Women History Month

WAFS: Betty Tackaberry Blake

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“Just believe in yourself. Study and work hard, and you can get to your goal, no matter what it is, if you just believe in yourself and try“

Betty Tackaberry Blake was a United States aviator who witnessed the arrival of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and was the graduate from the first class of the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS).

Source: Veteran Tributes

Born on October 20, 1920 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Betty Guild was encouraged to learn to fly by Amelia Earhart whom she met when she was 14 years old. Betty took her first flight at 15. She earned her license from the Civilian Pilot Program at University of Hawaii and went on to complete her commercial and instructor pilot training. On Dec 7, 1941 she witnessed the bombing of Pearl Harbor from her balcony. She had received her instructor’s rating and regular commercial license the previous afternoon, but civilian flights were immediately banned in Hawaii.

In 1942 Betty married Robert Tackaberry, a naval officer. She later applied and was accepted to the first class of Jackie Cochran’s new experimental flight training program Army Air Corps base in Houston, TX. She served as ferrying pilot stationed in Long Beach, CA. After the WASP was disbanded, she received instruction at the air force officer’s training school in Orlando, FL. She served as simulated flight instructor for air force trainees until 1945, when she divorced Tackaberry and stopped flying.

She later married George Blake, an officer in the Air Transport Command and moved to Arizona. She passed away on April, 9th 2015 at the age of 94. She is believed to be the last surviving graduate of the first WASP training class during World War II.

See Also:
Military.com
Wikipedia
Wings Across America
Veterans Tributes

WAFS: Betty Gillies

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Betty Gillies was an American Aviator who became the first pilot to qualify for the Woman Auxiliary Ferrying Service (WAFS) and the first woman to fly the Republic-47 Thunderbolt.

Born in 1908 in Long Island, NY, Betty Gillies, while a student nurse in New York City, began flying in 1928 and obtained her license in May 1929 after 23 hours of flight. She continued to build hours towards her commercial license. She joined the Ninety Nines in 1929, and was serving as their president between 1939-1941 when the US entered World War II.

Source: Wikipedia

Betty became one of the original WAFS members in 1942 and later that year, she was named commander of the WAFS stationed at New Castle Army Air Base in Delaware. She became the first woman to fly the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt in March 1943.  WAFS name was changed to Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) in 1943, and Betty remained as squadron leader of the WASP assigned to the 2nd Ferrying Group at New Castle Army Air Base until they were disbanded on December 20, 1944.

After more than 50 years in the air, she stopped flying in 1986 due to vision problems. She died on October 14th, 1998 in San Diego.

March is Woman History Month and Women of Aviation Month

See Also:


Wikipedia
Ninety-Nines
Womens History

WAFS: Cornelia Fort

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Cornelia Clark Fort was a United States aviator who became famous for being part of two aviation-related events: Pearl Harbor and second woman to join the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS).

Cornelia Fort was born in 1919 in Nashville, TN. Her interest in aviation was born at a young age of five when she watched a barnstormer perform in the Curtiss Jenny. She took her first lesson in 1940 and was hooked becoming an instructor in 1941. Her first job was at Fort Collins, CO flight school where she was the only woman flight instructor in a government sponsored pilot training program.

Source: Wikipedia

One warm December morning Cornelia and her student were out flying. The student practiced, honing his skills prior to solo flight, practicing take-offs and landings and level flight when Cornelia observed a military aircraft headed in their direction. While not unusual since the military base was next to the civilian airport, something was off. It was December 1941. Knowing something was off, Cornelia had seized the controls from the student and averted an incident with the oncoming aircraft, and watched in utter disbelief, as the Japanese aircraft passed by. She and her student landed and fled to safety.

Knowing US was soon headed to war she was interested in contributing to that effort. She accepted a instructor position at Andrews Flying Service in Honolulu in September of 1941 and by December of that year she had 300 flight hours. In September of the same year she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Service (WAFS). WAFS was created in September 1942 within the Air Transport Command, under Nancy Harkness Love’s leadership. WAFS were recruited from among commercially licensed women pilots with at least 500 hours flying time and a 200-hp rating.

She was based in Long Beach, CA and checked out in the BT-13 and participated in ferrying missions. It was during one of those missions when she was transporting a group of pilots from Long Beach to Dallas, TX in March 1943, she perished in during a mid-air collision with another aircraft that resulted in her aircraft crashing to the ground. She was the first of the WAFS to be killed on a mission.

March is Women History Month and Women of Aviation Month.

See Also:

Wikipedia: Cornelia Fort

Lost Aviators of Pearl Harbor

Plane and Pilot Magazine: Cornelia Fort

Fly Girls: Cornelia Fort

Women in Transportation History: Lillian Gatlin, Aviation Pioneer

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On October 8, 1922, Lillian Gatlin became the first woman to travel across the continental United States in a plane when she arrived at the U.S. air …

Women in Transportation History: Lillian Gatlin, Aviation Pioneer

Women in Aviation: Lady Mary Bailey

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Mary Westenra, daughter of the fifth Baron Rossmore, was born on December 1, 1890 in Rossmore Castle, Ireland. She married Sir Abraham ‘Abe’ Bailey, a wealthy South African mining magnate of British descent, in 1911. Mary volunteered to be an aviation technician when World War I began in 1914, and was stationed in Britain and France with units of the Royal Flying Corps.

