Ladies In The Air

By ANN Contributor Aleta Vinas

(This is the first of a two-part series from contributor Aleta Vinas, who interviewed several women pilots during AirVenture 2004 --ed.)

"This is not a time when women should be patient. We are in a war and we need to fight it with all our ability and every weapon possible. Women pilots, in this particular case, are a weapon waiting to be used."

--Eleanor Roosevelt, 1942

On September 28, 1939 legendary aviatrix, Jackie Cochran wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt with the idea of putting women in the cockpit as non-combatants. It was the start of a new chapter in American history. The Women's Airforce Service Pilots better known as WASP was formed just a few years later.

The EAA forum, Warbirds In Review, hosted several WASP in the Warbird area at Oshkosh on Friday.

Nell "Mickey" Bright said, "We trained at Sweetwater (TX) -- primary, basic and advanced. Out of our class, 20 of us were chosen to go to B-25 school. After that we went to El Paso. There we flew B-25s, B-26s, A-24s, A-25s, P-47s, Twin engine Beeches. Got an awful lot of good flying time in."

Caro Bosca remembers an incident in a PT-19 during primary aerobatic training. "'I'll do loop, then you do one,'" her instructor said to her. Bosca already knew how to fly a loop.

Her instructor tried again. "'I'll do a slow roll,'" Bosca recalls being told.

She performed that maneuver just fine. So her instructor tried another to stump her again. "'Now we'll do a snap (roll).'"

"I know he thought he was going to catch me," Bosca says. "I did a snap and he did a snap and I followed him through, then I did a snap (again) and they were both perfect. The instructor says 'you do another one' and mine was just perfect.

"He said 'I'll do another one' and he was just about five degrees off of the horizon and he said 'excuse me'. The instructor again had Bosca do another snap, which again was perfect. Says Bosca "We never spoke of it again."

Dawn Seymore flew the B-17 for many hours, learning at Lockburn in Columbus (OH). The CEO there had decided, "Only married men were able to 'handle' women," she says.

One of the instructors mentioned that the female cadets learned to fly the B-17 different than their male counterparts. Why? "We (women) were trying to prove to ourselves that we could fly and we wanted to do it very well. And we were hard on ourselves and he didn't have to be the disciplinarian and tell us what to do."

Dot Lewis says she never noticed any prejudice in her training. "The instructors were always on our side," she says. "They wanted us to succeed. At least ours did and that was good."

The US Air Force exhibit at AirVenture last week had an area dedicated to the WASP. They flew over 44 types of aircraft throughout the US and Canada, freeing up men for combat missions.

According to the WASP website, in late December 1944, records marked 'classified,' sealed and stored in government archives for more than 30 years. Their contribution to the allied victory in WWII isn't recorded by the historians who write official history textbooks. As a result, many Americans don't know the WASP ever existed.

On November 3, 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed a bill into law that provided military status for the Women Airforce Service Pilots. Finally, the ladies have been awarded the recognition they deserved.

FMI: www.wasp-wwii.org