Wasp of the Ferry Command: Women Pilots, Uncommon Deeds - Rilegato

Rickman, Sarah Byrn

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1574416375 ISBN 13: 9781574416374

Casa editrice: Univ of North Texas Pr, 2016

Riassunto

WASP of the Ferry Command is the story of the women ferry pilots who flew more than nine million miles in 72 different aircraft—115,000 pilot hours—for the Ferrying Division, Air Transport Command, during World War II. In the spring of 1942, Col. William H. Tunner lacked sufficient male pilots to move vital trainer aircraft from the factory to the training fields. Nancy Love found 28 experienced women pilots who could do the job. They, along with graduates of the army’s flight training school for women—established by Jacqueline Cochran—performed this duty until fall 1943, when manufacture of trainers ceased.

In December 1943 the women ferry pilots went back to school to learn to fly high-performance WWII fighters, known as pursuits. By January 1944 they began delivering high performance P-51s, 47s, and 39s. Prior to D-Day and beyond, P-51s were crucial to the air war over Germany. They had the range to escort B-17s and B-24s from England to Berlin and back on bombing raids that ultimately brought down the German Reich. Getting those pursuits to the docks in New Jersey for shipment abroad became these women’s primary job. Ultimately, more than one hundred WASP pursuit pilots were engaged in this vital movement of aircraft.

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Informazioni sull?autore

SARAH BYRN RICKMAN is the author of an award-winning WASP novel, Flight from Fear; as well as The Originals: The Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron of World War II and Nancy Love and the WASP Ferry Pilots of World War II (UNT Press). She is the recipient of the Seventh Annual Combs Gates Award by the National Aviation Hall of Fame for her outstanding work on the women pilots of World War II. She lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

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WASP of the Ferry Command

Women Pilots, Uncommon Deeds

By Sarah Byrn Rickman

University of North Texas Press

Copyright © 2016 Sarah Byrn Rickman
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57441-637-4

CHAPTER 1

The Beginnings

The world in the late 1930s waited, poised on the brink of war.

After World War I, U.S. Army Air Service Brigadier General Billy Mitchell predicted that the next war would be won in the air. This heresy got him court-martialed. But not all of the Army brass thought Mitchell was wrong. One such man was H.H. "Hap" Arnold, who went on to serve as Commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. Another was William H. Tunner, a member of the West Point graduating class of 1928.

"The Air Corps was considered the lunatic fringe," General Tunner wrote in his memoir. But he opted for it anyway. Five flights in five different airplanes in one week's time during his senior year had shown him that "man could fly."

In 1938, with the threats of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan on the rise, Captain Tunner saw the growing need for a corps of reserve pilots. He began to recruit local pilots in Memphis, where he was stationed, and built a sizeable group of Reserve flying officers.

Women also recognized the coming need for more pilots. Cecil "Teddy" (Mrs. Theodore) Kenyon, a founder of the Ninety-Nines — the international organization for licensed women pilots — suggested in 1936 that women could assist in wartime by ferrying planes. Betty Huyler Gillies, another Ninety-Nines founder and the organization's president from 1939 to 1941, advised the membership to sharpen their skills and build their time. "Be ready to fly for your country if she needs you."

In 1939, Jacqueline Cochran — founder of Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics, a record-setting racing pilot, and a Ninety-Nine — wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt to suggest a plan to use American women pilots in a national emergency. Women could fly ambulance planes, courier planes, and commercial and transport planes, "thereby releasing male pilots for combat duty. ... We have about 650 licensed women pilots in this country. Most of them ... could be of great use a few months hence if properly trained and organized."

In 1940, another well-known aviator and Ninety-Nine, Nancy Harkness Love, wrote to Lt. Col. Robert Olds, in the Plans Division of the Office of the Chief of the Air Corps, about the possibility of women ferrying airplanes for the U.S. Army. Mrs. Love had gained experience delivering airplanes that she and her husband, Robert M. Love, sold to their customers at InterCity Aviation in Boston. Olds asked for a list of women pilots holding commercial ratings. Using Aero Chamber of Commerce lists, Nancy Love gave him forty-nine names. "I really think this list is up to handling pretty complicated stuff."

That summer, Olds considered using "approximately 100 women pilots as co-pilots in transport squadrons and for ferrying single-engine aircraft thereby releasing a number of [male] pilots" for other duty. General Arnold turned down the proposal.

The United States was still a neutral country, but civilian crews employed by the Atlantic Ferrying Organization (Atfero) were moving aircraft from Canada across the North Atlantic for the British. Then in March 1941, Lend-Lease — through which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the Free French, China, and other Allied nations with materiel between 1941 and 1945 — went into effect. The Army Air Corps began to plan how the United States could deliver aircraft to England and, in doing so, give its ferry pilots on-the-job training and experience.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Univ of North Texas Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2016
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1574416375
• ISBN 13: 9781574416374
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 440
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile