Women Pilots in WW II |
Although they were never in combat and their activities were confined to North America, meaning the United States and Canada. American civilian women pilots played a role in World War II. The idea of using women as pilots to support the military goes back to before the war. Famous aviatrix Jackie Cochran used her wealth and noteriety as a female pilot and competitor in air races to get close to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who had an interest in aviation and in equal right for minorities and women. The first lady followed Cochran's aviation exploits and wrote about them in her newspaper column, My Day, and in articles in certain women's magazines. In 1939, Cochran suggested to the first lady, who had no say in government herself but had influence over her husband, that the United States establish a corps of women pilots who would be trained to perform aviation services in "national emergency."
Cochran, whose real name was Bessie Pittman, grew up poor in Lower Alabama and the Florida Panhandle as the daughter of a mill worker. The family was constantly moving as her father followed the mills. When she was thirteen or fourteen, and probably pregnant, she married a young sailor from the Pensacola Naval Air Station, an aircraft mechanic named Robert Cochran. She had a son who died at age 5. She and Cochran were divorced but she kept the Cochran name. She became a hairdresser in Montgomery, Alabama and started reinventing herself. Although she did not distance herself from her family, she disowned them even though some of them would later live with her in California. She claimed they were her servants and it wasn't until after her death that the truth came out. At some point, she started calling herself Jackie. She got a job with Saks Fifth Avenue and worked in various Saks salons around the country. In 1932 she met tycoon Floyd Odlum in the Miami Saks and apparently began an affair with the married man who was fourteen years her senior. She convinced Odlum to back her in the cosmetics business and moved to New York. Odlum allegedly encouraged her to learn to fly and bought her an airplane to use for her travels. Odlum and his wife divorced in 1935 and he married Cochran the following year. The marriage not only gave Cochran money, it also gave her connections. Odlum was closely connected to the White House and would remain so.
Her interest in aviation led her to become interested in the new sport of cross-country air racing. She had the money to buy newer and faster airplanes and she had connections to the aviation industry through her husband then through her own prestige. She became friends with the Roosevelts and advocated to Eleanor that the United States form a corps of women pilots for "national emergencies". After World War II broke out, she started pushing for the use of female pilots to ferry airplanes. She bought her way onto the crew of a Lockheed B-34 Ventura - British Hudson - twin-engine bomber for a delivery flight to England. The publicity-conscious Cochran notified the press of her intentions and stated she was going to England to study the British female pilots in anticipation of establishing such an organization in the United States. She later claimed she made the flight at the insistence of Air Corps commander Hap Arnold but this is doubtful since it wasn't until after she had lunch at the White House with the Roosevelts where she told about her experiences in England that FDR told her he would put her in touch with the Army Air Corps. Roosevelt arranged for her to meet with Robert Lovett, the Assistant Secretary of War for Air, who arranged a meeting for her with Henry H. Arnold, then a major general, the chief of the Air Corps, and Col. Robert Olds, commander of the new Army Air Corps Ferrying Command, "at the direction of the President." Olds stated that he saw no reason why Ferrying Command couldn't employ women to ferry trainers, and proposed that 50 women be hired. Arnold turned down the proposal.
The meeting was in Lovett's office. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the possibility of "using women to ferry primary, basic and advanced trainers from factories to Air Corps bases. However, Cochran had something bigger in mind. She wanted to establish a corps of government-trained women pilots to fly military airplanes, a corps she herself would head.
