Nancy Love and the WASP Ferry Pilots of World War II

Chapter 7: Two Women Pilot Groups

7 Two Women Pilot Groups T he New York Times printed the story on September 11, accompanied by a photograph of Secretary of War Stimson, General George, and Nancy Love—who wore a hat and gloves as women did in 1942. Love is holding up her right hand to take the oath of allegiance as the head of the newly formed Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, Ferrying Division, Air Transport Command. Jacqueline Cochran arrived back in New York from England on September 10, took one look at the Times front page the next morning and left immediately for Washington, D.C. She met with Hap Arnold that same day. She brandished a copy of the New York Times. What was this story all about? Arnold told her he had “given instructions to prepare and submit plans for use of women pilots but that he had not seen the plan that had apparently been activated and that the announcement had been made without his knowledge and was not in accordance with his own intentions.”1 80 Two Women Pilot Groups 81 The following footnote in Lt. Col. LaFarge’s “History of the Air Transport Command: Women Pilots in the Air Transport Command,” tells it differently. Miss Cochran suggests strongly that the establishment of the WAFS was slipped over on General Arnold …. This is hardly possible. As indicated above, General Arnold acted on General George’s memorandum of September 5th, which set forth the plan fully. The original plan was that General Arnold, himself, should make the public announcement, and General George and Mrs. Love were invited to his office on the morning of September 10th to meet the press when it was made. When they reached his office, they were advised that he had been unexpectedly called out of Washington, and that the Secretary of War would make the announcement. They proceeded to the latter’s office accordingly. (Interview, Mrs. Love with Lt. Col. Oliver La Farge.)2 Cochran drafted a memo to Arnold dated September 11 that stated, “The use of a few of our women pilots to ferry trainer planes is just one segment of a larger job to be done.” Failing to properly coordinate all the women pilot resources would be wasteful, she claimed. Besides, she reminded Arnold, “The top job is what you told me I would do and is the one I have been preparing to do during the past year…. The announcement made yesterday will throw this larger plan into confusion unless you clarify immediately.”3 Handwritten below the typed contents is the following: “It was this broader phase President Roosevelt had in mind when he sent me to you last summer [1941] on his own initiative.”4 Cochran claimed that while Arnold was in England during the summer of 1942, he had told her “the time was approaching for the activation of a women pilot program at home and that she should close out her work in England and return home to take over this new phase.”5 Cochran says that Arnold added: “I suggested that she return and left the time to her but suggested that she not wait too long.”6 Hap Arnold had promised Cochran the leadership role in a women pilot’s organization. 82 Nancy Love and the WASP Ferry Pilots of World War II Arnold called General George and Col. C.R. Smith, to his office. In Cochran’s presence, Arnold told them that the project should be revised and that they should work it out with her for she knew his views. General George went to work, and by the following day (September 12), he had drafted a two-part memo to General Arnold. In that memo, he suggests that the ATC’s plan to employ approximately fifty experienced women ferry pilots go forward but that no extension of training of additional women pilots be planned by the ATC. The ATC, he points out, did not have the facilities. However, he continues, the Flight Training Command did have the facilities for such training. He suggests that use be made of the same basic program of flight training being used for male cadets. “The present program in progress with the Flight Training Command (FTC) is readily adaptable to the requirement of the women’s flight training program. After graduation, women pilots should be assigned to or employed by ATC for flight duty. After assignment...