Lyudmila Pavlichenko—"Lady Death"
Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko was a Soviet sniper in the Red Army during World War II credited with 309 kills, making her the deadliest female sniper in history.
That claim, however, has been questioned by historians analyzing her contradictory claims and timeline of events.
She served in the Red Army during the siege of Odessa and the Siege of Sevastopol, during the early stages of fighting on the Eastern Front.
After she was injured in battle by a mortar shell, she was evacuated to Moscow. When recovered, she trained other snipers and was a spokeswoman for the Red Army.
In 1942, she toured the US, Canada, and the UK After the war ended in 1945, she was reassigned as a senior researcher for the Soviet Navy.
She died of a stroke at age 58.
"Lady Death"
The following information is from:
"Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper:
Pavlichenko was a Soviet sniper credited with 309 kills
—and an advocate for women’s rights.
On a U.S. tour in 1942, she found a friend in the first lady"
"Lady Death"
Lyudmila Pavlichenko arrived in Washington, D.C., in late 1942 as little more than a curiosity to the press, standing awkwardly beside her translator in her Soviet Army uniform. She spoke no English, but her mission was obvious. As a battle-tested and highly decorated lieutenant in the Red Army’s 25th Rifle Division, Pavlichenko had come on behalf of the Soviet High Command to drum up American support for a “second front” in Europe. Joseph Stalin desperately wanted the Western Allies to invade the continent, forcing the Germans to divide their forces and relieve some of the pressure on Soviet troops.
She visited with President Franklin Roosevelt, becoming the first Soviet citizen to be welcomed at the White House. Afterward, Eleanor Roosevelt asked the Ukrainian-born officer to accompany her on a tour of the country and tell Americans of her experiences as a woman in combat. Pavlichenko was only 25, but she had been wounded four times in battle. She also happened to be the most successful and feared female sniper in history, with 309 confirmed kills to her credit—the majority German soldiers. She readily accepted the first lady’s offer.
"Lady Death"
She graciously fielded questions from reporters. One wanted to know if Russian women could wear makeup at the front. Pavlichenko paused; just months before, she’d survived fighting on the front line during the Siege of Sevastopol, where Soviet forces suffered considerable casualties and were forced to surrender after eight months of fighting. “There is no rule against it,” Pavlichenko said, “but who has time to think of her shiny nose when a battle is going on?”
The New York Times dubbed her the “Girl Sniper,” and other newspapers observed that she “wore no lip rouge, or makeup of any kind,” and that “there isn’t much style to her olive-green uniform.”
In New York, she was greeted by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and a representative of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union, C.I.O., who presented her with, as one paper reported, a “full-length raccoon coat of beautifully blended skins, which would be resplendent in an opera setting.” The paper lamented that such a garment would likely “go to the wars on Russia’s bloody steppes when Lyudmila Pavlichenko returns to her homeland.”
"Lady Death"
But as the tour progressed, Pavlichenko began to bristle at the questions, and her clear, dark eyes found focus. One reporter seemed to criticize the long length of her uniform skirt, implying that it made her look fat. In Boston, another reporter observed that Pavlichenko “attacked her five-course New England breakfast yesterday. American food, she thinks, is O.K.”
Soon, the Soviet sniper had had enough of the press’s sniping. “I wear my uniform with honor,” she told Time magazine. “It has the Order of Lenin on it. It has been covered with blood in battle. It is plain to see that with American women what is important is whether they wear silk underwear under their uniforms. What the uniform stands for, they have yet to learn.”
Still, Malvina Lindsey, “The Gentler Sex” columnist for the Washington Post, wondered why Pavlichenko couldn’t make more of an effort with regard to her style. “Isn’t it a part of military philosophy that an efficient warrior takes pride in his appearance?” Lindsey wrote. “Isn’t Joan of Arc always pictured in beautiful and shining armor?”
