Nancy Batson Crews: Alabama's First Lady of Flight

Introduction

Introduction Nancy Elizabeth Batson was number twenty to qualify for the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS), which was made up of the first twentyeight women to fly for the U.S. Army in World War II. In September 1942, noted aviatrix Nancy Love was recruiting experienced women pilots to ferry badly needed single-engine trainer airplanes from the factories to the Army’s flight training schools.1 Love was working with Col. William H. Tunner, commander of the Ferrying Division, Air Transport Command, U.S. Army Air Forces. Tunner’s need for ferry pilots was so critical to the war effort, he was willing to give competent women pilots a try. The women went on to fly far more than trainers. In January 1944, Nancy Batson and eleven others became the first women pilots to graduate from pursuit school.2 They were qualified to fly highperformance pursuit (fighter) aircraft. One hundred thirty-two women eventually qualified as pursuit ferry pilots for the Ferrying Division. They routinely ferried aircraft cross-country at speeds up to three hundred miles per hour, at altitudes up to four miles high, from one coast to the other— alone—in an era when most women hardly dared dream of driving the family automobile across the state line, let alone across the whole of the United States. Nancy spent much of 1944 ferrying P-47s from the factory to stateside embarkation points for transfer to the war zones. Twenty-two when she joined the WAFS, Nancy Batson earned the nickname the Golden Girl of the Ferry Command.3 Her prowess at the controls of an airplane, her absolute dedication to the job, her winning personality, and her engaging Southern accent all contributed to her acceptance by both the men and the women of the Ferrying Division. Five feet seven inches tall and of slender but athletic build, Nancy was blessed with honey-blonde hair, gray eyes, finely sculpted features, and flawless skin. She was, unquestionably, a beautiful young woman. Her looks 2 • Introduction brought her yet another nickname—the Veronica Lake of the Ferry Command . Veronica Lake was a popular 1940s movie star whose long blonde hair fell seductively over one eye. Nancy excelled early at horseback riding and school sports and later at golf. Her athlete’s sense of timing and superb physical coordination carried over into her flying. She tried out for cheerleader in high school—not for the popularity the role assured, but to prove she could do it. She campaigned for the highest elected office a coed could hold on the University of Alabama campus—not to impress others, but to prove her leadership skills to herself and to her father . Not surprisingly, she won both those competitions. People liked Nancy. “Batson could charm the pants off a snake,” said her good friend and fellow WAFS Teresa James. Beneath the personable exterior was a woman with finely tempered hometown Birmingham steel in her backbone. She epitomized the Puritan work ethic and sense of right versus wrong—the latter to a fault. There were no shades of gray in Nancy’s life. Typical of a young woman brought up in the pre–World War II South, she never questioned how she had been raised to think nor what she had been taught to believe. Who she was and how she was shaped by the socioeconomic, political, and racial realities of the South are an integral part of her story. Nancy Batson’s accomplishments and contributions as a WAFS are notable . So are her achievements in aviation before the war, and so too is what she did in her later years. She was born into a well-to-do upper-middle-class family, which gave her economic and social advantages, but she also was a girlchild born into the patriarchal South. Her personal mission—her passion— was to make her mark in a decidedly male profession: aviation. She had the good fortune to have a mother who did not try to mold her into the traditional role of a Southern belle. Ruth Batson gave her daughter all the manners, social graces, and refinements one needs to get along in genteel society. But Ruth did far more than that. She didn’t use those things to harness Nancy’s energy and ambition. Nancy was allowed to grow up to be the person she wanted to be. Her mother gave her—to use our more modern-day expression—her space. Nancy’s father went along with...