Blog Mirror: Casper WWII Pilot Flew B-29 Bomber With Nose Art Drawn By Walt Disney

 

Casper WWII Pilot Flew B-29 Bomber With Nose Art Drawn By Walt Disney

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, February 24, 1924. Machines.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, February 24, 1924. Machines.: 

Sunday, February 24, 1924. Machines.

Mexican Federals defeated rebels in Tamaulipas.

The Berliner gyrocopter No. 5 gave its first successful demonstration.  U.S. Army Lt. Harold R. Harris flew it for one minutes and 20 seconds at the College Park Airport, near the University of Maryland, in front of the press and members of the U.S. Navy.

Harris has been mentioned here before due to his career as a test pilot.  He lived until 1988, dying at age 92.

The Beverly Hills Speedway hosted its final race, which was attended by 85,000 automobile racing fans.  Harlan Fengler broke the world's record for a 250 mile race, averaging 116.6 mph.

Fengler would go on to be the Chief Steward of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from 1958 until 1974.  He passed away in 1981 at age 78.

Today In Wyoming's History: Major Gale "Buck" Cleven

Today In Wyoming's History: Major Gale "Buck" Cleven:  

Major Gale "Buck" Cleven

 

In the Apple TV series Masters of the Air, one of the characters is Maj. Gale "Buck" Cleven, who reports himself as being from Casper twice in the first episode.

Who was he, and was he really from Casper?

Clevens was born in Lemmon, South Dakota, on December 27, 1918, just after the end of World War One.  His family moved to Casper when he was still a child, although I'm not certain when, as they moved first to Lusk, in 1920.  He likely was a 1937 graduate from Natrona County High School, the only high school in Casper at the time (Natrona County had a second one in Midwest).  Following graduating from high school, he attended the University of Wyoming while also working on drilling crews as a roughneck.

He did, in fact, move at some point to Casper, where he was employed as a roughneck on drilling crews.  He used the money he earned to attend the University of Wyoming and was enrolled by the fall of 1937, presumably right after high school.  His name appears in the social pages of The Branding Iron as having had a date attend the men's residence hall October dance.  He was a guest of a different young lady at the 1939 Tri Delts Halloween sorority dance.  The same year he was apparently in a fraternity, as he's noted as having attended the Phi Delta Theta dance with, yes, another young lady.  In February 1939 he went to a fraternity dance with Nova Carter, whom I believe I'm related to by marriage.  A year later, February 1940, he took a different gal to the same dance.

He left UW in 1941 to join the Army, intent on being a pilot.  The October 21, 1943, edition of the UW Student Newspaper, The Branding Iron, notes him (inaccurately) as being stationed in North Africa and having received the Distinguished Service Cross, which he in fact did receive for piloting his badly stricken plane from Schweinfurt to North Africa, the flight path taken on that raid. This even is depicted in Masters of the Air.  The Branding Iron noted that he had attended UW for three years.  In June, 1944, the student newspaper reported him a POW.  He's noted again for a second decoration in the March 2, 1944, edition, which also notes that he was a Prisoner of War.

As depicted in Masters of the Air, his B-17 was in fact shot down over Germany.  He ended up becoming a POW, as reported in the UW paper, at Stalag Luft III for 18 months, after which he escaped and made it to Allied lines.  He was put back in the cockpit after the war flying troops back to the United States.

Following the war, he was back at the University of Wyoming.  He graduated from UW with a bachelor's in 1946.  He apparently reentered the Air Force after that, or was recalled into service, and served in the Korean War, leaving the Air Force around that time.

He was on the Winter Quarter 1954 UW Honor Roll and obtained a Masters Degree, probably in geology, from UW in 1956.  Somewhere in here, he obtained a MBA degree from Harvard and an interplanetary physics doctorate from George Washington University.  

He married immediately after the war in 1945 to Marjorie Ruth Spencer, who was originally from Lander Wyoming.  They had known each other since childhood.  She tragically passed away in 1953 while visiting her parents, while due to join Gale at Morton Air Force Base in California.  Polio was the cause of her death, and unusually her headstone, in Texas, bears her maiden name.  Reportedly, her death threw Cleven into a deep depression.  He married again in 1955, to Esther Lee Athey.