"Lady Death"
Slowly, Pavlichenko began to find her voice, holding people spellbound with stories of her youth, the devastating effect of the German invasion on her homeland, and her career in combat. In speeches across America, often before thousands, the woman sniper made the case for a U.S. commitment to fighting the Nazis in Europe. And in doing so, she drove home the point that women were not only capable, but essential to the fight.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko was born in 1916 in Balaya Tserkov, a Ukranian town just outside Kiev. Her father was a St. Petersburg factory worker, and her mother a teacher. Pavlichenko described herself as a tomboy who was “unruly in the class room” but athletically competitive, and who would not allow herself to be outdone by boys “in anything.”
“When a neighbor’s boy boasted of his exploits at a shooting range,” she told crowds, “I set out to show that a girl could do as well. So I practiced a lot.” After taking a job in an arms plant, she continued to practice her marksmanship, then enrolled at Kiev University in 1937, to become a scholar and teacher. There, she competed on the track team as a sprinter and pole vaulter, and, she said, “to perfect myself in shooting, I took courses at a sniper’s school.”
"Lady Death"
She was in Odessa when the war broke out and Romanians and Germans invaded. “They wouldn’t take girls in the army, so I had to resort to all kinds of tricks to get in,” Pavlichenko recalled, noting that officials tried to steer her toward becoming a nurse. To prove that she was as skilled with a rifle as she claimed, a Red Army unit held an impromptu audition at a hill they were defending, handing her a rifle and pointing her toward a pair of Romanians who were working with the Germans. “When I picked off the two, I was accepted,” Pavlichenko said, noting that she did not count the Romanians in her tally of kills “because they were test shots.”
The young private was immediately enlisted in the Red Army’s 25th Chapayev Rifle Division, named for Vasily Chapayev, the celebrated Russian soldier and Red Army Commander during the Russian Civil War. Pavlichenko wanted to proceed immediately to the front. “I knew that my task was to shoot human beings,” she said. “In theory that was fine, but I knew that the real thing would be completely different.”
On her first day on the battlefield, she found herself close to the enemy—and paralyzed by fear, unable to raise her weapon, a Mosin-Nagant 7.62 mm rifle with a PE 4x telescope.
"Lady Death"
A young Russian soldier set up his position beside her. But before they had a chance to settle in, a shot rang out and a German bullet took out her comrade. Pavlichenko was shocked into action. “He was such a nice, happy boy,” she recalled. “And he was killed just next to me. After that, nothing could stop me.”
She got the first of her 309 official kills later that day when she picked off two German scouts trying to reconnoiter the area. Pavlichenko fought in both Odessa and Moldavia and racked up the majority of her kills, which included 100 officers, until German advances forced her unit to withdraw, landing them in Sevastopol in the Crimean Peninsula.
As her kill count rose, she was given more and more dangerous assignments, including the riskiest of all—countersniping, where she engaged in duels with enemy snipers. Pavlichenko never lost a single duel, notching 36 enemy sniper kills in hunts that could last all day and night (and, in one case, three days). “That was one of the tensest experiences of my life,” she said, noting the endurance and willpower it took to maintain positions for 15 or 20 hours at a stretch. “Finally,” she said of her Nazi stalker, “he made one move too many.”
"Lady Death"
In Sevastopol, German forces badly outnumbered the Russians, and Pavlichenko spent eight months in heavy fighting. “We mowed down Hitlerites like ripe grain,” she said. In May 1942, she was cited in Sevastopol by the War Council of the Southern Red Army for killing 257 of the enemy. Upon receipt of the citation, Pavlichenko, now a sergeant, promised, “I’ll get more.”
She was wounded on four separate occasions, suffered from shell shock, but remained in action until her position was bombed and she took shrapnel in her face. From that point on, the Soviets decided they’d use Pavlichenko to train new snipers.
“By that time even the Germans knew of me,” she said. They attempted to bribe her, blaring messages over their radio loudspeakers. Lyudmila Pavlichenko, come over to us. We will give you plenty of chocolate and make you a German officer.”
When the bribes did not work the Germans resorted to threats, vowing to tear her into 309 pieces—a phrase that delighted the young sniper. “They even knew my score!”
