Force Flying Training Command as members of the 319th AAFFTD—the Women’s Flying Training Detachment. “You are part of an experiment,” they were told at their orientation, “which will do more to advance equality for women than anything that has been done so far.”

  Life at Avenger Field offered a stark contrast to the common conception of female pilots. These women weren’t society flyers training for powder puff derbies. They were women from all walks of life, united by their love of flying and love of country. They were up at six a.m. to clean their barracks and eat breakfast before a full day of training. They flew seven days a week, learning the intricacies of every kind of plane they would be ferrying or testing for the Army Air Force. They did drills, trained to build upper body strength, took ground school classes, and studied every evening before lights out. Social status didn’t matter, nor did appearance. They braided their long hair or tucked it under a turban to keep it away from engines and propeller blades and wore oversize coveralls they jokingly called “zoot suits” that were so bulky most girls had to shower in them just to get them clean.

  However unglamorous, men seemed to feel an inexorable pull toward Avenger Field. Within days of the WFTD’s arrival, more than a hundred male pilots made “forced landings” at the base just to get a glimpse of the all-female flying unit. And Jackie was having none of it. Remembering the handsy foremen from her childhood days in the cotton mill, she barred men from landing at her base unless it was a genuine emergency. She insisted only married officers be assigned to Avenger Field in an effort to protect her girls on their own base. She forbade her girls from fraternizing with male pilots and banned them from drinking and going to nightclubs to maintain a chaste and professional image, though Jackie herself kept whiskey in her desk drawer. They had to wear skirts, not slacks, to officers’ clubs. She wanted them to command respect as pilots and as women. When Jackie found out that local prostitutes were passing themselves off as Avenger Field trainees to cash in on the allure of female pilots, Jackie barred the girls from leaving the base at night.

  The strict rules earned Avenger Field the nickname Cochran’s Convent, which Jackie used proudly. Likewise, the girls weren’t bothered. In their unconventional living quarters, camaraderie flourished as they snuck moonshine onto the base for nighttime revelry and wrote a verse to the tune of “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” about the zoot suits. “Once we wore scanties, but now we’re in zoots, they are our issued GI flying suits! They come in all sizes, large, large, and large. We look like a great big barge!” Eventually, they bought khaki pants, white shirts, and khaki flight hats to give them a unified look.

  On April 24, 1943, Jackie watched with pride as the first group of forty-five girls graduated in a ceremony at Ellington Air Force Base. Hap was there to give the girls their wings, courtesy of Floyd, who’d bought and modified pins to read “319th.” Watching from the sidelines, Jackie had to step in when she saw Hap falter over the women’s lack of lapels; she walked over and discreetly suggested he simply hand them to each girl. None of the pilots cared that it was unorthodox; they were all thrilled to start flying real missions.

  When the second class graduated a month later, Jackie felt far less celebratory. These girls were being sent to Nancy Harkness Love’s Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, the WAFS in the Ferry Command. Jackie had spent months training these pilots in a program designed to prove that women were as capable as men, and now they were being lumped into the catchall ferry command. What Jackie needed was full military control over her program; otherwise, her pilots would be funneled into the program she viewed as below her girls’ skill level. She needed the WFTD militarized under the AAF. Floyd tried to help by tapping into his previous life as a lawyer. He researched laws that allowed women to serve as doctors with the army and navy, looking for verbiage Jackie could adapt to apply to pilots.

  Things started to fall into place for Jackie that summer. At the end of June, Hap named her head of all women flying for the AAF, a new role that allowed her to expand the program and send her girls to air bases around the country to test planes that had been repaired. Two months later, Jackie’s new position was formalized when the WFTD and the WAFS were brought together and renamed the Women’s Auxiliary Service Pilots under her full control. Nancy Harkness Love, the woman who had threatened her leadership from
the start, was now her subordinate and director of the ferry division. As director of the WASPs, Jackie managed all training and operations in conjunction with the assistant chiefs of air staff and the air surgeon. The only thing missing was military status. Her program was still a civilian one, and Jackie could only hope that its continued success would earn the WASPs the recognition and benefits that would come with militarization.

