Flying their war into history: Women Airforce service pilots

Flight Journal, Feb 2000 by Landdeck, Kate

At only 5 feet, 1 inch and 100 pounds, Violet Thurn Cowden sat on her parachute and two extra cushions so she could fly for her country in its time of need. And fly she did, piloting everything from the PT-17s and AT-6s she trained in to her beloved P-51s. And Cowden wasn't alone; from September 1942 to December 1944, a select group of women flew for the Army Air Force (AAF).

Initially, they were limited to flying trainers and other light aircraft, but they quickly proved themselves as pilots, and the AAF began an extensive training program to increase the ranks of qualified female pilots. In all, 1,074 women became Women Airforce Service Pilots - WASPs. They carried out a number of duties for the AAF: ferrying, towing targets, engineering test flights, instrument training, utility flying and more. The women eventyally flew everytning the AAF had to fly and had accident and approval rates comparable to those of male pilots who carried out the same duties. Although the WASPs did not fly combat and their tours of duty were confined to the continental United States, their experience are an important part of our avaiation history.

As one of their primary duties, WASPs were ferry pilots with the Air Transport Command. The women flew numerous types of planes, including all kinds of pursuit aircraft, such as the P-38, P-47 and P-51. They fulfilled the requirements of pursuit school and were trained on the available aircraft. "We had 10 hours in the back of an AT-6, and then the first pursuit that we flew was the P-47, and then the P-40 and the P-51," remembers Violet Cowden. "Those were the only ones on the field. Then we went to fly the P-39s and the P-63s. We would just go to the factories, and they would give us the manual, and we would look at the manual and jump in." Cowden's nonchalance about the challenge of flying new, hot aircraft is exemplified by her approach to flying. "Anybody can take a plane off, that was no big deal. I would go up and I would shoot landings on the clouds. You get the feel of the plane, and luckily, as I'm still here, I know it worked."

Tex Brown Meachem, another WASP who flew for the Air Transport Command, was so busy ferrying aircraft that she does not remember spending more than one overnight at her base in Wilmington, Delaware. "When we came back in-snafu, train, or however we came back-there would be orders on the bulletin board, and when you checked in, they would find out which planes you had been checked Out in, and they would pull it off the bulletin board and put your name on it; and the next day, you were out." Cowden confirms Meachem's memory of how busy the women were, particularly in the days before the Normandy invasion. "I didn't sleep in my bed for two weeks. I was one of those eager beavers, because I knew they needed the planes, so instead of staying overnight, I would pick up another set of orders and change my shirt and be gone again."

The WASP ferry pilots sometimes acted as production test pilots as well. The women often picked up new planes from the factory and flew them to their point of debarkation. The planes were supposed to have been tested for an hour before the ferry pilots took them, but Cowden reveals that wasn't always the case. "I'd go out there, and it hadn't been tested, so the mechanic would come in and write an hour Lin the logbook]. I wondered whether they'd put everything together all right," Cowden admits. "But then, when it really flew, to think that you were the very first person to fly that airplane; it was like when you walk in snow and you are the first person to step on that snow. You feel really wonderful!"

WASPs outside Air Transport Command carried out a wide variety of duties for the AAF. Dawn Seymour was one of the "lucky 13" WASPs who completed training on the four-engine B-17. (The women went through the same training program as the male combat pilots.) "We had one- and two-engine procedures-- sometimes three-engine, just to see how the plane would fly. That took a lot of strength. We would squeeze tennis balls to build our upper body strength," Seymour recalls. "Our instructor would teach us tricks such as pushing down your rudder and toeing under the other pedal and pull back, so you could really hold it."

The WASP B-17 pilots at Buckingham Army Air Field in Ft. Myers, Florida, where Seymour was based, flew a gunnery instructor and a group of gunnery students on their first aerial mission. "You were scheduled on the blackboard to meet your B-26, which carried the sleeve and target over the Sanibel lighthouse." Once the planes met at their rendezvous, they flew together to the range at Marco Island. "You flew formation on the sleeve. And this is where the gunners would get their first time firing the .50-caliber machine gun on a moving target. Some of them had never been up in the air-and they were kids! Some of them [were only] 18 or 19 years old." She was only 26 herself. As for any reaction from the young gunners about having a woman pilot, Seymour says it wasn't obvious that a woman was flying the plane. "Most of it, we were just down to business. And it was a long mission-at least five hours in the air and then all the preparation. We worked every day, either morning or afternoon shift, and had every other Sunday off, so we were needed." Seymour flew approximately 700 hours in the B-17.