Women Airforce Service Pilots
and Their Quest for
Militarization
Jennifer Montgomery
Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) flew almost every
type of military aircraft used during World War II, including the
B-26 Marauder, also known as the Widow Maker, and the B-29
Superfortress, which the military later used to drop atomic bombs
on Japan.1 By the fall of 1942, the Army Air Force (AAF) had
finally conceded to hire women to ferry planes because they no
longer had enough male pilots to ferry all of the planes the
factories were producing. The AAF gave Nancy Love and Jackie
Cochran the chance to put their proposed plans into motion,
which not only provided women pilots to ferry planes but also
freed up male pilots to go overseas. Their respective programs,
the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) and the
Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD), later combined
to become the WASP, Women Airforce Service Pilots, in August
1943. The AAF employed the WASPs in a variety of domestic
military flying duties, which included ferrying, target towing,
repair testing, glider towing, radar scrambling, and strafing.2 Love
and Cochran formed their programs and the WASP with the
intention to later have them militarized, but their decision to wait
backfired when militarization met resistance in 1943–44. One of
the WASP’s last hopes rested on the Costello Bill in June 1944,
but its rejection by the House of Representatives denied them the
1
2
Jacqueline Cochran, Statement by Miss Jacqueline Cochran on Accomplishments of
WASP Program, Press Release, 19 December 1944,
http://wingsacrossamerica.us/records_all/press_archive/cochran1.pdf.
On ferrying, target towing, repair testing, and strafing, see Jacqueline
Cochran, “Formulation of Overall WASP Program,” Chap. 10 in Final Report,
http://wingsacrossamerica.us/records_all/DOCUMENTS/final_report.htm
. On glider towing and radar scrambling, see Vera S. Williams, WASPs:
Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II (Osceola: Motorbooks
International Publishers and Wholesalers, 1994), 99.
36
military status they had hoped for and, even worse, contributed
to their deactivation in December 1944 before the war was over.
Nancy Love formed the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying
Squadron in September 1942 with the encouragement of the
Ferrying Division of the Air Transport Command within the
Army Air Force. She got approval from General Henry “Hap”
Arnold, head of the AAF, and sent out telegrams to the most
qualified women pilots asking them to report to Dallas Love
Field to ferry military aircraft.3 Originally, Love planned for the
Woman’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) to commission the
WAFS into their organization after a probationary period, which
would then make them militarized, but Love soon realized that
the WAAC’s congressional bill did not include the word pilot.4
The only way the WAACs could commission the WAFS is if
Congress added an amendment to their bill, which would take
time. Love and the Ferrying Division were not willing to wait on
Congress because they needed to deliver the planes, so they hired
the women as civilians and planned to later push for Congress to
militarize them under the Army Air Force.5 The decision to
organize quickly and start ferrying helped clear out the
3
Helena Page Schrader, Sisters in Arms: British and American Women Pilots during
World War II (South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Aviation, 2006), 12.
Conflicting information exists for where approval for the WAFS came from,
but the mostly likely person it came from was Arnold. For those who say
Arnold did not approve it because he was recovering from a heart attack, see
Williams, 21–22 and Leslie Haynsworth and David Toomey, Amelia Earhart’s
Daughters: The Wild and Glorious Story of American Women Aviators from World
War II to the Dawn of the Space Age (New York: William Morrow and Company,
Inc., 1998), 43–44. A biography of Arnold, however, says that his first
documented heart problem was in March 1943, the next year. Dik Alan
Daso, Hap Arnold and the Evolution of American Airpower (Washington:
Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), 198. Other sources, such as Cochran’s
own writing, say that Arnold never knew about it and someone over him
gave approval for it. Recounted in Sally Van Wagenen Keil, Those Wonderful
Women in Their Flying Machines: The Unknown Heroines of World War II (New
York: Rawson, Wade Publishers, Inc., 1979), 107.
4
On the WAAC, see Schrader, 260. On the use of the word pilot, see Amy
Nathan, Yankee Doodle Gals: Women Pilots of World War II (Washington:
National Geographic Society, 2001), 21.
5
On not being willing to wait, see Schrader, 260. On planning to push for it
late, see Ann B. Carl, A WASP among Eagles: A Woman Military Test Pilot in
World War II (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999), 37.
37
undelivered planes, but it also left the WAFS without military
benefits.
