Nancy Love and the WASP Ferry Pilots of World War II

Chapter 13: Change in the Air

13 Change in the Air O n September 7, 1943, Brig. Gen. C.R. Smith wrote a memo to Maj. Gen. Barney M. Giles, Chief of the Air Staff, justifying the Love-Gillies trans-Atlantic flight. Such flights were considered routine, he said, and given the number of women pilots in the Ferrying Division, more were probable in the future. Both women were capable pilots with no qualms about making the flight. And he thought it wise to reconsider sending the two women pilots over the Atlantic in another of the badly needed B-17s.1 Jackie Cochran took particular note of the cancelled flight. If she had felt—in the light of her own troubles with the gear of the twin-engine Lockheed Hudson—that a woman couldn’t fly a B-17, she knew now that a woman could. Marianne Verges writes in On Silver Wings, “The woman who made her mark with individual aviation records and who was forever proud of being the first—and only—woman to deliver a bomber to England during World War II, reported on her agenda for the WASP, ‘Individual comet-like achievements should be avoided, graduation into important new assignments should be not by exceptional individuals but by groups.’”2 147 148 Nancy Love and the WASP Ferry Pilots of World War II With that in mind, Cochran acted. She asked the commanding officer at Avenger Field for the names of his biggest and best among the trainees about to graduate. She wanted women big enough to handle a B-17 and who also were considered both exceptional pilots and mature young women. She selected nine from Class 43-6 with the highest scores in twin-engine AT-17 transition. They graduated October 9. To those nine, she added eight graduates of 43-5—who had just been assigned to the Ferrying Division—and sent them all to B-17 transition school at Lockbourne. They reported October 15, 1943.3 Thirteen of those women graduated as first pilots, four of whom initially were assigned to engineering flying and delivery work out of Lockbourne and the other nine as copilots of B-17s on gunnery missions.4 Some of the nine eventually flew missions as first pilot.5 “By July [1944] the WASPs had proved themselves capable of handling the Fortress and were authorized to fly as first pilot with another WASP on all B-17 flights except on the heavily loaded (10 gunners and ammunition) B-17Gs on gunnery missions over the gulf [of Mexico],” WASP Yvonne Pateman (43-5) wrote in Aviation Quarterly magazine. Pateman quotes WASP B-17 pilot Julie Ledbetter (43-5): “We had to have a male first pilot when we first flew gunnery missions, since the characteristics of the gunnery B-17s were different than the planes we flew in training, especially the B-17G…. Our ships at Lockbourne were stripped down types with no turrets except in the tail and no guns or ammo and fewer people. Eventually, they let us fly them without a man on board.”6 B.J. Erickson flew two orientation flights on the B-17 on October 8 and 9, 1943. The following spring, she checked out as first pilot in the aircraft and ferried several as copilot and then as pilot in command.7 The ATC really didn’t need women to ferry B-17s, Erickson-London says. However, the Ferrying Division treated its male and female pilots the same and had no problem with qualified women pilots checking out in the Fortress . “Gender didn’t matter. They were allowing the women pilots to check out in more complex airplanes at their own rate based on individual skill—just like the male pilots.”8 Change in the Air 149 Publicity claiming that the women learning to fly B-17s at Lockbourne were the first women to fly the Fortress prompted General Tunner to write to the War Department’s Bureau of Public Relations on November 20, 1943: It has been brought to the attention of this Headquarters that statements have been made to the effect that the first WASPs to fly four-engine aircraft are at present being trained at Lockbourne…. This Command wishes to state that two of the women pilots employed by the Ferrying Division have been qualified as first pilots on the B-17 aircraft since August 15…. It is requested that prior...