Not so sweet in Sweetwater

This article is reprinted in an abridged form...from the website of the Bullock Texas State Historic Museum in Austin, Texas.

In 1942, a women’s flying training detachment program was created and approved. By 1943, all training took place at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. Famed aviator Jacqueline Cochran was Director of Women Pilots.

 Life wasn’t always sweet at Sweetwater. The training Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) received was as rigorous as that of the male cadets. Although the women were already licensed pilots, they had to learn to fly America’s military aircraft (like a man).

A woman could be in camp one day, and her locker cleaned out the next. Ground school was no picnic either. Hydraulics, meteorology, Morse code, aerodynamics, physics and airplane maintenance were just some of the required courses.

Add to that, their male-sizes-only uniforms didn’t fit, the weather was hot and dusty or cold and snowy, the bays (barracks) were crowded, the latrines were spartan and sometimes meat loaf, grits and squash just wasn’t a dream dinner. All in all, becoming a WASP took guts, skill and stamina.

 

The WASP faced some unexpected challenges and resistance when they signed up. Male instructors at Avenger Field wondered publicly if the women could really fly these military planes, and male pilots worried privately that they could.

Was it possible that a woman could actually fly a plane as well as a man? And if she did – and he was released from stateside duties as a result – did he really want to be sent on combat missions overseas?

 

Success for the WASP was a complicated issue. Jacqueline Cochran herself noted that the female pilots were always reminded to “leave the glamour and the glory” for their brother pilots who were over on the front lines.

Women Airforce Service Pilots flew 70 hours each of primary and advanced training. They practiced take-offs and landings, snap rolls, parachute bail-outs, night flying, cross country flying and aerobatics. Primary instructors even flew trainees upside down to demonstrate the importance of safety belts.

Even though the women were learning to fly new planes, they were all experienced pilots. And like most pilots, they savored the freedom of the skies. Some of them even fell in love a little with their planes.

 

“There’s a romance to flying. You’re away from the earth, defying gravity, and you have to do your best; there’s no safety net,” said Ethel Meyer Finley.

Although they were stationed at U.S. military bases and flew Army Air Force planes, Women Airforce Service Pilots were classified as civilians. That seeming contradiction had long been an irritant for WASP.

By 1943, the issue had also become a concern for the Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who, like the rest of the nation, had become convinced of the value of the program to the war efforts.

In 1944, Rep. John Costello (Calif.) sponsored a bill to commission the Women Airforce Service Pilots as full-fledged military personnel. It failed.

In October 1944, Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces, ordered Jacqueline Cochran to deactivate the WASP program. Director Cochran’s final speech on Dec. 7, 1944, at Avenger Field included these words:

“The emotions of happiness and sorrow are pretty close together today, and I am experiencing them both at the same time, as well as the third emotion of pride. Happiness also swells within me from the knowledge that the WASP successfully completed a twofold mission.”

 

“We have flown scores of millions of miles in relieving the pilot shortage, and we have proved that women can be trained as pilots easily and used in many ways in the air effectively. What the WASP have done is without precedent in the history of the world.”

In the years following the war, the WASP story was rarely told. After the program was disbanded at the end of 1944, WASP records were sealed, classified and stored in the government archives for 33 years.

In 1976, the Air Force announced that women would be permitted to fly military aircraft, labeling it a “first” in U.S. history. As women who had flown for the nation more than 30 years earlier, WASP united in an effort to set the record straight.

In 1977, with the help of Sen. Barry Goldwater (Ariz.), Reps. Lindy Boggs (La.) and Margaret Heckler (Mass,) and Gen. Arnold’s son, Air Force Col. Bruce Arnold, the WASP were finally granted veteran status. Seven years later, in 1984, their service medals came in the mail.

 

On March 10, 2010, the Women Airforce Service Pilots were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of their pioneering military service, exemplary record and revolutionary reform in the Armed Forces of the United States of America.