His post-war career is hard to follow.  He flew again during the Korean War, as noted, which would explain the gap between his bachelors and master’s degrees, and probably his doctorate.  He's noted as having served again during the Vietnam War, and also has having held a post at the Pentagon.  He was in charge of EDP information at Hughes Aircraft.  Given all of that, it's hard to know if an intended career in geology ever materialized, or if his World War Two service ended up essentially dominating the remainder of his career in the form of military service.  The interplanetary physics degree would and employment by Hughes would suggest the latter.  His highest held rank in the Air Force was Colonel.

Following retirement, he lived in Dickenson, North Dakota, and then later at the Sugarland Retirement Center in Sheridan.  He died at age 86 in 2006, and is buried at the Santa Fe National Cemetery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his marker noting service in three wars.

Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, February 29, 1924. Air assisted victory.

Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, February 29, 1924. Air assisted victory.:

Tuesday, February 29, 1924. Air assisted victory.

Mexican Federal forces took Esperanza in Puebla in a hard fought battle.

The counter-attack featured strafing runs by Mexican-born American pilot, Ralph O'Neill.

O'Neill had distinguished service with the US Army as a pilot in World War One and held three Distinguished Service Cross citations.  He lived until 1980, dying at age 83 in California.

Lex Anteinternet: Friday, June 28, 1923. Bert Cole, local pioneering aviator, killed.

Lex Anteinternet: Friday, June 28, 1923. Turkey's first election, H...: Bert Cole, famous local pilot, but one already known for a tragic airborne death in Evansville, died in an airplane accident himself.

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, June 24, 1943. Heroic jump.

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, June 24, 1943. Heroic jump.: 

Wednesday, June 24, 1943. Heroic jump.

Col. W. Randolph Lovelace, M.D. bailed out of a B-17 at 40,200 feet in a medical experiment which would lead to flight crews being instructed to delay opening parachutes until they reached a lower altitude, so as to not pass out from the shock of the parachute's opening at high altitude.

Dr. Lovelace at age 52, showing how, really, this generation took on the appearance of aging much more rapidly than current ones do.

Dr. Lovelace and his wife died in a December 1965 private plan crash near Aspen, Colorado.  The pilot, 27 year old Milton Brown, also died of injuries at the site, but not before he placed their bodies next to each other and covered them with a coat.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, June 6, 1943. Famous Navy Crewman, A-36

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, June 6, 1943. Radio broadcasts, Triple Cro...:

Paul Newman, having enlisted days before his 18th birthday, was called up for service in the Navy.

Newman wanted to be a pilot, but was taken out of flight school when it was discovered he was color blind.  He went on to be a torpedo bomber crewman.

Sarah Sundin noted Newman's enlistment, but also noted the A36:

Today in World War II History—June 6, 1943: North American A-36 Apache flies first combat mission in a US Twelfth Air Force mission to Pantelleria. Future actor Paul Newman enlists in the US Navy, age 18.

We don't think much of the A-36, the dive bomber version of the P-51.  The odd aircraft only came into existence in the first place as the 1942 appropriations for new fighter aircraft had run out and converting the assembly line to dive bombers kept the P-51 line open.  Only 500 were built, with most used by the U.S. Army Air Force, but some used by the RAF.

A-36 in Italy.

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, May 3, 1943. The crash of Hot Stuff claims the life of Gen. Andrews.

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, May 3, 1943. The crash of Hot Stuff claim...: 

Monday, May 3, 1943. The crash of Hot Stuff claims the life of Gen. Andrews.

Lt. Gen. Frank Maxwell Andrews, for whom Andrews Air Force Base is named, died in the crash of the B-24 Hot Stuff in Iceland, when it went down in bad weather.

He had been on an inspection tour in the United Kingdom.