Airplanes flown by WAFS - Piper L-4, Vultee BT-13 and Fairchild PT-19
Jackie Cochran had the Roosevelts' ear but she wasn't the only one who believed the United States should make use of it's women pilots. In 1940 Nancy Harkness Love wrote a letter to Col. Robert Olds, who at that time was Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans in Air Corps Headquarters, recommending that women be used as contract pilots to ferry airplanes. Nancy Love, a doctor's daughter from Michigan, and her husband Robert Love owned an aviation business in Boston and were dealers for Beechcraft airplanes. Love had considerable experience ferrying airplanes and knew other women pilots with the experience to fly airplanes cross-country. She said in her letter that she had identified forty-nine women capable of ferrying airplanes over long distances and she thought she could find at least fifteen more. Olds liked the idea and recommended it to Arnold, but Arnold nixed it. When the Air Corps activated Air Corps Ferrying Command in March 1941, Olds was picked to command it. One of his staff officers was Nancy Love's husband Robert, an Army reservist, who had been called to active duty as a lieutenant colonel. Nancy went with him to Washington and was hired by the Army for a position in Ferry Command headquarters. She caught the ear of Lt. Col William H. Tunner, the Ferrying Command personnel officer. Tunner was in charge of finding personnel for ferrying airplanes. Before he transferred to Washington, Tunner had been in charge of an office in Memphis, Tennessee responsible for recruiting civilian pilots for Army service. Love presented her previous ideas to Tunner, who discussed them with Olds. Olds got permission from Air Corps HQ to hire a group of women pilots. However, Jackie Cochran, who was preparing to leave for England with a group of women she had recruited, got wind of the plan and complained to Arnold, who instructed Olds to put the plan on hold.
The Ferrying Division
The Army Air Forces Ferrying Service was an outgrowth of the Army Air Corps Ferrying Command, which activated after the passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941 authorizing the United States to provide military equipment to Allied nations "on loan." Previously, the warring nations purchased US equipment, particularly airplanes, on a "cash and carry" basis. Airplanes were delivered from the factories by civilian pilots contracted by the factories to airfields where they were picked up by ferry pilots from the Allied nations, particularly the UK and Canada, or loaded on ships for shipment to Europe or Asia. With the passage of Lend-Lease, the military was put in charge of ferrying. In addition to the factory contract pilots, ferrying was by pilots and other aircrew from the Army Air Combat Command on temporary duty with the new Ferrying Command. Routes were set up for Army crews to fly four-engine bombers and twin-engine transports across the Atlantic to England and the Soviet Union - France had been defeated in 1940. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and airfields on Oahu in Hawaii put the United States in the war as an active participant and the military pilots and crews working with Ferrying Command were needed in the combat squadrons being organized for combat operations. This left the Ferrying Command short of manpower. With military pilots no longer available, the Army Air Forces, a new organization that assumed functions previously performed by the Air Corps, was forced to turn to the some 78,000 licensed US pilots for candidates for ferrying duty. An additional 12,000 or so pilots were in the employ of the airlines, which were contracted to ferry airplanes and operate transport routes, some in former airline transports that had been appropriated by presidential directive for the military.
In the late spring of 1942 the Army Air Forces, commanded by Lt. General Henry H. Arnold, reorganized its transport and ferrying functions by establishing the Army Air Transport Command, taking the name from a previous organization that had been organized to control combat transport operations. The headquarters of the Ferrying Command was elevated to become the new Air Transport Command and Transport and Ferrying Divisions were established under it. General Harold George was put in command of the new Air Transport Command and Tunner, who had been promoted to colonel, became commander of the Ferrying Service. Nancy Love was given a job in Tunner's office. She pressed him to recruit experienced female pilots as civil service workers to ferry airplanes. The Air Corps had been authorized to hire civilian pilots as contract ferry pilots with the activation of the Ferrying Command but hadn't needed to do so due to the availability of pilots from the Army Air Combat Command on temporary duty. That changed with the outbreak of war as the combat pilots were recalled to their units. Even permanent duty FC pilots were transferred to combat units. Ferrying Service had no other option than to recruit and hire civilian pilots. While there were some 12,000 pilots in airline employ, many of them Army reservists, there were over 78,000 licensed male pilots. While some of them had the experience to begin ferrying airplanes immediately upon appointment, most had to be given some training to fly the higher-performance military basic and advanced trainers and combat planes. ATC established a policy of hiring men with a commercial license with at least 500 hours flying time. This figure dropped temporarily to 200 hours but by September 1942 had been raised to 300 and would again be raised to 500 and by the end of the war was up to 1,000 hours. Tunner wanted to hire women to ferry less-demanding trainers and observation planes.
