These women included wives, mothers, debutantes and actresses. More than 1,000 women joined the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) and were trained to test-pilot aircraft, ferry planes, instruct male pilots and tow targets for anti-aircraft artillery practice as part of the war effort. Thirty-eight of these women died while serving.
Jacqueline Cochran, an ambitious businesswoman and pioneering female aviator came up with the idea for the women’s pilot corps. Cochran was passionate about flying—by 1941 she held 17 world records and became the first woman to fly a bomber across the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1940 Cochran wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt suggesting the establishment of a women's flying division of the Army Air Forces. Cochran wrote that qualified women pilots were capable of performing all of the domestic, non-combat aviation jobs so that more male pilots could be free for combat. She also wrote a letter to Colonel Roberts Olds, an organizer of the Ferrying Command, with this same suggestion.
In 1942 Chief of the Army Air Forces Hap Arnold tasked Cochran with the assignment of recruiting American women pilots and researching the British Airport Transport. Upon the U.S.’s entry into the war, Cochran was named director of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) and was in charge of women’s flight training for the U.S.
With ambition and a sense of duty to serve their country, 25,000 women applied for the program. About 1,830 women were accepted and received pilot training at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. The base became known as “Cochran’s Convent,” the only all-female Air Force base in history. The women received the same training as men. For Cochran’s efforts she received the Distinguished Service Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
In 1943 pilot Cornelia Fort, a Sarah Lawrence-educated woman, became the first woman to die on active duty for the U.S. when another pilot accidentally clipped the wing of her plane.
In 1999 the documentary “Fly Girls,” another name for the WASP pilots, chronicled the history and experience of this unique time in American military history.
The WASP women continuously faced the skepticism of the general public and of male pilots. Many of these courageous women overcame these and many other obstacles during the war but unfortunately the government did not recognize them as having military status. Adverse opinions mounted in 1944 when the war drew to an end and male pilots returned home from combat.
The U.S. government put pressure on Cochran to merge the WASP program with the Women’s Army Corps but Cochran refused and so the WASP program was disbanded. It would take more than thirty years before women would fly again for the U.S. military.