Only the plane's tail gunner, SSgt George A. Eisel, survived the crash.  Eisel had survived a previous B-24 crash in North Africa.  He'd live until 1964 when he died at age 64.  Married prior to the war, he and his wife never had any children.

Hot Stuff was the first B-24D to complete 25 missions, well before, it might be noted, the B-17 Memphis Belle did the same.  Hardly anyone recalls Hot Stuff, as the Army went on to emphasize the Memphis Belle following the crash of Hot Stuff and the death of all but one of its crew.  Of note, Hot Suff, predictably, had a much more salacious example of nose art than Memphis Belle, and it's interesting to speculate how the Army would have handled that had the plane been popularized.  At any rate, the story that Memphis Belle was the first US bomber to complete 25 missions is a complete myth.

Andrews was the CO of the ETO at the time of this death.  A West Point Graduate from the class of 1906, he had been in the cavalry branch from 1906 to 1917, when he was assigned to aviation over the objection of his commander.  A prior objection had prevented his reassignment in 1914.

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday March 8, 1923. Air to Air, almost.

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday March 8, 1923. Air to Air, almost.: 

Thursday March 8, 1923. Air to Air, almost.

Inventor Lawrence Sperry, inventor of the autopilot and artificial horizon, demonstrated that air-to-air refueling was a theoretical possibility by intentionally touching a Sperry Messenger to a deHavilland flown by Lt. Clyde Finter.  He did it eight times.

Sperry Messenger.

Both plans maintained a speed of 65 mph during the demonstration.

Sperry would go down over the English Channel that December, losing his life at age 30.  He was flying a Sperry Messenger at the time.  His company lives on.

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, September 10, 1942. WAFS founded.

Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, September 10, 1942. WAFS founded.: 

Thursday, September 10, 1942. WAFS founded.

WAFS, 1943.

Today in World War II History—September 10, 1942: US forms WAFS (Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron) under Nancy Harkness Love for already-licensed pilots, a precursor to the WASP program.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

The WAFS were civilians by regulation, not military pilots, and operated under ninety day contracts. They had to be licensed pilots with 200 hours of experience when they hired on, and while they wore uniforms, they had to buy them, although that was required of Army officers as well. Unlike officers, however, they had to pay for their own room and board as well.  There were only forty at the height of the program.

While they were required to have 200 hours of flight time, in reality the average for those signing on was 1,400 and a commercial pilots license. This made the WAFS not only quite experienced as pilots, in context, but unusual for female pilots.

Betty H. Gillies.

Betty H. Gillies was the first member, in that she was the first to report for training. She was an experienced pilot of fourteen years and married to the vice president of Grumman.

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, June 14, 1922. Birth of Robin Olds

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, June 14, 1922. Birth of Robin Olds:   

Wednesday, June 14, 1922. Birth of Robin Olds

 

Legendary fighter pilot Robert "Robin" Olds, Jr., son of an Army Air Corps officer of the same name, was born this day in Hawaii.

He became a triple ace, scoring kills in World War Two, Korea and Vietnam, and retired as a Brigadier General in 1973.  His father had been a Major General.

Olds was a larger than life character in every way.  He was married for many years to starlet Ella Raines, although their marriage eventually ended in divorce and he remarried (he still came in at half the total number of marriages than his father).  His penchant for drinking likely kept him from rising higher in the Air Force than he did.  He served on the Steamboat Springs Planning Commission in retirement.

He died in 2007 at age 84.

June 15, 1930. Bessie Coleman receives a pilots license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale

 

On this day in 1921, Bessie Coleman received a pilots license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, making her the first black person to be a "licensed" pilot.  As her grandparents were Cherokee, she was also the first licensed Native American pilot.

The event is a real milestone, but it's somewhat deceiving.  The US didn't require pilots licenses at the time and the global requirement was far from universal.  Pilots licenses would be introduced in the US in 1927.  This is significant here as Coleman's international pilots license was a real license, but one that was not recognized everywhere and, moreover, she was not the first black or female black pilots as is sometimes suggested.