ATC commander General Harold George liked the idea of hiring women pilots as did Olds, who had been promoted to brigadier general and transferred to Third Air Force. Olds planned to hire female pilots along with the males when Ferrying Command began hiring civilian ferry pilots right after Pearl Harbor. Cochran claimed Olds told her he was going to start hiring women right after she came up with her plan to take a group of women to England. Cochran rushed to Arnold who told Olds not to begin hiring women until she came back from England. However, later in the summer while she was still overseas, Army Air Forces HQ approved a plan drawn up by Nancy Love to begin recruiting women. Cochran would claim that Arnold had told her while she was in England that women were going to be approved to ferry airplanes and she should return to the States to head the program. Arnold later said he only told her she should come back. As for placing her in charge of any program for women pilots, he indicated that he had not made such a promise. As it turned out, someone in Arnold's office - or Arnold himself - approved the hiring of women as ferry pilots and the New York Times reported it on September 10, by coincidence the same day the ambitious Cochran returned to the United States. She was incensed that Nancy Love had been appointed to be in charge of the program and not her. She was also upset that women were only going to be hired to ferry airplanes. She wanted an ambitious military training program, with herself in charge, to train young women to fly military airplanes. What the Air Transport Command had an immediate need for was experienced pilots to supplement the men, of whom roughly 1,200 or so had been hired. A total of 1,730 male ferry pilots had been hired by the end of 1942 and 1,372 had been commissioned as Service Pilots, a new rating based on civilian flying experience. Service pilots were authorized to fly military airplanes but were not trained for combat. Air Transport Command came up with a plan to hire civilians for 90-day contracts to ferry airplanes, which at the time were mostly trainers since new flying schools were being established through the United States. During the 90 days, the men were evaluated for their suitability for commission. At the end of the 90 days, those found competent for military service were offered commissions. Those who were not found suitable were offered the opportunity to continue ferrying airplanes or take positions as instructors at one of the many new flight schools that were being established around the United States.
The Army also intended to commission the female pilots with Service Pilot ratings. The plan was to commission them as second lieutenants through the Womens Auxilary Army Corps, headed by Oveta Culp Hobby, the wife of former Texas governor and newspaper publisher William P. Hobby. This plan also irritated Cochran, who wanted the women to have their own air corps separate from the WAACs with herself in command. That the Army intended to commission Nancy Love as a first lieutenant was also an irritant. As it would turn out, Cochran was constantly at odds with the Air Transport Command, the command with the most need for former civilian pilots.
Telegrams were sent to women Love had picked, and those who wished to apply assembled at New Castle Airport outside Wilmington, Delaware where the Second Ferrying Group was located. Betty Giles, an experienced woman pilot whose husband was an executive with Grumman Aircraft on Long Island, was the first to report. Cornelia Fort, a 23-year-old Tennessee socialite from Nashville, was second. They both got to New Castle ahead of Love. Cornelia Fort was probably the most famous female pilot in the United States at the time. She had been a flight instructor in Honolulu and was aloft with a student when the Japanese attacked. She had been highly publicized after returning to the US and had gone around the country speaking at War Bond drives and had been featured in a movie. All told, 27 women were hired as ferry pilots counting Love and Giles, who were in administrative positions. Twenty-eight had been hired and completed the training program but one resigned due to family issues. Each applicant was interviewed and evaluated by an Army instructor in a PT-19 trainer. Those who were offered positions were based at New Castle where they underwent a month-long training program, including some military training. They were required to learn to march and participate in weekly Saturday morning reviews. Their unit was the Women's Airforce Ferrying Training Squadron, or WAFTS. When new squadrons were formed, the squadron became the Women's Airforce Ferrying Service, WAFS.