"Lady Death"
Promoted to lieutenant, Pavlichenko was pulled from combat. Just two months after leaving Sevastopol, the young officer found herself in the United States for the first time in 1942, reading press accounts of her sturdy black boots that “have known the grime and blood of battle,” and giving blunt descriptions of her day-to-day life as a sniper. Killing Nazis, she said, aroused no “complicated emotions” in her. “The only feeling I have is the great satisfaction a hunter feels who has killed a beast of prey.”
To another reporter she reiterated what she had seen in battle, and how it affected her on the front line. “Every German who remains alive will kill women, children and old folks,” she said. "Dead Germans are harmless. Therefore, if I kill a German, I am saving lives.”
Pavlichenko received gifts from dignitaries and admirers wherever she went—mostly rifles and pistols. . . . She continued to speak out about the lack of a color line or segregation in the Red Army, and of gender equality, which she aimed at the American women in the crowds. “Now I am looked upon a little as a curiosity,” she said, “a subject for newspaper headlines, for anecdotes. In the Soviet Union I am looked upon as a citizen, as a fighter, as a soldier for my country.”
"Lady Death"
Her time with Eleanor Roosevelt clearly emboldened her, and by the time they reached Chicago on their way to the West Coast, Pavlichenko had been able to brush aside the “silly questions” from the women press correspondents about “nail polish and do I curl my hair.” By Chicago, she stood before large crowds, chiding the men to support the second front. “Gentlemen,” she said, “I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist occupants by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?” Her words settled on the crowd, then caused a surging roar of support.
While women did not regularly serve in the Soviet military, Pavlichenko reminded Americans that “our women were on a basis of complete equality long before the war. From the first day of the Revolution full rights were granted the women of Soviet Russia. One of the most important things is that every woman has her own specialty. That is what actually makes them as independent as men.
"Lady Death"
"Soviet women have complete self-respect, because their dignity as human beings is fully recognized. Whatever we do, we are honored not just as women, but as individual personalities, as human beings. That is a very big word. Because we can be fully that, we feel no limitations because of our sex. That is why women have so naturally taken their places beside men in this war.”
On her way back to Russia, Pavlichenko stopped for a brief tour in Great Britain, where she continued to press for a second front. Back home, she was promoted to major, awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, her country’s highest distinction, and commemorated on a Soviet postage stamp. Despite her calls for a second European front, she and Stalin would have to wait nearly two years. By then, the Soviets had finally gained the upper hand against the Germans, and Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in June 1944.
"Lady Death"
Eventually, Pavlichenko finished her education at Kiev University and became a historian. In 1957, 15 years after Eleanor Roosevelt accompanied the young Russian sniper around America, the former first lady was touring Moscow. Because of the Cold War, a Soviet minder restricted Roosevelt’s agenda and watched her every move. Roosevelt persisted until she was granted her wish—a visit with her old friend Lyudmila Pavlichenko.
Roosevelt found her living in a two-room apartment in the city, and the two chatted amiably and “with cool formality” for a moment before Pavlichenko made an excuse to pull her guest into the bedroom and shut the door. Out of the minder’s sight, Pavlichenko threw her arms around her visitor, “half-laughing, half-crying, telling her how happy she was to see her.” In whispers, the two old friends recounted their travels together, and the many friends they had met in that unlikeliest of summer tours across America 15 years before.
Videos
YouTube “Lyudmila Pavlichenko—The Extraordinary Sniper.” Dubistic, September 23, 2016. No sound, but good pictures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYnnBpxsI7s&ab_channel=dubistic.
Smithsonian Channel—short but effective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAbg1IuBMsk
Short video, repeats my notes—History's Stories
The following information is from:
"Night Witches:
The Female Fighter Pilots of World War II
Members of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment
decorated their planes with flowers . . .
and dropped 23,000 tons of bombs."
The Atlantic, July 15, 2013
By Megan Garber
"Night Witches"
It was the spring of 1943, at the height of World War II. Two pilots, members of the Soviet Air Force, were flying their planes—Polikarpov Po-2 biplanes, built mainly of plywood and canvas—over a Soviet railway junction. Their passage was on its way to being a routine patrol . . . until the pilots found themselves confronted by a collection of German bombers. Forty-two of them.
