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Women have the 'right stuff'

  • Published
  • By Dr. Robert Kane
  • Air University History Office
MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. --  Congress has successively designated March as Women's History month since 1987 to recognize the vast contributions of women to all sectors of American life.  The idea for such special recognition began with the first International Women's Day in 1911 and a Women's History Week in 1978. 

This year's theme is "Weaving the Stories of Women's Lives."

Women since colonial days have contributed much to the development of the American way of life in many areas, including national defense.  In colonial America, for example, women helped their husbands defend isolated farms from Indian attacks.  During the American Revolution, Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley, popularly known as "Molly Pitcher," provided water to the men of her husband's artillery battery in more than 100-degree heat during the battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778, until he fell exhausted and she took his place in cleaning his cannon.  In subsequent American wars, women served as clerks, nurses, cooks and even as civilian spies during the Civil War. 

During World War I, more than 30,000 women served with the armed forces, mostly as nurses, but 300 served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps in France as French translators.  In addition, the Navy enlisted 15,000 women, the first women to serve as military members of the armed forces.  After the war ended, former President Woodrow Wilson recognized their contributions to the war effort with his support for the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

With the pending U.S. entry into World War II in the summer of 1941, the Army Air Forces faced a shortage of male pilots.  Lt. Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold, the AAF commander, asked the renowned female aviator Jacqueline Cochran, recipient of four international and 17 national aviation awards, for suggestions.  She offered to recruit female pilots as civilian pilots for the AAF to release male pilots for combat.

However, Arnold initially turned down her plan.  Undaunted, she recruited and trained American women pilots to ferry aircraft for the Royal Air Force.  As a result, 25 American women went to Britain in the spring of 1942 as uniformed civilian pilots of the British Air Transport Auxiliary. 

Meanwhile, in September 1942 another well-known American female aviator Nancy Harkness Love formed the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron with 38 female pilots to fly aircraft to Britain for the Air Transport Command.  The first class graduated April 28, 1943, after 23 weeks of military, ground school and flying training at the Houston, Texas, airport.

The success of Love's program caused Arnold to reconsider Cochran's women's pilot training program.  In October 1943, Cochran became the director of women's flying training, assigned to the Flying Training Command, headquartered at Fort Worth, Texas, and soon afterward she formed the Women's Flying Training Detachment to qualify women as civilian pilots for the AAF.

On Aug. 5, 1943, Cochran's WFTD merged with Love's squadron to form the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP, with Cochran as director and Love as the executive in charge of ferrying operations.  The women selected for the WASP program trained at Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas.

By Dec. 20, 1944, when the AAF terminated the program, 1,074 women had graduated from this flight training program.  They were assigned to 120 bases, including Maxwell Field, across the United States.  Flying virtually every type of military aircraft, including the C-47 Skytrain, P-38 Lightning, B-17 Flying Fortress, and the B-29 Superfortress, they ferried aircraft from factories to U.S. airfields, towed targets for gunnery training, flew experimental aircraft, conducted bombardier and navigation training, and transported personnel for a total of more than 60 million miles during the program's existence.

In the book "Test Flying at Old Wright Field," former WASP Ann Baumgartner described her experiences at Camp Davis, North Carolina, where she went after flight training graduation:  "To train artillery men, we flew small cubs, old B-34 bombers, ancient SBD dive bombers, tired, old fabric-covered C-78s, and heavy SB2C dive bombers.  Oh, to fly the sleek fighters and bombers at Wright Field."

By mid-1944, the return of male pilots to the United States signaled the end of the WASP program, and the AAF terminated the program in December 1944.  Throughout the program's existence Cochran tried to convince Congress to give the WASP military status, but without any success.  The female pilots received pay as civilians without any benefits accorded to their military male counterparts performing the same tasks.  As a result, for example, during the program's existence 38 WASP died in the line of duty, but Cochran, the WASP and the deceased's families paid the funeral costs for these women.

After the war ended, the AAF sealed the records of the WASP program, and neither the AAF nor Congress provided the WASP any recognition for their tremendous contributions to the Allied victory during the war.  Many WASP returned to private life, while others continued to fly.  Some joined the Air Force Reserve with their WASP service counting toward commissioned service, but few made military service a career.

About 30 years later, in 1977, the Air Force publicly announced that it would begin training the first women to fly military aircraft.  That announcement led the surviving WASP to lobby Congress to recognize them as World War II veterans.  With the support of U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, Congress passed a bill, which former President Jimmy Carter signed, that granted the WASP full military status for their World War II service.

On July 1, 2009, President Barack Obama and Congress awarded the WASP the Congressional Gold Medal.  During the award ceremony, the president said, "The Women Airforce Service Pilots courageously answered their country's call in a time of need while blazing a trail for the brave women who have given and continue to give so much in service to this nation since.  Every American should be grateful for their service, and I am honored to sign this bill to finally give them some of the hard-earned recognition they deserve."

Since 1971, American women have achieved numerous milestones that have widened their opportunities to serve in the U.S. armed forces.  In 1976, the Air Force opened flight training to women, and today women fly combat aircraft, such as the F-15, F-16 Fighting Falcon and A-10 Thunderbolt II, as well as noncombatant aircraft.  Air Force Col. Sue Helms flew on the space shuttle and made the longest spacewalk to date. 

Women form nearly 20 percent of today's Air Force, the highest among the military services.  With the removal of all legal barriers to women serving in combat, women will be able to serve in all Air Force career fields by early 2016. 

They truly carry on the legacy and the motto of the WASP: "We live in the wind and sand, and our eyes are on the stars."