After completion of the training, the women began ferrying airplanes sometime in October. The first flight was the delivery of six Piper L-4 Liasion airplanes from the Piper factory at Loch Haven, Pennsylvania to Mitchell Field on Long Island. L-4s were Piper's famous J-3 Cubs that had been militarized for use as observation airplanes for artillery spotters. After several L-4 deliveries, the women began delivering Fairchild PT-19s and PT-26s from the Fairchild factory in Hagerstown, Maryland. The PT-26 deliveries were to Canada. The Royal Canadian Air Force bought PT-26s from Fairchild because they had enclosed cockpits while PT-19s did not and were more suitable for the harsh Canadian winters. The Army had decided to establish its primary training bases mostly in the South and Southwest were winters were milder and temperatures less extreme. The women were bussed from New Castle to Loch Haven and Hagerstown. Upon completion of their deliveries, they returned to New Castle by airlines, train or bus. They were forbidden from catching hops on military airplanes due to fear of media complaints of immorality. After the women proved they were capable of ferrying primary trainers, Air Transport Command queried the commanders of its Domestic Division's six ferrying groups to see who would accept women. Of the six, three responded that they would. New squadrons were established at Dallas Love Field, Romulus, Michigan and Long Beach, California. Five women were transferred to each of the new squadrons. Nancy Love transferred to Dallas. The women in Long Beach, in particular, were checked out in Vultee BT-13 basic trainers. As the program progressed, some women were checked out in higher-performance airplanes, including the AT-6 advanced trainer, fighters, medium bombers and transports.
A major problem faced by the WAFS was jealousy on the part of the wives of male pilots and fears of immorality. Consequently, some commanders established policies designed to keep the male and female pilots from getting together at stops during ferry flights. Ironically, the main concern on the part of Army officials was not the sexual morality of the women, but fear that the press would find out about some indiscretions and splash it across the headlines. The war led to a wartime attitude on the part of young Americans and the female pilots were no doubt as caught up in it as anyone else. Some women became pregnant, not those in the WAFS but women who were part of the WASP program. Whether they were married - many of the Originals, as the WAFS referred to themselves, were married and had families but many women, perhaps most, were single when they went to work for the Army.
There was also a problem with Jackie Cochran, who had forced Arnold to let her organize a training program for women pilots and given her a desk in AAF HQ. Cochran constantly interfered with ATC's use of the women, all of whom were experienced pilots and well- qualified to ferry airplanes. WAFS felt that Cochran was jealous of Nancy Love, over whom she had no control. Their fears would soon be realized.
The WASP
The knowledge that the ATC was hiring female pilots infuriated the ambitious Jackie Cochran, who wanted to be a general, or at least a colonel in command of a large group of women. Cochran did not see or was not concerned with the immediate needs of the Army, pilots to ferry airplanes, but wanted a large-scale training program to train women to become military pilots. Never mind that no such program existed for men. Civilian contract pilots were hired on the basis of their qualifications and experience and went right to work after checking out in the airplanes they were to fly. That was how ATC set up the WAFS, who started out delivering Piper Cubs, with which most of them were familiar, then moved to PT-19s then on to more advanced trainers and other airplanes. Nor was there a corps for male contract pilots, they were civil service employees as were the WAFS. Cochran rushed to Arnold's office as soon as she could after she learned of the WAFS program. Arnold knew that Cochran was well-connected. Not only was she friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, Floyd Odlum, her husband, was a White House advisor on war production and other matters. Perhaps out of fear of her political connections to the White House, Arnold authorized Cochran to form a training program for female pilots and gave her a position at Headquarters USAAF as Director of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots. All new pilots hired by the Army would be trained under Cochran's supervision. It doesn't appear that Arnold considered the legality of such a move. No Congressional funds had been appropriated for such a program.