The pilots did what anyone piloting a plane made of plywood would do when confronted with enemy craft and enemy fire: they ducked. They sent their planes into dives, returning fire directly into the center of the German formation.
"Night Witches"
The tiny planes' flimsiness was in some ways an asset: their maximum speed was lower than the stall speed of the Nazi planes, meaning that the pilots could maneuver their craft with much more agility than their attackers. The outnumbered Soviets downed two Nazi planes before one of their own lost its wing to enemy fire. The pilot bailed out, landing, finally, in a field.
The people on the ground, who had witnessed the skirmish, rushed over to help the stranded pilot. They offered alcohol. But the offer was refused. As the pilot would later recall, "Nobody could understand why the brave lad who had taken on a Nazi squadron wouldn't drink vodka."
The brave lad had refused the vodka, it turned out, because the brave lad was not a lad at all. It was Tamara Pamyatnykh, one of the members of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment of the Soviet Air Forces.
"Night Witches"
The 588th was the most highly decorated female unit in that force, flying 30,000 missions over the course of four years—and dropping, in total, 23,000 tons of bombs on invading German armies. Its members, who ranged in age from 17 to 26, flew primarily at night, making do with planes that were—per their plywood-and-canvas construction—generally reserved for training and crop-dusting. They often operated in stealth mode, idling their engines as they neared their targets and then gliding their way to their bomb release points. As a result, their planes made little more than soft "whooshing" noises as they flew by.
Those noises reminded the Germans, apparently, of the sound of a witch's broomstick. So the Nazis began calling the female fighter pilots Nachthexen: "night witches." They were loathed. And they were feared. Any German pilot who downed a "witch" was automatically awarded an Iron Cross.
"Night Witches"
The Night Witches were largely unique among the female combatants -- and even the female flyers—of World War II. Other countries, the U.S. among them, may have allowed women to fly as members of their early air forces; those women, however, served largely in support and transport roles. The Soviet Union was the first nation to allow women to fly combat missions—to be able, essentially, to return fire when it was delivered. These ladies flew planes; they also dropped bombs.
Last week, one of the most famous of the Night Witches—Nadezhda Popova, a commander of the squad who flew, in total, 852 of its missions—passed away. She was 91. And the obituaries that resulted, celebrations of a life and a legacy largely unknown to many of us here in the U.S., serve as a reminder of the great things the female flyers accomplished. Things made even more remarkable considering the limited technology the woman had at their disposal.
"Night Witches"
The Witches (they took the German epithet as a badge of honor) flew only in the dark. Because of the weight of the bombs they carried and the low altitudes at which they flew, they carried no parachutes. They had no radar to navigate their paths through the night skies—only maps and compasses. If hit by tracer bullets, their craft would ignite like the paper planes they resembled. Which was not a small concern: "Almost every time," Popova once recalled, "we had to sail through a wall of enemy fire."
Their missions were dangerous; they were also, as a secondary challenge, unpleasant. Each night, in general, 40 planes—each crewed by two women, a pilot and a navigator—would fly eight or more missions. Popova herself once flew 18 in a single night. (The multiple nightly sorties were necessary because the modified crop-dusters were capable of carrying only two bombs at a time.)
"Night Witches"
The women's uniforms were hand-me-downs from male pilots. And their planes had open cockpits, leaving the women's faces to freeze in the chilly night air. "When the wind was strong it would toss the plane," Popova noted. "In winter, when you'd look out to see your target better, you got frostbite, our feet froze in our boots, but we carried on flying."
Once, after a successful flight—which is to say, a flight she survived—Popova counted 42 bullet holes studding her little plane. There were also holes in her map. And in her helmet.
Despite all this bravado, however, the female fighter pilots initially struggled to earn the respect of their brothers in arms. The Night Bomber Regiment was one of three female fighter pilot units created by Stalin at the urging of Marina Raskova—an aviation celebrity who was, essentially, "the Soviet Amelia Earhart."