The pilots in the Women’s Flying Training Detachment did
not have military benefits either because Jackie Cochran wanted
them to prove themselves first before being militarized.6 Even
though Arnold had promised to give Cochran the first
opportunity to start a women’s pilot program, she did not get
permission to start her own program until after Love had already
formed the WAFS.7 Like Love, Cochran was impatient to get
started and did not want to wait for Congress to pass any
legislation.8 The WFTD was a training program set up to train
less experienced pilots, and once women graduated from the
program, they joined the WAFS and ferried airplanes.9 Cochran
considered the WFTD to be an experiment to prove that women
could fly as well as men and serve in the military if needed.10
Even though Cochran did not want the WFTDs militarized
in the beginning, she did plan for their future militarization with
the structure of the training program. The WFTDs had the same
courses and training as male pilots with two exceptions. They did
not train in gunnery or formation flying, and they had more
instrument training.11 The women lived as if they were in the
military by staying in barracks at Avenger Field and keeping them
clean to not incur demerits.12 They could also receive demerits
while in rank for inattention and chewing gum.13 If they received
too many demerits, they washed out of the program.14 The
6
Jacqueline Cochran to the Commanding General, Army Air Forces, C3, 1
August 1944, WASP Virtual Collection, Texas Woman’s University Library.
Marianne Verges, On Silver Wings: The Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War
II (New York: Ballantine Books, 1991), 42.
8 Ibid., 66.
9 Ibid., 43.
10 Cochran, “Objectives of Women in Pilot Program,” Chap. 3 in Final Report.
7
11
12
13
14
On gunnery and formation flying, see Williams, 84. On instrument training,
see Schrader, 54–55.
Williams, 71–73.
319th AAFFTD Alphabetical List of Delinquencies and Demerits, p. 4, WASP
Virtual Collection, Texas Woman’s University Library.
Williams, 73.
38
demerit system shows how their training functioned along
military lines even though they were civilians. In contrast, male
civilian pilots did not have a demerit system. The female trainees
also marched almost everywhere they went, and since they could
not talk while marching, they wrote catchy and sometimes brazen
songs that expressed their feelings and experiences.15 Once the
women graduated, they lived on Air Force bases and flew military
aircraft; it seemed only a matter of time before they would
actually be in the military. 16
In August 1943, the Army Air Force combined Love’s
program and Cochran’s program into the WASP, Women
Airforce Service Pilots, because Cochran wanted to branch out
into areas other than ferrying. Arnold made Cochran director of
the WASP while Love became an executive within the Ferrying
Division. Under the WASP, the women pilots continued the
same types of military training, and some of them even went
through officers’ training in preparation for militarization, which
they were hoping would come with the passage of the Costello
Bill.17
The Costello Bill would have removed the contradictions the
WASPs sometimes faced between their civilian status and military
training. One example occurred when an officer walked into a
room to ask a WASP a favor. When she realized he wanted to
speak to her about flying a plane, she stood at attention. He told
her that she did not need to stand at attention because she was
only a civilian, yet that was what training had taught her to do.18
The WASPs revealed their feelings about their position within the
military in one of their songs called “I’m a Flying Wreck.” Some
of the lyrics are: “When the general comes, sir, To view us in our
drill, / We’ll do a four winds march, sir, And check out o’er the
hill. / And when he calls ‘ATTENTION,’ We’ll click our heels
and yell, / ‘I’m just a raw civilian, sir, And you can go to
15
Ibid., 52–53. Williams’ book contains many of the songs the WASP sang.
WASP songs can also be found on the following website:
http://www.wingsacrossamerica.us/wasp/songs/songs.htm.
16
Cochran to Commanding General, D6, 1 August 1944, WASP Virtual
Collection.
Verges, 187.
Haynsworth and Toomey, 127–28.
17
18
39
HELL.’”19 In the song, the WASPs demonstrate an animosity
toward those with military power that they were obedient to and
had to treat with military respect even though the female pilots
were classified as only civilians. Militarization, which the Army
Air Force began to seek around the time they formed the WASP,
would have solved the conflicting feelings of the female pilots.
By early 1943, the Army Air Force started to make serious
attempts at militarization of the WASPs through three main
avenues: the WAAC, or Women’s Army Corps (WAC) as it was
later known, direct commissions, and legislation; resistance,
however, existed against all three. Even though General George
Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, approved of the WASP
militarizing through the WAC, many others within the Army Air
Force opposed the idea for various personal and operational
reasons.20 Cochran herself completely disliked Ovetta Culp
Hobby, head of the WAC, and claimed that she had mismanaged
the WACs.21 As director of the WASP, Cochran wanted the
women to continue flying and was concerned that Hobby would
have them doing other kinds of work.22 Cochran refused to allow
the AAF to put the WASPs under Hobby’s command.