She was a pioneering aviator however and earned her living as a barnstormer after taking up flying.  In that career she was also an advocate for African Americans.  She tragically died in 1930 at an airshow when her aircraft had catastrophic failure.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday June 5, 1921. An accident claims the life of barnstormer, Laura Bromwell

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday June 5, 1921. An accident claims the life ...: 

Sunday June 5, 1921. An accident claims the life of female barnstormer, Laura Bromwell.

Laura Bromwell, a stunt pilot, became the first woman in that occupation to be killed in an areal demonstration.  The engine of her airplane stopped during a stunt over Mitchel Field, Long Island.

Czechoslovakia and Romania signed a treaty aimed at Hungary, which they feared  may seek to redraw its borders at their expensive.

April 1, 1921. Adrienne Bolland flies over the Andes.

Adrienne Bolland, a pilot employed by René Caudron to demonstrate his airplanes in South America, flew a Caudron G.3 from Mendoza, Argentina to Santiago, Chile, across the Andes Mountain Range.

From this Day In Aviation

Lex Anteinternet: January 5, 1941. The death of Amy Johnson.

Lex Anteinternet: January 5, 1941. The death of Amy Johnson.:   

January 5, 1941. The death of Amy Johnson.

 

Amy Johnson.

Pioneering aviatrix Amy Johnson died on this day in the service of the British Transport Auxiliary, the British air ferrying service that was created in order to allow civilian pilots, including women, preform this service during war time.

She was flying an Airspeed Oxford in poor weather when it went off course and is generally believed to have run out of fuel.  She bailed out over the Thames Estuary and was sighted descending by vessels of the Royal Navy, which went to help.  She was sighted in the water in heavy seas and the commander of one of the vessels, Lt. Cmdr Walter Fletcher went over the side to rescue her but was unable to, soon becoming unconscious himself.  He died a few days later.  Her body was not recovered.  

Her loss remains controversial in the UK.  In 1999 a crewman of a wartime anti aircraft batter claimed his gun had shot her down when she had failed to reply to an identification signal and that the crew had believed they had shot down an enemy aircraft until they read of her death the following day, at which time an officer ordered them not to speak of the event.  That's possible, but in my view unlikely as the claim of a hit would have been made at the time and likely records of it might still remain.

And a crewman of the ship that was nearest to her claimed many years later that she was sucked into the ship's screw which killed her, although the crewman did not witness it.  Given the way that ships generally work and the depth of the screws, that's also quite unlikely.

In any event, two heroes, Johnson and Fletcher, who lost their lives that day.

More on events of this day including the Commonwealth victory in Bardia.

Today in World War II History—January 5, 1941

Day 493 January 5, 1941

Lex Anteinternet: December 28, 1920. Famous Aviator and Aviatrix, C...

Lex Anteinternet: December 28, 1920. Famous Aviator and Aviatrix, C...: 

December 28, 1920. Famous Aviator and Aviatrix, Committees, Soviet Subjugation, the Roar from the 20s.

On  this day in 1920 a young Amelia Earhart rode in an airplane piloted by Frank Hawks at the California State Fair in Los Angeles.  She was 23 years old and her father paid the $10.00 charge for the ten minute flight.

Earhart in 1928.

It was the beginning of her interest in aviation.

We're all familiar with the Earhart story, of course, so I'll not go into it here.  Frank Hawks, however, is likely less well known to a modern audience, and of course there's no enduring mystery surrounding his death.

Frank Hawks.

Hawks had been an aviator in World War One and then was a record setting aviator after the war.  He retired from air racing in 1937 to become an executive in the Gwinn Aircar Company, being in charge of sales.  He flew around the country in that capacity demonstrating the safety features of the aircraft, but died in 1938 piloting one.

Gwinn Aircar.

Only two of the aircraft was ever made, and the Gwinn company subsequently folded.

Women in Washington D.C. who were on the inaugural committee were photographed.

Unlike now, the inauguration was in March at the time.

On the same day the Ukrainian communist party surrendered its independence to Russia's, which it probably had little choice but to do, in the Workers Peasant Union Treaty.  