  * * *

  In Wichita Falls, Texas, just a few hours from Avenger Field, Lieutenant Colonel Harvey Cobb came home to have lunch with his wife, Helena, and their two daughters, both of whom had come home from school for their midday meal. After America joined the war, Harvey transferred to the Army Air Corps hoping to fly overseas, but he was over the age limit to begin flight training. There was, however, a loophole he had finally been able to exploit, which meant he had big news to share over lunch. As the chattering family gathered around the table, Harvey silenced the room with the simple act of holding an envelope over his plate. “Who can guess what this is?” he asked with a smile.

  “Orders?” Helena guessed.

  “A war bond?” Jerrie asked.

  “A commendation?” her older sister, Carolyn, said.

  They were all wrong.

  “It’s nothing very important, I guess.” He shrugged. “Just my—are you sure you can’t guess?”

  “William Harvey Cobb! Enough of this!” Helena cried. “Just your what?”

  “Just my license as a private pilot!”

  There was a moment of silence as the girls took in the news, then the room erupted in excited squeals. Harvey had been learning to fly in secret. This private license was the first step before his commercial license, which in turn would qualify him for military flight training regardless of age. But that wasn’t it. He had one more surprise.

  “Just so that I could practice whenever there’s enough time—sometimes you can’t just walk into the field and get the plane you want that very minute, you know—well, the Cobbs now own their own airplane!”

  There was nothing to discuss. The girls were excused from school for the afternoon, and the family piled into the car and drove out to the small air force base at Sheppard Field where a Taylorcraft sat waiting. Carolyn went up first. Then it was Jerrie’s turn to climb into the rear cockpit. At twelve she was still short enough she could barely see over the fuselage, but it hardly mattered. As soon as they were airborne, the wind whipping against her face, she fell in love. The Sun somehow felt hotter, even though she was only a few hundred feet off the ground. In that moment she recognized that the sky was her home. She needed to learn to fly, and not when she was grown—she wanted to learn right now.

  “Daddy, will you teach me to fly?” she asked just days after that first flight. No, he said. He assumed that her excitement about riding in a plane would pass before long. But she tried again the next day, and the day after that, and every time he gave her another reason why the answer was no. So she changed her tactic.

  “Dad, I don’t mean that I’ll fly alone. Just with you. All I want to do is to learn how. That’s all. Won’t you even show me how?”

  “Ask your mother,” Harvey replied, caving in to his youngest daughter.

  Helena was far from thrilled by the prospect. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “Why?” Jerrie asked.

  “Because…” she paused, reaching for an excuse, “your school grades are so bad, that’s why!” In an attempt to keep her daughter on the ground, Helena had inadvertently given Jerrie the perfect bargaining chip.

  Weeks later, her grades acceptably high, Jerrie sat in the Taylorcraft’s rear cockpit on a stack of pillows. She could see over the fuselage and reach the controls now, but her feet dangled a foot above the rudder pedals. For the moment, it didn’t matter. She listened as her father explained the instruments on the control panel and taught her hand signals. Then he gave her the cardinal rule: “Just sit there and don’t touch anything and don’t do anything until I tell you.” With that, he hopped in the forward cockpit, taxied down the runway, and took the little plane into the air.

  Jerrie watched the Texas landscape stretch out below her until she saw her father lift his hands. It was a signal. Carefully, she reached forward and grabbed the stick in front of her. When she saw her father point down, she pushed the stick forward and felt the Taylorcraft’s nose dip as it went toward the ground. Next, she saw the signal for up, so Jerrie pulled the stick back and felt the plane’s nose tilt skyward as it gained altitude. For an hour they flew in concert, Harvey giving hand signals and working the rudder pedals while Jerrie followed his instructions on the engine’s throttle and stick. Too soon, Jerrie saw the hands-off signal and knew their lesson was over.

  Back on the ground, they met a lieutenant from Harvey’s squadron in the hangar. “Good flight?” he asked them.

  “Training flight,” Harvey explained. “Jerrie just had her first lesson.”

  “Better log it,” the young lieutenant said, producing a small blue memo book from his pocket. “Here, Jerrie, let me give you your first log.” Jerrie watched as he divided the first page into columns, then filled in the time, date, and place. As her instructor, Harvey signed off on the hour. The men chuckled over the girl’s informal logbook, but to Jerrie, its empty pages held immeasurable potential.