To Cochran and Arnold, pilots were a different breed and
therefore, should not be lumped together with the other groups
that fell under the WAC.23 Within the AAF, Arnold and General
William Tunner, head of the Ferrying Division, objected to
putting the WASP under the WAC.24 The WASPs themselves
showed their feelings about militarizing under the WAC in their
usual way, through song. In an untitled song, they said “A WAC
may be an officer / With bright bars that shine / Her olive green
and everything looks fine / She’s very proud of the name she
19
20
21
22
23
24
Williams, 91.
Schrader, 139.
Verges, 95–96 and Schrader, 138.
Williams, 123.
Verges, 95–96.
On Arnold, see Memorandum to General Marshall from H. H. Arnold,
“Incorporation of Women Civilian Pilots and Trainees into Army Air
Forces,” 14 June 1943, Jacqueline Cochran and the Women's Airforce
Service Pilots Online Documents, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential
Library. On Tunner, see Verges, 180.
40
bears / As for you, you don’t want her cares; / Her olive green
was never meant for you, / You want the Santiago Blue.”25 The
WASPs did not want to be WACs even if it did mean
militarization; they would rather remain civilian pilots for the time
being and wear their Santiago blue WASP uniforms.
Aside from some of the personal reasons against militarizing
under the WACs, operational reasons also existed. In a letter to
General Marshall, Arnold listed some of the problems that would
require legislation to fix. At this time, WAC legislation still did
not include a provision for pilots, and WAC and WASP
requirements for membership differed in ways that would
negatively affect WASP recruitment. While women could be a
WASP from ages eighteen and a half to thirty-two, women had to
be at least twenty-one years old to be a WAC, which would
restrict some of the WASP’s best flyers.26 With WAC legislation,
women could not be a WAC if she had children under fourteen
years old, which would again exclude capable female pilots in the
WASP.27 The WASP also had their own specific requirements the
WACs did not have to meet, such as a certain level of physical
condition and flying experience.28 If the AAF had to ask
Congress to make changes to WAC legislation, it made more
sense for them to just ask Congress for a new piece of legislation
that would militarize the WASPs under the Army Air Force
instead of the WACs. When the differences between both
programs’ requirements were added to the personal animosity
Cochran felt towards Hobby, the chance of militarization under
the WACs was almost nonexistent.
The next method General Arnold attempted to use to
militarize the WASPs was to try to direct commission them as
officers by using the War Powers Act of September 1941, which
gave the Army Air Force the authority to temporary commission
officers. Cochran did not think direct commissions were the best
choice for the WASPs since women who were training or doing
25
Williams, 7.
26
Memorandum to General Marshall from Arnold, 14 June 1943, Dwight D.
Eisenhower Presidential Library.
Ibid.
Schrader, 139.
27
28
41
work other than ferrying could not get them.29 Arnold wrote to
the Deputy Chief of the Air Staff to ask if he could give direct
commissions to the WASPs, but the Deputy Chief replied that
the act only referred to men.30 This interpretation of the act was a
setback for the WASPs because it would have been easier to
incorporate the women pilots into the AAF this way, at least for
the duration of the war, but now the only option left was to get
Congress to pass a bill.
The Army Air Force’s first attempt to militarize the WASPs
with a bill in Congress was in September 1943 with the Costello
Bill. The Costello Bill sought to bring the WASPs under the
command of the AAF and keep them there for up to six months
after the end of the war. The bill first went to the Military Affairs
Committee of the House of Representatives where it stayed for
six months without discussion of it.31 In February 1944, John
Costello reintroduced the bill to the House and Senate with
additions that explained officer rankings and gave Congress and
the President power to end the use of female pilots sooner.32 The
bill did not make any progress in the Senate, but in the House,
the Military Affairs Committee held a hearing on it in March.33
General Arnold was in favor of the bill and was the only witness
to speak at the hearing.34 The committee members received many
letters concerning the militarization of the WASP from male
civilian flight instructors and Army Air Force trainees who
thought the WASPs were taking their jobs.35 Most of the
instructors and trainees had lost their jobs when the Army Air
Force closed the Air Force training programs in January 1944
when the Army needed more infantrymen than pilots.36 Arnold
told the committee that they should militarize the WASP so that
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
Ibid., 138.
Haynsworth and Toomey, 120.
Schrader, 139.