A training program was set up in Houston, Texas at the Howard Hughes Airport southeast of the city. There was immediate conflict between Cochran and the Air Transport Command, for whom her new program was justified. ATC only wanted to hire women with a commercial license and a minimum of 500 hours flying time, but Cochran wanted a program that would utilize all of the some 3,000 licensed women pilots in the country and train more. General Arnold sent a memo recommending that Cochran recruit 500 of the "best women fliers" in the country. Those with considerable experience could be hired directly by ATC and the others would go to Houston for training to bring them up to ATC standards. Cochran managed to get the ATC rep to agree to a program in which women with 200 hours would be accepted, then they would be put through a 100-hour training program to bring them up to 300 hours at which they would be turned over to ATC. The ATC representative at a meeting with Cochran wanted 50 hours in 200 HP airplanes but Cochran protested that would eliminate most of the applicants. The new Women's Flying Training Detachment would produce 500 pilots; 25 women would begin training first followed by 50 more each month. Cochran herself established the standards for new recruits. They were initially required to be between ages 21-35, at least 5'2'' and "clean cut." Cochran was an advocate of glamour and looks was evidently a factor in whether a woman was hired. Photographs of the women don't show a homely woman in the bunch.
The first class of women began training in Houston in November, 1942, with the first class planned to graduate in April of the following year. Training was conducted by a contractor called Aviation Enterprises under the Gulf Coast Training Center. Initially, training was in whatever civilian airplanes were available. The first group of women were generally experienced with flying time from 200 hours to over 700. However, Cochran decided to do away with the 200-hour requirement and accept women with as little as 75 hours, then 35 then with no aviation experience at all. As the number of women increased, it became apparent that the Houston facilities were not adequate to handle the number of women needing training to meet the 500-woman goal, so the program was moved to Avenger Field at Sweetwater, a town in West Texas some 40 miles west of Abilene. WASP training started at Sweetwater in February 1943. Some training continued at the Houston location and on March 7 Margaret Oldenberg became the first WASP casualty when she put a PT-19 into a spin and neither she or her instructor were able to pull out of it. They were both killed. Two weeks later Cornelia Fort, the third woman hired by ATC, died in a crash as a result of a midair collision with a male pilot near Abilene while on a delivery flight to Dallas.
The first women graduated from Cochran's WASPs and they were assigned to Air Training Command for ferry duty. WAFS available for ferrying averaged around 23 women per day and they were ferrying an average of 2 airplanes per month. The WASP graduates had to have additional training before they were considered qualified for ferry duty and it wasn't until June that the number of available WAFS pilots showed an increase, from 23 in May to 48 in June. They further increased to 88 the following month and airplane deliveries increased to 95 in May, 150 in June and 305 in July. Controversy developed between ATC and the WFT director over acceptance of pilots by ATC. ATC wanted women to be hired based on their experience and proficiency while Cochran just wanted any graduate to be hired regardless of how well they performed on evaluation flights. In June, Cochran was given the title of Director of Women Pilots, thus putting herself over Love and the WAFS pilots. She came up with a new name for the women's pilot program - Women's Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP. Two months later she put out a memo effectively abolishing the WAFS and declaring that henceforth all female pilots would be referred to as WASPs.
There seems to have been no love lost between Cochran and the woman in the WAFS, particularly Nancy Love and Betty Giles, of whom she appears to have been very jealous because of their accomplishments. Both women were qualified to fly airplanes she herself was not qualified for (her duties were administrative and she only flew to get herself around to visit bases and for meetings.) ATC had declared that women could be used for any ferrying mission for which they were qualified, including overseas deliveries. Nancy Love and Betty Gilles were assigned to deliver a B-17 to England via the North Atlantic Route. Tunner's personal flight crew was assigned to accompany them. They took off for Newfoundland on their way to England. When they got there, they found a message from Arnold's office ordering them to give up the airplane, two male pilots would take it on to England. They were very suspicious since Arnold himself had approved the flight. The WAFS felt that Jackie Cochran was the culprit, that she was jealous of the WAFS's notoriety and didn't want Love and Gillis stealing her thunder from her 1941 delivery of a Hudson to England.