Self determination of nations was a declared policy of Lenin's, but it was clearly not one that the Russian Reds meant.  At this point in time they were busy reassembling those portions of Imperial Russia that they could grab, and Trotsky was already proposing that the revolution should be taken to neighboring states.

General John T. Thompson received the first of his patents on his submachine gun.  The gun would go into production the following year but initial sales were poor.  The U.S. military did buy some, and it was intended as a military weapon, but overall it was a new gun in an era which didn't seem to require it.  The first real military application by the United States of the initial model, the M1921, came at the hands of the Marines in the Banana Wars.  The United States Postal Service bought some for guards and there were some police sales.  An early indication that it might acquire some infamy came in the form of sales that ended up being for the Irish Republican Army.

1921 advertisement for the expensive Thompson Sub Machine Gun.   While the gun may have been advertised as "sold only to law and order", it quickly came to be used by the unlawful and disorderly.

It would be the spate of Prohibition related crime, followed by Depression era crime, that would make the gun famous and which would in part lead to the National Firearms Act regulating the sales of automatic weapons.  A new improved version was introduced in 1928 which is the most famous various of the gun, outside the M1 version used during World War Two.

Lance Corporal of the British East Surry Regiment with M1928 Thompson Sub Machine Gun.

Of interest here, in redesigning the weapon for military use during World War Two it was discovered that part of the patented mechanism in the gun was unnecessary and it was omitted.  By that time soldiers were stripping the "H piece" from the earlier variants and leaving it out given that this slightly reduced the weight of a very heavy weapon.  M1A1 Thompsons remained expensive to produce and the military sought to supplant them during the war, but some remained in use as late as the Vietnam War.

And the Laramie Boomerang (from Wyoming Digital News Paper Collection) let the public know that it was flu season.

Lex Anteinternet: December 23, 1940. Aviation construction and disaster

Lex Anteinternet: December 23, 1940. Aviation construction and disa...:

December 23, 1940. Aviation construction and disaster.

On this day in 1940, a photo was taken of some new construction benefiting aircraft at a Naval Air Station in Rhode Island.

On the same day, famous aviator August Eddie Schneider was killed in an aviation accident.

Schneider was a well known daring aviator and had won multiple aviation speed records.  He'd also flown for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War.  On this day he was training a student when his plane was struck by a Navy aircraft, taking it down and killing him.

And of course the war raged on:

Day 480 December 23, 1940

Today in World War II History—December 23, 1940

On this day in the war, Winston Churchill addressed the Italian people and urged them to rebel against Mussolini and take Italy out of the war.  The overall poor performance of Italian troops in combat was already effectively achieving that result.

Chuck Yeager passes at age 97.

Brigadier General Charles Elwood Yeager died yesterday at age 97.

Yeager entered the United States Army Air Force in 1941 as a private.  He was an aircraft mechanic at first but volunteered for flight training and was promoted to Flight Officer, a rank more or less equivalent to warrant officer.  He flew P51s during World War Two and was stationed in the ETO.  He became a test pilot following World War Two and famously broke the sound barrier in that role flying the X1 "Glamourous Glennis", which was named after his wife.

Yeager had a long Air Force career which was likely somewhat arrested, as famous as he was, by the fact that he was not a college graduate, having entered the Air Force at a time in which it was still possible to become a pilot without a college degree.  The movie The Right Stuff, in which Yeager was played by Sam Shepard (and in which Yeager had a cameo role as a bar tender), based on the book by Tom Wolfe, asserted that he was ineligible to become an astronaut for that reason.  Whether or not that is true, he certainly was a justifiably famous character and in some ways his passing on December 7 was oddly symbolic.

 

On the WASPs

Elizabeth Gardner, age 22, in the pilot's seat of a B-26, one of the most difficult to fly aircraft of the Second World War.  Gardner would live until age 90 and worked for a time after the war as a test pilot, a role that would require her to bail out from failed aircraft twice.

From Sarah's Blog

75 Years Ago—Dec. 20, 1944: US terminates WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) program—returning combat airmen will perform their ferrying services; 1037 women served, with 38 fatalities.