HR 4219, 78th Cong., 2d sess. (February 17, 1944).
Cochran to Commanding General, B2, 1 August 1944, WASP Virtual
Collection.
Schrader, 140.
Ibid., 141.
Ibid., 140–41.
42
the women pilots could free up more men for the infantry.37
After hearing Arnold speak, the committee recommended the bill
and sent it on to the Rules Committee to pick a day and decide
the rules for it to enter the House floor for debate.38
A big debate for the Costello Bill took place once it reached
the floor of the House in June 1944 because of the public outcry
against it. The civilian instructors and AAF trainees sent even
more letters, which the representatives took into special
consideration because it was an election year.39 Soon, the press
took notice of the debate and picked sides, stirring public fervor
even more.40 Although some of the newspapers supported
militarization of the WASP, many were against it and printed false
stories. They often glamorized the WASPs and blamed them for
taking men’s jobs and sending them into the war as ground
troops instead.41 The main argument against passage of the bill
was that the WASPs would continue to take male pilots’ jobs.
However, the WASPs were not taking their jobs because, as
Arnold had told the Military Affairs Committee, the Army Air
Force would take any men that qualified to fly with them.42 Only
about one-third of the instructors qualified, and with the closing
of the training programs, the remaining two-thirds were worried
about the Army drafting them into the infantry because they were
in reserve.43 The trainees were not trained enough to qualify for
the AAF, and the Army was not going to train men to fly when
what they really needed were ground troops. The smarter choice
was to train and use female pilots because they could not fight in
the infantry.
Those in favor of the bill tried to be heard over the outcry,
but not everyone was successful. No one heard the WASPs
because Cochran forbade them to write their own letters to the
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Ibid.
Haynsworth and Toomey, 121.
Ibid., 129.
Verges, 193.
Keil, 276.
Ibid., 267.
Ibid., 267–68.
43
representatives.44 Cochran, however, was working to help the
WASPs by massing a huge publicity campaign.45 Arnold was not
present during the debates because he was recovering from a
heart attack he had in March, and then, he was working on plans
for D-Day and helping coordinate the aftermath of it.46 Although
support for the bill did exist, it was not as loud as the opposition.
More opposition to the Costello Bill came on June 5, 1944, in
the form of the Ramspeck Report, which a representative entered
into the debate.47 In March 1944, the Civil Service Committee
looked into the WASP program to evaluate it and discover where
the money came from to fund it since Congress had never
approved it.48 Their report, called the Ramspeck Report, focused
on the WASPs training and the money the Army Air Force spent
on it. Their overall opinion was that the training program was
“costly and unnecessary.”49 They recommended that the AAF
cancel the training program but said that the female pilots who
were already working should continue to do so.50 This report
acted as one more objection to the Women Airforce Service
Pilots, and even though the Army Appropriations Bill for 1945
had passed through Congress, giving the WASP program six
million dollars for funding, the House voted the Costello Bill
down by nineteen votes on June 21, 1944.51 All of the opposition
to the Costello Bill crippled its chances of passing even though
earlier militarization bills for other women’s organizations, such
as the WAC and Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency
Services (WAVES), had already passed through Congress.52 This
bill was the WASPs last hope for militarization, although they did
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
Verges, 188.
Ibid.
Schrader, 144–45.
Ibid., 144.
Ibid., 142.
Committee on the Civil Service, Concerning Inquires Made of Certain Proposals for
the Expansion and Change in Civil Service Status of the WASPs, 78th Cong., 2d
sess., 1944, H. Rep. 1600, 1.
Ibid., 13.
Cochran to Commanding General, B2, 1 August 1944, WASP Virtual
Collection.
Schrader, 140.
44
not realize it at the time, because within six months, female pilots
no longer flew for the military.
The Costello Bill started the ball rolling toward deactivation
of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, and its failure to pass in
the House prompted Cochran to write a report, which pushed the
ball along even faster. The debate in the House and the
Ramspeck Report showed so much opposition to the WASP
training program that the AAF decided to cancel it on June 26,
just days after the bill’s failure, even though the Appropriations
Committee had just put aside funds to continue it.53 Part of the
reason for canceling the training program was that the war was
going well and the AAF did not need many new pilots.54 The
WASPs already enrolled at Avenger Field finished their training
and graduated, but those who had just arrived had to turn around
and go back home.55 If the AAF had decided to continue the
training program in June, it would have incited more public
opinion against them, which they did not want. The Costello Bill
had stirred up the public, press, and Congress so much that the
chances of getting another WASP militarization bill passed in the
near future seemed unlikely.