Cochran threw another monkey wrench in the works when she decreed that not all of the WASP graduates would be going to ATC for ferry duty. She had given herself authority to determine where women would be assigned and decided to open up other venues for them. She had also decreed that only she had the authority to determine qualifications for female pilots. She decreed that ATC could not demote or fire a woman pilot without her approval, which went against Army policy. One of the first changes was when a number of women were diverted from assignments to ATC to Camp Davis, North Carolina to train to tow targets for antiaircraft gunners. Some were also trained for "radio tracking" which evidently means flying training missions for radar operators. One complaint was that the women had not been trained for formation flying, which was necessary for the radar training. Cochran was also coming up with other plans. One involved the assignment of a group of women to I Troop Carrier Command, the original Air Transport Command. Just why they were to go to Troop Carrier is unclear. They ended up going to Camp Davis to train as target tow pilots. One group of women did go to Troop Carrier Command to become glider tow pilots but the mission turned out to be too strenuous for the women and the project was discontinued. The women were transferred to other commands.
Although a little over a thousand women completed the WASP program, the most ever assigned to ferrying was 303 women in April 1944. The number remained at 300 until July when 123 women were transferred to the Air Training Command, leaving 177 women to ferry airplanes. Some of the women were substandard, some lacked experience and some didn't want to fly fighters, which was starting to become the primary ferrying mission. When women were first hired, they were hired to fly trainers and other light planes but were later allowed to move into higher-performance airplanes. By 1944 the mission had changed. Experiences in North Africa had demonstrated the effectiveness of the fighter/bomber and fighter production had increased. The war was turning in the Allie's favor and losses among US aircrew were far fewer than anticipated. Fighter production had increased drastically and fighters were the airplanes most needed in the combat units. It was during this period that women were primarily ferrying fighters. However, it is a lie, not just a myth, that women ferried half of the airplanes ferried in the United States. More than 60,000 airplanes were produced in US factories but women only delivered 12,650 airplanes and a large percentage of them were light planes and trainers.
The WASP and the WAFS before them had caught the attention of the media. The Army saw them as icons to encourage women to leave their homes and go to work in factories and other jobs which were lacking in manpower due to millions of men having been pressed into military service. Elizabeth Gardner was a WASP who flew B-26s. A photograph of her in the cockpit of a B-26 was widely circulated and her record was embellished. Accounts of her claim that she was a twenty-year-old mother of two when the war broke out. However, there's no mention of this in an interview she gave a reporter for an account that's in the WASP museum. She said she went to college for two years then moved to Pennsylvania to go to work for Piper at their Loch Haven plant. The Find A Grave site for her says she didn't get married until after the war to an Army pilot and her first child wasn't born until the 1950s. She had completed a ground school and started taking lessons after she went to Piper. She volunteered for the WASP program and was interviewed by by Jackie Cochran in New York. After completing the WASP program, she was checked out on B-26s then went to Harlingen, Texas to fly the twin-engine bombers towing targets for the flexible gunnery program. This photograph of her was widely circulated. Miss Gardner claimed that she was trained at some point by Colonel Paul Tibbets, who later dropped the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. This seems to have led some to believe she flew on a B-29. However, it was two other WASP pilots, Dora Doughtery and Dorthea Johnson, that Tibbets had fly a B-29 between a couple of bases to give confidence to his crews.
Although WASP historians imply that WASPs ferried B-29s. This is not true. Two WASP pilots were given a perfunctory checkout in a B-29 in what can only be described as a stunt by Colonel Paul Tibbets, who was involved with the new B-29 very heavy bomber project. The B-29s were getting a reputation for mechanical problems after a few incidents, some involving fires. Former B-17 and B-24 pilots, most with combat experience, who had been selected to fly them, did not trust the new bombers. Tibbets got the idea to have a couple of women make a few flights in a B-29 under the theory that if the men saw women flying the huge bomber, it must be alright. He gave the women a three-day checkout and did not have them perform the before takeoff checks during which fires were occurring. He then had them fly some prospective B-29 pilots and crewmembers from the training base at Alamagardo, New Mexico to other installations. The stunt was halted by General Barney Giles, who was deputy AAF commander, out of fear there'd be an accident and it would cause adverse publicity. The two women were sent back to Eglin Field, Florida and never were in a B-29 again.