Raskova trained her recruits as pilots and navigators, and prepared them for an environment that preferred to treat women as bombshells rather than bombers. One general, male, initially complained about being sent a "a bunch of girlies" instead of soldiers. But the women and their flimsy little crop-dusters and their ill-fitting uniforms and their 23,000 tons of ammunition soon proved him wrong. And they did all that while decorating their planes with flowers and using their navigation pencils as lipcolor.
Video
"Night Witches"
The following information is from:
"Female WWII Pilots: The Original Fly Girls"
NPR, March 9, 2010
Susan Stamberg at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C.,
May 21, 2019.
American Women Aviators (WASPs)
In 1942, the United States was faced with a severe shortage of pilots, and leaders gambled on an experimental program to help fill the void: Train women to fly military aircraft so male pilots could be released for combat duty overseas.
The group of female pilots was called the Women Airforce Service Pilots — WASP for short. In 1944, during the graduation ceremony for the last WASP training class, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Henry "Hap" Arnold, said that when the program started, he wasn't sure "whether a slip of a girl could fight the controls of a B-17 in heavy weather."
"Now in 1944, it is on the record that women can fly as well as men," Arnold said
American Women Aviators (WASPs)
A few more than 1,100 young women, all civilian volunteers, flew almost every type of military aircraft — including the B-26 and B-29 bombers — as part of the WASP program. They ferried new planes long distances from factories to military bases and departure points across the country. They tested newly overhauled planes. And they towed targets to give ground and air gunners training shooting — with live ammunition. The WASP expected to become part of the military during their service. Instead, the program was canceled after just two years.
They weren't granted military status until the 1970s. And now, 65 years after their service, they will receive the highest civilian honor given by the U.S. Congress. Last July, President Obama signed a bill awarding the WASP the Congressional Gold Medal.
American Women Aviators (WASPs)
Women With Moxie
Margaret Phelan Taylor grew up on a farm in Iowa. She was 19, had just completed two years of college and was ready for adventure in 1943 when a Life magazine cover story on the female pilots caught her eye. Her brother was training to be a pilot with the Army. Why not her? She asked her father to lend her money for a pilot's license — $500, a huge amount then.
"I told him I had to do it," Taylor says. "And so he let me have the money. I don't think I ever did pay it back to him either."
But there was a problem. She was half an inch shorter than the 5-foot-2-inch requirement.
"I just stood on my tiptoes," she says. When she arrived at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, where most of the WASP were trained, "Well, there were a lot of other short ones just like me, and we laughed about how we got in."
Short, tall, slim, wide, they all came in knowing how to fly. The military trained male pilots from scratch, but not the female civilian volunteers.
American Women Aviators (WASPs)
"They didn't want to bring in a bunch of girls who didn't know how to fly an airplane," says Katherine Sharp Landdeck, associate professor of history at Texas Woman's University, who's writing a book about the WASP, tentatively called Against Prevailing Winds: The Women Airforce Service Pilots and American Society.
"So you have women who are getting out of high school and taking every dime they had to learn how to fly so they could be a WASP."
A Dangerous Job
Once when Taylor was ferrying an aircraft cross-country, somewhere between Arizona and California, she saw smoke in the cockpit. Taylor was trained to bail out if anything went wrong. "But the parachutes were way too big. They weren't fitted to us," she says. "The force of that air and that speed and everything, why that just rips stuff off you. You'd slip right out."
So her plane was smoking and Taylor faced a defining moment.
American Women Aviators (WASPs)
"I thought, 'You know what? I'm not going until I see flame. When I see actual fire, why, then I'll jump.' "
Was she scared? "No. I was never scared. My husband used to say, 'It's pretty hard to scare you.' "
The plane's problem turned out to be a burned-out instrument
But 38 female pilots did lose their lives serving their country. One was 26-year-old Mabel Rawlinson from Kalamazoo, Mich.
"I've always known of her as the family hero," says Rawlinson's niece, Pam Pohly, who never knew her aunt. "The one we lost too soon, the one that everyone loved and wished were still around."