On August 1, 1944, Cochran wrote a report, which she sent
to Arnold and the press, to push for WASP militarization even
though the Costello Bill had recently failed. One author suggests
that she did this to try to get some action on the Costello Bill that
still sat in the Senate.56 Cochran’s report gives a history of the
WASPs and highlights their accomplishments. The goal of the
report was to inform everyone about the facts of the program
and show why Congress should militarize the WASPs.57 Because
of problems that arose from female pilots not being militarized,
Cochran ended the report with what was essentially an ultimatum,
stating, “Serious considerations should be given to inactivation of
53
54
55
56
57
Cochran to Commanding General, D8, 1 August 1944, WASP Virtual
Collection.
Schrader, 140.
Ibid., 16.
Verges, 200.
Cochran to Commanding General, 1 August 1944, WASP Virtual Collection.
45
the WASP program if militarization is not soon authorized.”58 If
the Costello Bill had passed the House, Cochran would not have
felt that it was necessary to send out this report. The press treated
the report like an ultimatum and, apparently, so did the Army Air
Force because later that month they started making plans for the
WASP’s deactivation.59
In October, Arnold sent Cochran a letter to tell her that it
was time to plan for WASP deactivation, and later that month,
they both sent a letter to all of the WASPs explaining that the
Army Air Force would deactivate the program on December 20,
1944.60 Arnold said the AAF did not need them anymore, and if
they were to stay, they would replace men, not release them as
they had been doing.61 The announcement shocked the female
pilots because they had not seen it coming, and as far as they
could tell, the Army Air Force still needed them because they
were constantly busy flying for the AAF.62 Upon deactivation,
some of the WASPs even offered to continue flying for one
dollar a year, but Arnold turned them down.63 The women were
crushed to know that they had to leave before the war was over.
In the end, the AAF deactivated the WASPs without ever finding
a successful way to militarize them, which would have given them
benefits and recognized them as veterans of the Air Force.
58
59
60
61
62
63
Ibid., J1d.
Schrader, 16–17.
On the letter to Cochran, see H. H. Arnold to Director of Women Pilots,
“Deactivation of WASP,” 1 October 1944, Online Documents, Dwight D.
Eisenhower Presidential Library. On the letter to the WASPs, see Jacqueline
Cochran to Members of the 43-W-3 Class, 12 October 1944, Online
Documents, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.
Arnold to Director of Women Pilots, 1 October 1944.
Before the AAF actually deactivated the WASP, the Ferrying Division tried to
keep the WASPs they already had under their employment, but Arnold
denied their request. Verges, 211–12 and Brigadier General Nowland to
Commanding General, Air Transport Command, secret memorandum, 1
November 1944,
http://wingsacrossamerica.us/records_all/press_archive/nowland.pdf.
When some of the WASPs left to go home on December 20, planes still sat
on the ground waiting to be delivered, showing that the AAF did still need
them as the Ferrying Division had said. Fly Girls, produced by Laurel
Ladevich, 56 minutes, PBS Video, 2006, DVD and Nathan, 78.
Schrader, 149.
46
Nancy Love and Jackie Cochran’s wish to have the WASP
and its predecessors militarized never came true because of the
opposition it faced when they later tried, not only from people in
the Army Air Force but also from the public. Militarizing under
the WAC, giving out direct commissions, and passing the
Costello Bill were all options Love, Cochran, and Arnold
attempted, but because of resistance to them, they were never
successful. With the failure of the Costello Bill came the
termination of the training program and, soon after that, the
deactivation of the whole WASP program. The WASPs did not
want to quit flying for the military because they loved to fly and
most of them knew they would never have the chance to fly
military aircraft again. After deactivation, the women went back
home, and people soon forgot they ever existed, even the press,
who in 1977 said that the new women recruits for the Air Force
were the first women to ever fly military aircraft for the United
States.64 Around the same time in 1977, the WASPs again began
the fight in Congress to gain military recognition. Thirty-three
years after the Army Air Force deactivated them and Congress
denied them militarization, the women became veterans with the
passage of the GI Bill Improvement Act of 1977 on November
3.65 These women flew military aircraft in World War II, proving
that women were capable of flying them, and they thoroughly
enjoyed the time they spent training and doing what they loved:
flying. In the end, the WASPs got the recognition they deserved
and earned their place in history.
64
65
Verges, 146.
Ibid., 147.
47