As a matter of fact, only thirteen women were qualified to fly four-engine bomber. Out of seventeen women sent to a B-17 qualification program, thirteen were qualified. Four-engine ferrying was mostly by men who were gaining experience before they were assigned to four-engine transport duty in C-54s and C-87s. Four-engine transports were in demand for transport routes to various parts of the world and were particularly in demand to fly supplies from India to China. Women were forbidden from exposure to combat and could not fly overseas missions. WASP writers often comment that WASPs flew test flights, implying they were involved in the dangerous mission of test-flying new designs. However, at the conclusion of the WASP program, only six women were assigned to the Air Proving Ground, the organization responsible for testing new airplanes, and three to the Air Technical Command, which developed new equipment. Ferry pilots did take new airplanes up for test flights prior to departing on ferry flights and airplanes coming out of maintenance facilities required a test flight prior to returning to their units, but such flights were routine, unlike APC testing. Oddly enough, it seems that the largest number of WASPs were assigned to Training Command. At the conclusion of the program, there were 620 women assigned to the command, out of 916 women still on duty. Some were instrument instructors but what were the rest doing? They no doubt flew airplanes back and forth to maintenance facilities and performed maintenance test flights. Only 141 women were assigned to Air Transport Command, the organization that had a need for women pilots in the first place.
The Army Air Forces leadership thought they would eventually be able to commission the women and they probably would have if Jackie Cochran hadn't been so obstinate and self-centered. Cochran wanted the women to be commissioned as officers in a corps of women pilots that she would herself command. Hap Arnold wanted them commissioned into the WACs but Cochran was opposed to such an idea. She insisted that the women would have to be administered and commanded by another woman pilot, meaning herself. Had the Originals been commissioned as Arnold and George evidently planned, they would have perhaps had the same opportunities as the men to make international deliveries and fly transport missions. Instead, they remained as civil service workers. In early 1944 a new factor was introduced. The Army announced it was shutting down dozens of CPT and Wartime Training Program airfields around the country due to a decline in the need for new pilots. These were the airfields where new Army pilots went through primary training. The civilian instructors at the schools would all be let go and would thus lose their deferments and become eligible for the draft. They could be assigned to the infantry. Some of these instructors were in the enlisted reserve and were eligible to apply for commissions as Service Pilots, but not all were in the reserve. At the same time, hundreds of combat pilots were returning to the United States after completion of their combat tours and were available for duties such as ferrying. The women had been hired on the basis that they were needed to fill positions that couldn't be filled because experienced male pilots were needed for combat duty. The nation had been pushing the idea that women were needed in many jobs that had been left vacant by men who had been inducted into military service. Those needs were decreasing and thousands of women were in danger of losing their jobs. The CPT and WTP instructors were not happy that they were subject to be drafted to fight as infantry while women were filling pilot positions they were qualified for. Their wives and families were also upset. Congress was deluged by letters from irate family members and the furloughed instructors. As a result, Congress failed to pass a bill to militarize the WASPs.
It also came to light that the WASP program had never been authorized by Congress. While the WAFS were legitimate government employees since ATC was authorized to hire civilian pilots, the WASP were being paid out of funds allotted for training of government civilian employees. The WASP training program had never been funded. After the WASP commissioning bill failed to pass Congress, Arnold decided to shut the program down. He allowed the women still in training to complete the course but no new women were recruited and the WASP were shut down when the last class graduated. The women in the ATC Ferrying Division were affected because Jackie Cochran had abolished the WAFS and made all women part of the WASP, which was an unfunded program.
In the 1960s with the emergence of various civil rights and equality movements, the former WASPs caught the attention of feminists and some politicians, including Senator Barry Goldwater, who had been a male ferry pilot during the war. Because the women had been civil service workers, they were not considered military veterans and were therefore not eligible for the benefits afforded by GI Bill of Rights, which had been passed to compensate men who had left civilian life to fight the war to return home and attend college, buy homes and farms and obtain treatment for their service-connected injuries at government expense. As it was, the male civil service pilots and former airline pilots who flew on government contracts, sometimes in hazardous areas such as the India-China Hump, were not veterans either. They pushed for veterans status for the former WASPs. The male civilian pilots and aircrew were not included in the bill.
The Army Air Forces in World War II Volume VII