American Women Aviators (WASPs)
Rawlinson was stationed at Camp Davis in North Carolina. She was coming back from a night training exercise with her male instructor when the plane crashed. Marion Hanrahan, also a WASP at Camp Davis, wrote an eyewitness account:
I knew Mabel very well. We were both scheduled to check out on night flight in the A-24. My time preceded hers, but she offered to go first because I hadn't had dinner yet. We were in the dining room and heard the siren that indicated a crash. We ran out onto the field. We saw the front of her plane engulfed in fire, and we could hear Mabel screaming. It was a nightmare.
It's believed that Rawlinson's hatch malfunctioned, and she couldn't get out. The other pilot was thrown from the plane and suffered serious injuries. Because Rawlinson was a civilian, the military was not required to pay for her funeral or pay for her remains to be sent home. So — and this is a common story — her fellow pilots pitched in.
American Women Aviators (WASPs)
"They collected enough money to ship her remains home by train," says Pohly. "And a couple of her fellow WASP accompanied her casket."
Even though she was considered a civilian, Mabel Rawlinson's family draped her coffin with a flag, a tradition reserved for members of the armed forces. . . .
The Program Is Pulled
The head of the WASP program was Jacqueline Cochran, a pioneering aviator. (After the war, she became the first woman to break the sound barrier.) Cochran's goal was to train thousands of women to fly for the Army, not just a few dozen integrated into the men's program. She wanted a separate women's organization and believed militarization would follow if the program was a success. And it was. The women's safety records were comparable and sometimes even better than their male counterparts doing the same jobs.
But in 1944, historian Landdeck says, the program came under threat. "It was a very controversial time for women flying aircraft. There was a debate about whether they were needed any longer," Landdeck says.
American Women Aviators (WASPS)
By the summer of 1944, the war seemed to be ending. Flight training programs were closing down, which meant that male civilian instructors were losing their jobs. Fearing the draft and being put into the ground Army, they lobbied for the women's jobs.
"It was unacceptable to have women replacing men. They could release men for duty — that was patriotic — but they couldn't replace men," Landdeck says.
And so, Arnold announced the program would disband by December 1944, but those who were still in training could finish. The Lost Last Class, as it was dubbed, graduated, but served only 2 1/2 weeks before being sent home on Dec. 20, along with all the other WASP.
Lillian Yonally served her country for more than a year as a WASP. When she was dismissed from her base in California, there was no ceremony. "Not a darn thing. It was told to us that we would be leaving the base. And we hopped airplanes to get back home." Home for Yonally was across the country in Massachusetts.
American Women Aviators (WASPS)
That was a familiar story, but Landdeck says there were some bases that did throw parties or had full reviews for their departing WASP.
Riling The WASP's Nest
The women went on with their lives. A few of them got piloting jobs after the war, but not with any of the major airlines. And some of them stayed in the air as airline stewardesses. In those days, no major commercial airline would hire these experienced women as pilots. Like many World War II veterans, most WASP never talked about their experiences.
And according to Taylor, they never expected anything either.
"We were children of the Depression. It was root hog or die. You had to take care of yourself. Nobody owed us anything," she says.
The WASP kept in touch for a while. They even formed a reunion group after the war. But that didn't last long. Then, in the 1960s, they began to find each other again. They had reunions. They started talking about pushing for military status. And then something happened in 1976 that riled the whole WASP's nest.
American Women Aviators (WASPs)
"The Air Force comes out and says that they are going to admit women to their flying program," Landdeck says. An Air Force statement says "it's the first time that the Air Force has allowed women to fly their aircraft."
Thirty years later, that comment still upsets former WASP Yonally.
"It was impossible for anybody to say that. That wasn't true. We were the first ones," Yonally says.
The fact that the WASP were forgotten by their own Air Force united the women. They lobbied Congress to be militarized. And they persuaded Sen. Barry Goldwater to help. He ferried planes during the war, just as the WASP did. And then, in 1977, the WASP were finally granted military status.