Among those who follow World War Two, the WASPs are well known.  But to be frank, I expect for the average person World War Two is at this point known in a general way, highly influenced by movies.  Indeed, at least one such movie, Saving Private Ryan, at least partially caused the boom in focus on World War Two by both the aging Baby Boomer generation and the following Millenials (and others).  That film, and the other popular portrayals that followed, such as The Pacific and Band of Brothers, do a good job of portraying slices of the war, but they're just slices, and the war was so vast that really detailed portrayals can only come through books, and a lot of them.  No one book could possibly do justice to anything but the narrower topics it deals with.

In terms of the air war, two really notable films were done early on, those being Twelve O'Clock High and The Best Years of Our Lives.  People no doubt don't think of that last one as an "air war" film, but the portrayal of returning psychologically distressed bombardier Cpt. Fred Derry to a life that's coming apart at home, certainly should qualify it as such.  More recent efforts, such as Memphis Belle, have been lacking.  Perhaps the best film involving aircraft is Tora! Tora! Tora!, on the attack on Pearl Harbor.  In an odd way, the best one as a tribute to air power might be Battleground, in which not a single airplane is ever seen. Those who have seen the film will know why I'm referencing it here. Those who haven't, should see it.

Anyhow, one of the stories that isn't all that well known by people today is that of the WASPs.  Indeed, the role of women in the service in World War Two isn't that well known in general.

The WASPs were not technically in the service, but rather were civilians employed by the service. This has always occurred, contrary to some more modern commentary.  I.e., there have always been civilian "contractors" in contract to the military.  During the American Revolution heavy transport was normally done by temporary contractors by both sides of the conflict, some of whom had little choice in the matter.  I.e, when artillery, for example, was moved in a country that was surprisingly short of horses, freighters and farmers were called to do it, or sometimes just compelled to do it.  Later on, during the post Civil War frontier era, transportation of all sorts, both freighting and packing, was very often done by military contractors.  Civilian mule packers remained a feature of Army life all the way through the Punitive Expedition.  So its not surprising that civilians were used to ferry aircraft from North America to Europe.

More surprising is that they were women, however.

WASP pilots in front of the notoriously difficult to fly B-26 Marauder.

When women precisely entered established roles in the military is surprisingly difficult to determine.  By and large, however, most historians point to World War One as the conflict that brought that about. The degree of female employment during the Great War was enormous in general, and indeed it was so vast that the entire Rosey The Riveter story of World War Two is really a myth when the full story is considered as the World War Two role of women in industry repeated the experience of the prior war.  Female employment during the First World War would rival that of the Second and in some sectors of the various warring nation's economies, female labor was more important in World War One than it was in World War Two.  Given the near absolute demand for fighting age males to serve in the military during World War One, and the more primitive and less mechanized nature of the economy in the 1910s as compared to the 1930s and 1940s, when machine labor was already accomplishing more, it's not too surprising that women not only entered large numbers of normally male dominated industries but that they further were allowed into some roles in the military more or less for the first time.

Cornelia Fort, who became famous for encountering Japanese aircraft while flying as a flight instructor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941.  She was the first WASP to be killed in service a year later.

Those roles were largely clerical and and near clerical at the time.  Women as clerks in general, including secretaries, was a new and somewhat controversial thing in the 1910s.  By the 1920s, however, it was fully established.  But wasn't established was the presence of women in the service. Following the Great War women were discharged from the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, and their roles once again filled by men.

When this began to change on a more permanent basis I really can't say.  I.e., I don't know, and haven't studied for the purpose of this entry, women women clerks and nurses reappeared in military service, and therefore I don't know if it was in the 20s, 30s, or 40s.  If it was as late as the 1940s, it certainly changed nearly overnight and women once again were recruited for those roles.  Contrary, however, to the common recollection of the period, it wasn't as easy to recruit women to military service as commonly thought, and there remained a quite strong societal prejudice in the United States against female servicemen.  During the war the service studied it and found that a strong deterrent to filling those positions was that there was a common belief in society that female servicemen were "easy" and came from the same class that might otherwise be populating bars and offering favors easily.  This was completely unfair and the service worked hard to combat the myth but it was never really overcome.  Operating against it, however, was that female nurses had been a common and vital feature of the Allied efforts during the Great War and therefore there was a well established female military nursing role already, one that had its origins as far back as the Crimean War.  Perhaps worth noting here, however, is that female nurses in World War One were not in the service but rather usually in the Red Cross, an organization that was highly involved in World War One and whose male members, in the case of the US, had the option of being enrolled in the Army upon the US entering the war.  Female members, who remained critical to its operations, were not enrolled in the service.

Gertrude Tompkins Silver who disappeared in 1944 ferrying a P51 from California to New Jersey.  She and her plane have never been found.

With that being the background, perhaps its not too surprising that women pilots would be contracted with to ferry aircraft in World War Two.  Military age male pilots were in the service, and weren't available, although older pilots who were not of military age were not.  On coastal areas, quite a few of the latter entered Civilian Air Patrol units, however.

Women were not new to aviation in World War Two.  Indeed, aviation, which entered its youth in the Great War, was one of the new things that came about in which women had a rapid appearance in.  There were female aviators prior to the war and at least one notable female pilot attempted to enroll in American military service during World War One, going so far as to purchase her own uniform to be used in what amounted to a publicity campaign in aid of that effort.  It went nowhere, but the point is that aviation wasn't new to women in the Second World War.

Indeed, the early female appearance in aviation continued on after the Great War, and even during it, with some notable female pilots achieving headlines during the 1920s and into the 1930s.  Today best remembered is Amelia Earhart, but she is far from the first and may be best remembered today simply due to her tragic and mysterious disappearance, but she was far from being the only notable pilot.

Bessie Coleman, African American and Native American who held an early pilot's license and who died in a an aviation accident in 1926.

Indeed, there were women barnstormers in the 1920s and women figured well in air racing, a sport that was popular following World War One and prior to World War Two,and which had a role in the development of fighter aircraft.  There were also some women stunt pilots early on.  What was generally absent, however, were female commercial pilots and there were no female military pilots.

Florence Lowe "Pancho" Barnes.

Given this history, perhaps it isn't surprising that the government turned to women flyers to fill certain roles that didn't have to be filled by Army Air Corps pilots, and that is the way it was viewed. The WASPs weren't commissioned, enlisted or enrolled in the military. They were part of more than one civil service organization that came to be under the overall umbrella organization of the WASPs and had varied flying duties. The irony, right from the onset, is that in actuality the aircraft of the late 1930s and the 1940s actually had become in some instances much more physically demanding to fly so, even while women flew every type of aircraft in the American air fleet, some of them were very physically demanding aircraft.

WASP pilot in cockpit of P-51 Mustang.

The WASPs are best remembered for ferrying aircraft, and indeed one of the entities that came into the WASPs was the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, which was formed specifically for that purpose.  In addition to that role, however, they also flew target towing missions and other service flying roles within the United States.  Quite a few of the pilots were from well to do backgrounds which had allowed them to take up flying prior to the war.

WASP pilots and the B-17 Pistol Packin Momma.

The program was disbanded in December 1944 as male Army Air Corps pilots returning from overseas became available for the same roles.  At that time some of them attempted to volunteer for service in the Chinese Nationalist air force but were unsuccessful in that effort. Some, such as Elizabeth Gardner, were able to keep flying.  In 1949 they were offered commissions in the United States Air Force in non flying roles, with 121 taking the offer.  They were accorded veteran status in 1977.

There were 1,074 women who went through WASP training during the war, all of whom were pilots prior to entering the program.  Over 600 applicants failed to make it through that training.  A total of 25,000 women volunteered for the program.  38 women were killed in air accidents while part of the program.  The largest plane flown by WASP crews was the B-29.

Blog Mirror: Cody man inducted into Wyoming Aviation Hall of Fame

Cody man inducted into Wyoming Aviation Hall of Fame