Mary (née Westenra), Lady Bailey, 1 September 1911. (Bassano Ltd., Royal Photographers. © National Portrait Gallery, London)

She gained her pilot’s licence in 1927 and embarked on a record-breaking career:

  • Became the first woman to fly across the Irish Sea
  • Set a Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) world height record of 5,268 metres in a light aircraft category
  • Set the record for the longest solo flight and the longest flight by a woman flying 8000 miles from Croydon, South London, England, to Cape Town, South Africa and a 10,000-mile return flight.
  • She won the Harmon Trophy as the world’s outstanding aviatrix in 1927 and 1928.

Mary Bailey was one of the finest women pilots and one of the most remarkable Irishwomen of the 20th century. She died on July 29, 1960, at the age of 69.

See Also:

This Day in Aviation

SP’s Aviation

Wikipedia

Jackie Cochran

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I might have been born in a hovel
but I am determined to travel with the wind and the stars.
— Jackie Cochran

Born Bessie Lee Pittman in Pensacola, FL in 1906, Jackie Cochran, was the youngest of five children. She rose from a poverty-stricken childhood to become one of history’s most accomplished female aviators. She worked in a cotton mill at the age of six, and labored at a series of jobs before answering her call to the air. She married Robert Cochran in 1920, and after the marriage ended with the death of Robert in 1925, she retained the name of Cochran and began using Jacqueline or Jackie as her name.

She learned to fly in 1932 at the Roosevelt Flying School in Long Island and pursued advanced flight instruction at Ryan School of Aeronautics going on to get her instrument, commercial and air transport pilot ratings. Some of her achievements included:

  • In 1934, she flew in the London, England to Melbourne, Australia race.
  • In 1935, she became the first woman to fly in the Bendix Trophy Race, which she won in 1938.
  • In 1937 she became the first woman to make a blind instrument landing.
  • In 1939-40 she set new women’s records in altitude and open class speed.
  • She was the first woman to fly a bomber across the Atlantic Ocean during World War II, leading to the formation of the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) program.
  • In 1950, she received the Harmon Trophy as the Aviatrix of the Decade.
  • In 1953, she became the first woman to break the speed barrier.
  • In 1962, she subsequently set 73 records in three years.
  • In 1964, she exceeded Mach 2.
  • She was also the first woman to land and take off from an aircraft carrier

She was a sponsor of the Mercury 13 program, an early effort to test the ability of women to be astronauts. She served as the President of the Ninety Nines for two terms. She received the Distinguished Service Medal for her leadership of the WASP and three Distinguished Flying Cross awards for other records. She was also a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. Jackie Cochran also authored two autobiographies —The Stars at Noon and, with Mary Ann Bucknam Brinley, Jackie Cochran.

Jackie Cochran pioneered women’s aviation as one of the most prominent racing pilots of her generation.

See Also:

The National Hall of Fame

Women in Aviation and Space History

Jacqueline Cochran and the Woman’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs)

Celebrating Female Pilots and their Contribution to WW2! Clipped Wings by Molly Merryman @DeborahBrosseau @RRBookTours1 #RRBookTours #Books #Veterans — Reads & Reels

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In her exhilerating book Clipped Wings: The Rise and Fall of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII, author Molly Merryman shines light on the critical and dangerous work of the daring female aviators who changed history. New York University Press classics series has just updated the book with Merryman’s reflections on the changes in women’s aviation in the past twenty years. A documentary based on Merryman’s work, Coming Home: Fight For A Legacy, is currently in production. The WASP directly challenged the assumptions of male supremacy in wartime culture. They flew the fastest fighter planes and heaviest bombers; they test-piloted experimental models and worked in the development of weapons systems. Yet the WASP were the only women’s auxiliary within the armed services of World War II that was not militarized. In Clipped Wings, Merryman draws upon finally-declassified military documents, congressional records, and interviews with the women who served as WASP during World War II to trace the history of the over one thousand pilots who served their country as the first women to fly military planes. She examines the social pressures that culminated in their disbandment in 1944—even though a wartime need for their services still existed—and documents their struggles and eventual success, in 1977, to gain military status and receive veterans’ benefits.

Celebrating Female Pilots and their Contribution to WW2! Clipped Wings by Molly Merryman @DeborahBrosseau @RRBookTours1 #RRBookTours #Books #Veterans — Reads & Reels

Words on Wednesdays: WAVES

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Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) were a unit of the U.S. Naval Reserve. Mildred McAfee served as the first director of the WAVES. The first class consisted of 644 women, and subsequent classes produced a maximum of 1,250 graduates and by fall 1942, the U.S. Navy had produced a record 10,000 women for active service. WAVES were not eligible for combat duty and duties included everything from patching bullet holes in a naval boat to performing engine checks on a seaplane.  (See more here).

An undated photo from the personal collection of Alice Virginia Benzie, a Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service -- WAVES -- sailor stationed at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., in the 1940s, shows WAVES standing in formation outside the hangars. By the time recruiting ended in 1945, the WAVES boasted a force of 86,000 enlisted and more than 8,000 female officers -- around 2.5 percent of the Navy’s total strength at the time. Courtesy photo

Photo Source: https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/1102371/remembering-navy-waves-during-womens-history-month/

March is Women History Month and Women in Aviation Month.

See Also:

The WAVES of World War II