  Father and daughter spent hours in the little Taylorcraft, often taking off and landing with Jerrie scrunched out of sight; technically, Harvey was accumulating solo hours and shouldn’t have had a passenger. But it was his private plane, so he could bend the rules. The real problem for Jerrie was that the days were fast becoming too short for everything she wanted to do.

  * * *

  Jackie felt like time was disappearing as little issues commanded her attention. She, of course, wanted her girls to be the best possible flyers, first and foremost, but she also wanted them to be perceived as virtuous and well-groomed women. They needed real uniforms, not surplus nurses’ uniforms or ones made from excess Women’s Army Corps uniform fabric that she herself wouldn’t be caught dead wearing. She had one designed in New York City at her own expense: a Santiago blue wool jacket, skirt, and beret with a white cotton shirt and a black tie topped with a beige trench coat and a black calfskin utility bag that was a near match to the black alligator Fabrikoid case she sold with her weekend cosmetic kits. For flying, they would wear slacks and a waist-length battle jacket. Now she just needed money to have hundreds of them made, which meant getting approval from Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall. Jackie went to his office with three women in tow: a professional model in the perfectly tailored designer uniform, a woman from the quartermaster general’s office in an ill-fitting surplus nurse’s uniform, and a somewhat rotund woman in a similarly unflattering uniform made of the excess WAC fabric.

  “Well,” General Marshall said as he considered the women before him, “I like the one you’re wearing, Miss Cochran.” She was dressed in a hand-tailored gray suit she’d bought in Paris before the war. It wasn’t an option, she told him, but she knew where his eye would go next. “The blue one is the best.” He predictably picked the closest thing to couture, what the professional model was wearing, then agreed to pay to outfit every one of her WASPs in the designer uniforms. It was a small victory, but it meant a lot to Jackie. Her girls finally looked like the respected pilots they were.

  As the months wore on, the WASPs’ role expanded. Soon, at 120 Air Force bases around the country, Jackie’s girls were assigned to every kind of wartime stateside flying imaginable. They towed targets for male pilots to practice aerial shooting. They flew simulated strafing operations, passing low over ground troops and gun positions to train soldiers how to defend against aerial attacks. Searchlight flights saw the WASPs flying without navigation or lights so searchlight crews could practice finding planes. Tracking missions helped anti-aircraft gunnery crews learn to aim at moving targets. On low-altitude night flights, they dropped flares and smoke screens. When a plane was repaired, it w
as a WASP who flew it to ensure it was safe. They flew everything, muscling the controls of big planes like the B-17s, B-24s, B-25s, B-29s, C-47s, C-6s, and DC-3s bombers as well as smaller pursuit planes like the P-39, P-40, P-47, and P-61. They delivered flying cargo, top-secret weapons, and personnel around the country. One WASP tested a YP-59A twin-jet pursuit plane. While the army’s WAC and the navy’s WAVES—Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service—ran recruitment campaigns encouraging women to join the war effort, the WASP program never had to advertise. Press coverage made the program so popular that Jackie had to turn down hopeful WASPs for lack of space.

  * * *

  Jerrie was racking up hours in her father’s Taylorcraft when her flying career came to a grinding halt. Harvey was transferred to Denver, Colorado, forcing the family to sell the plane and a devastated Jerrie to give up her horse. To alleviate their daughter’s despair over this unexpected move, Harvey and Helena allowed Jerrie to work in a stable so she could board a horse for free and earn some money on the side. On weekends, she was allowed to go to the local private airport to watch the planes landing and taking off, though her only hope of flying was to be invited along for a ride. Though she developed a love of literature, it was these extracurricular pursuits that became the focus of Jerrie’s life, to the detriment of her education.

  Jerrie was playing hooky one day when her father caught her in a neighborhood park. Rather than lose his temper, Harvey drove his daughter to Rocky Mountain National Park. They found a quiet spot near a stream and sat for a moment before Harvey broke the silence.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “Well, there’s no one problem, really,” Jerrie replied. “I just don’t like sitting in classes when there’s so much going on outside. I can’t seem to get interested in most of the stuff in school. Why can’t I get a full-time job?”