American Women Aviators (WASPs)
Over the years it has been reported that the WASP records were sealed, stamped classified and unavailable to historians who wrote histories about WWII. According to archivists at the National Archives, military records containing reports about the WASP were treated no differently from other records from the war, which generally meant the WASP records weren't open to researchers for 30 years. But unlike other stories from the war, the WASP story was rarely told or reported until the 1970s.
"It's hard to understand that they would be forgotten and difficult to believe that they would be left out of those histories. But even they forgot themselves for a while," Landdeck says.
In 1992, to preserve their history, the WASP designated Texas Woman's University in Denton as their official archives.
Yonally is proud to be honored with the Congressional Gold Medal, 65 years after her service, but she's sad that fewer than 300 of her 1,100 fellow WASP are alive to receive it.
American Women Aviators (WASPs)
"I'm sorry that so many girls have passed on. It's nice the families will receive it, but it doesn't make up for the gals who knew what they did and weren't honored that way," Yonally says.
Taylor is also excited about the medal. She served her country out of loyalty, she says. That was certainly part of it. But the other reason?
"I did it for the fun. I was a young girl and everybody had left and it was wartime. You didn't want to get stuck in a hole in Iowa; you wanted to see what was going on."
WASP started out as two separate organizations. Pilot Jacqueline "Jackie" Cochran wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1939 to suggest using women pilots in non-combat missions
Creation of WASP
Cochran was introduced by Roosevelt to General Henry Arnold, chief of the Army Air Force, and to General Robert Olds, who became head of the Air Transport Command (ATC).
Arnold asked her to ferry a bomber to Great Britain to generate publicity for the idea of women piloting military aircraft. Cochran went to England, where she volunteered for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) and recruited American women pilots to help fly planes in Europe. Twenty-five women volunteered for the ATA with Cochran, the first American women to fly military aircraft. While in England, Cochran studied the organization of both the ATA and the Royal Air Force (RAF).
In the summer of 1941, Cochran and test-pilot Nancy Harkness Love independently submitted proposals to the U.S. Army Air Forces to allow women pilots in non-combat missions after the outbreak of World War II in Europe. The plan was to free male pilots for combat roles by using qualified female pilots to ferry aircraft from the factories to military bases, and also to tow drones and aerial targets.
Creation of WASP
The U.S. was building its air power and military presence in anticipation of direct involvement in the conflict, and had belatedly begun to drastically expand its men in uniform. This period led to the dramatic increase in activity for the U.S. Army Air Forces, because of obvious gaps in "manpower" that could be filled by women. To compensate for the manpower demands of the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the government encouraged women to enter the workforce to fill both industrial and service jobs supporting the war effort.
Nancy Harkness Love's husband, Robert, was part of the Army Air Corps Reserve and worked for Colonel Tunner. When he mentioned that his wife was a pilot, Tunner asked if she knew other women pilots. Tunner and Nancy Love met and began to plan an aviation ferrying program involving women pilots. More formally, on June 11, 1942, Colonel Tunner suggested putting women pilots into the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC).
By June 18, Love had drafted a plan to send to General Harold George who sent the proposal onto General Henry Arnold.
Creation of WASP
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote about women working as pilots during the war in her September 1 "My Day" newspaper column, supporting the idea. General George again broached the idea with General Arnold, who finally, on September 5, directed that "immediate action be taken and the recruiting of women pilots begin within twenty-four hours."
Nancy Harkness Love was to be the director of the group and she sent out 83 telegrams to prospective women pilots that same day.
The Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) went into operation publicly on September 10, 1942. Soon, the Air Transport Command began using women to ferry planes from factory to airfields. Love started with 28 women pilots, but their number grew during the war until there were several squadrons.
Recruits had to be between ages 21 and 35, have a high school diploma, a commercial flying license, 200 horsepower engine rating, 500 hours of flight time and experience in flying across the country.
Creation of WASP
Uniforms for the WAFS were designed by Love and consisted of a gray gabardine jacket with brass buttons and square shoulders, worn with gored skirts or slacks also made of gabardine.
