As early as 1939, Jacquelyn Cochran has a conversation with Eleanor
Roosevelt about the idea of using about women pilots. She writes a letter in
fact to Eleanor, where she uses the terms "I believe in a future conflict the
bottleneck will be skilled pilots, and perhaps we can make use of the women who
have those skills in this conflict."
This was phenomenally unusual! Think about a world where women flying
was unthinkable. There were 800, 900 women who had a pilot's license in the
late 1930s. And if you were to ask the American public "Can women fly
airplanes?" the response would be "No." And they would say "Well, what Amelia
Earhart, or Jacquelyn Cochran" and they'd say "Well, yes, they can do it, but
they're anomalies, they're unusual. They're not average American
women." Remember, these are years when few women even had driver's licenses!
So it's not a time where little girls growing up thought "One day I'll fly
military airplanes!" In fact, the idea of growing up and flying airplanes at
all would be absurd!
Cochran writes to Eleanor Roosevelt, proposes this idea, Eleanor is
intrigued by the idea - in fact she writes a column about it in her famous
My Day column series. She writes about the idea of using women pilots,
of using women in the military. Eleanor - like Earhart, like other women in
that time period - is very much an advocate of women's equal participation in
the workplace. And so she sees this as a splendid idea and begins to put some
weight behind it. Eleanor Roosevelt is also a really good friend of Earhart's,
loves Earhart and so part of that was a way of continuing a legacy of Earhart
for Eleanor. But nothing happens in the interim. Jackie comes up with
some proposals for using women pilots in 1941 and in particular the
conversation is stimulated by a luncheon for the Collier Trophy. The Collier
Trophy is the most prestigious award given in American aviation every year;
it's for the most outstanding achievement in aviation in the United States in
the preceding year. Cochran had been on that Awards Committee, the award was
presented at the White House every year, she's attending the ceremony that
year. At that meeting she hooks up with Hap Arnold and Clayton Knight. Clayton
Knight is the director of the British ferry command; Hap Arnold is the leading
aviation officer in the United States at the time. And they have a general
conversation about the idea of using women pilots, of Britain's use of women
pilots, of whether or not such an idea might be a good one in the United
States. And there's enough positive reaction to that conversation that Cochran
goes out and begins to do a little survey of women who are commercially rated
pilots; tries to find out how many there are. It turns out there's between 130
and 150 according to her count, and she prepares a proposal which she sends to
Arnold, outlining a plan for making use of these women.
He says "Thanks but no thanks." This is precisely the moment when actually the
ferrying command in the United States Air Force, at that time the Army Air
Corp, becomes the Army Air Forces of World War II and we now have the Air
Transport Command. There's a complete re-organization. That re-organization
brings in new people into Washington who have the responsibility for ferrying
airplanes, not just around the United States but now around the world. So
there's a domestic division, ferrying division, and six foreign divisions that
are created at this time. This is the group that's going to transport people
and airplanes and supplies all over the world in support of the American war
effort. Domestically their responsibility is to get the aircraft from the
factory to the bases and to the points of embarkation, and that is the group
that is under the command of William Tunner.
William Tunner of course is assisted by Bob Love, and through him he meets
Nancy Love. Nancy Love is an active pilot and she has asked by William Tunner
to come up with an idea - a plan, if you will - of how to recruit some women to
support the ferrying command's shortage. The ferrying division is lowest
of low priority. The pilot need is largely in the Eighth Air in England,
then in the Pacific for military pilots - so at the bottom of the feeding chain
is the ferrying divisions, the people that have to get the planes from the
factory to the air fields. And because they're so low priority, Tunner has to
look to alternatives that he would not necessarily consider in normal, peace
time circumstances, and that's why the idea that Nancy Love proposes gets a
hearing. Two years earlier it wouldn't get a hearing.
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