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.