Because they had to pay for their own uniforms, only 40 women ever wore the WAFS uniform. All WAFS were issued a flight uniform of khaki flight coveralls, a parachute, goggles, a flying scarf and leather flying jacket sporting the ATC patch.
Headquarters for WAFS was established at the new (May 1943) New Castle Army Air Base (the former Wilmington Airport). Tunner ensured that there were quarters for the women to live in at the base.
WAFS worked under a 90 day, renewable contract, earned $250 a month and had to provide and pay for their own room and board.
The WAFS each had an average of about 1,400 flying hours and a commercial pilot rating. They received 30 days of orientation to learn Army paperwork and to fly by military regulations. Afterward, they were assigned to various ferrying commands.
Creation of WASP
Ferrying planes from factory to airbases made up the first duties of the WASP. During World War II, women pilots flew 80 percent of all ferrying missions. They delivered over 12,000 aircraft and freed around 900 male pilots for combat duty.
To set an example, Nancy Love who was in charge of training, made sure she was trained and qualified on as many different planes as possible.
The women flew almost every type of aircraft flown by the USAAF during World War II. In addition, a few exceptionally qualified women were allowed to test rocket-propelled planes, to pilot jet-propelled planes, and to work with radar-controlled targets.
When men were less willing to fly certain difficult planes, such as the YP-59 and B-29 Super Fortress, General Arnold recruited two WASPs to fly these aircraft. Arnold believed that if men saw women fly these planes successfully, they would be "embarrassed" into taking these missions willingly.
Creation of WASP
Two WASPs, Dorthea Johnson and Dora Dougherty Strother, were chosen to fly the B-29. They flew to Alamogordo in the B-29s where there was a crowd waiting to see them land. General Arnold's plan worked, "From that day on, there was no more grumbling from male pilots assigned to train on and fly the B-29 Super Fortress. "Women would also test-fly the planes that had been repaired.
Thirty-eight members lost their lives in accidents: eleven during training, and twenty-seven on missions. Because they were not considered part of the military by the guidelines, a fallen WASP was sent home at family expense. Traditional military honors or note of heroism, such as allowing the U.S. flag to be placed on the coffin or displaying a service flag in a window, were not allowed.
On June 21, 1944, the U.S. House bill to provide WASP with military status was narrowly defeated, 188 to 169. Civilian male pilots lobbied against the bill: reacting to closure of some civilian flight training schools, and the termination of two male pilot training commissioning programs. The House Committee on Civil Service reported that it considered WASP unnecessary, unjustifiably expensive, and recommended that recruiting and training inexperienced women pilots be halted.
As a result, Arnold ordered that the WASP be disbanded by December 20, 1944.
Creation of WASP
Records of the WASP program, like nearly all wartime files, were classified and sealed for 35 years making their contributions to the war effort little known and inaccessible to historians. However, unofficial historians, like WASP Marty Wyall collected scrapbooks and newspaper clippings about what WASP members had done.
Early efforts to gain recognition for WASP continued in the early 1970s. Senator Barry Goldwater, who had flown with WASPs during WWII supported efforts to get WASPs veteran's status, but were met with shocking prejudice in Congress.
"Women were treated as non-persons." In the House, Representative Patsy Mink introduced a bill on May 17, 1972, to give WASPs veterans status and another House representative, Lindy Boggs, introduced a bill around 1977 to give WASPs military status. Eventually legislation passed to give them veteran status.
Creation of WASP
In 2009, the WASPs were inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame at the San Diego Air & Space Museum. And on July 1, 2009, President Barack Obama awarded the WASP the Congressional Gold Medal.
Three of the roughly 300 surviving WASPs were on hand to witness the event. During the ceremony President Obama said,
"The Women Airforce Service Pilots courageously answered their country's call in a time of need while blazing a trail for the brave women who have given and continue to give so much in service to this nation since. Every American should be grateful for their service, and I am honored to sign this bill to finally give them some of the hard-earned recognition they deserve."
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Kate Quinn
Diamond Eye