The Fly Girls of World War II

by Pamela S. Meyers

One thing I love about writing historical novels is all the things I have learned about the era in which I’m writing. My next novel, Tranquility Point is set during home front World War 1 and while researching it I learned a lot about the first flyboys to engage in airborne warfare. Aviation was so new at the time, but many brave men took the risk to fly into danger to defend the Allies against the invading Germans.

WASP pilots leaving their plane called "Pistol Packin' Mama." Public Domain

I’m now starting to research World War II and was excited to learn that about twenty years later, not only were there male pilots engaging in warfare both in Europe and the Pacific, but there were women pilots assisting the war effort at the home front. The Womens Airforce Service Pilots was a civilian women pilots organization that trained women to test and ferry new aircraft from their point of manufacture to bases to be used by pilots in the war. Doing this preliminary testing and delivering freed up the male pilots to be available to fight in the war. 

Elizabeth L. Gardner at the controls of a B-26 Marauder. She was from Rockford IL, a city close to where I currently live. Public Domain 

I found an informative film about the WASP pilots and their training on the Wikipedia website. You can find it in the right sidebar. It would never be shown today for a variety of reasons but it gives us a peek into what the women experienced. We've come a long way. 

In 1977, the status of these courageous female pilots was changed from civilian to veteran and rightly so. All the veterans were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009. Sadly some were not alive to experience the joy of being recognized.

 

Yours truly in front of the B-17 bomber I climbed into, viewed the cockpit, and literally crawled through the fuselage to the exit at the back. Personal photo.

My admiration of these women was further heightened by memories of a visit to my local private airport about a year ago when several WWII aircraft did a “fly-in” and I was able to climb inside a B-17 bomber and see the cockpit and the tight interior of the plane. Of course, the women were much younger than I currently am, but no matter the age, it wasn’t easy to climb up into the fuselage.  You had to be in good physical shape. I wasn't allowed into the cockpit but it was very tight in there.

I’ve loved learning about these lady heroes of WW II and you can be assured you will hear more about them in Rose Lodge, Book 4 of my current series.

I want to take a moment to wish all the readers of the Heroes, Heroines and History blog a very Merry Christmas!

Pamela S. Meyers writes historical fiction set in her home town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and the surrounding area. She lives in northern IL and can often be found across the state line in Wisconsin nosing around for new story ideas. Her next novel, Tranquility Point, releases in April 2020.

Amelia Earhart

Woman in Flight

By Martha Rogers

Amelia Earhart is a woman who proved that women could excel in whatever field they chose, her choice being aviation. She excelled as a female pilot in a world dominated by men at the time.

Born in Atchison Kansas on July 24, 1897, she began going against traditional gender roles 

at an early age by playing basketball and taking auto repair classes in school. During WWI she became a Red Cross nurse’s aid in Toronto, Canada. While there, she began spending time watching the pilots who flew and trained with Royal Flying Corps at a local airfield in Toronto.

After the war, she returned to the

United States to enroll at Columbia University where she began as a pre-med student. However, she stayed in school only a year because her heart and ambitions took her elsewhere.

In 1920, she and her father were at an airfield in Long Beach when a pilot, Frank Hawks gave her a plane ride that would forever change her life. It didn’t take long after they were airborne for her to decide she had to fly. With money she saved and her father’s help, she took her first lesson at Kinner Field with teacher Anita Snook who was a pioneer female aviator in 1921.

In order to pay for the lessons, she worked at the Los Angeles Telephone Company as a filing clerk. While there she began saving money for her own plane. Her first airplane was a secondhand Kinner Airster she nicknamed Canary because of its yellow color. Below she is with Snook and the plane.

  

Hard work and poor conditions accompanied those early training days. She chose a leather jacket to wear but had to sleep in it several nights to give it a “worn” look. She also cropped her
hair short. She loved flying and was determined to stay with it.

Amelia in her flight gear

She set a world’s record for women when she flew to an altitude of 14,000 feet in “The Canary” in 1922. In 1923, she became the 16th woman to be issued a pilot’s license.

She was engaged for a time to Samuel Chapman, a chemical engineer from Boston but broke it off in 1928. Later, in 1931, she married George P. Putnam, a publisher, but she retained her maiden name for her cross-country tours and flying exhibitions.

Between 1930 and 1935, Earhart set a number of women’s speed and distance aviation records. One of those was from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland with the intent to fly to Paris, France in her single engine Lockheed Vega 5B (pictured here) in an attempt to emulate Charles Lindbergh’s flight. Due to weather conditions and

mechanical problems, she had to land at Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ireland.

As the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic, she received the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress and several other honors for the feat.

During this time, she also set seven speed and distance records for women in aviation. With her new desire to fly around the world “as near the waistline as could be,” she then began to realize her red Vega was too limited for long distance flying over the ocean.

For a brief time, she and pilot Paul Mantz operated the Earhart-Mantz Flying school located in Burbank Airport in California. She later used the airport to hangar her Lockheed Electra 10E. It included extensive modifications to the fuselage to incorporate additional fuel tanks.

The Electra was widely publicized as “Flying laboratory,” but little useful scientific information was planned. Her plans were to circumnavigate the globe and gather information for her next book. Captain Harry Manning was signed on as her navigator who was also a skilled radio operator who knew Morse code. Then Fred Noonan was chosen as a second navigator because of his vast experience in both marine and flight navigation. She is pictured with Fred before their flight.

Next month I will tell more about that flight around the world, her disappearance, speculations about what happened and the disappearance has spawned many myths and legends about the legendary Amelia Earhart.

Have you ever flown a plane or wanted to be a pilot?

Martha Rogers is a multi-published author and writes a weekly devotional for ACFW. Martha and her husband Rex live in Houston, Texas where they are active members of First Baptist Church. They are the parents of three sons and grandparents to eleven grandchildren and great-grandparents to five. Martha is a retired teacher with twenty-eight years teaching Home Economics and English at the secondary level and eight years at the college level supervising student teachers and teaching freshman English. She is the Director of the Texas Christian Writers Conference held in Houston in August each year, a member of ACFW, ACFW WOTS chapter in Houston, and a member of the writers’ group, Inspirational Writers Alive.

Find Martha at: www.marthawrogers.com,

Twitter: @martharogers2

Facebook: Martha Rogers Author Page

BOOK GIVEAWAY AND WASPs – WORLD WAR II LADY TEST PILOTS

ANNE GREENE here. Today I’m giving an autographed copy of my WWII Women Test Pilots book, ANGEL WITH STEEL WINGS, to one person who answers a question at the bottom of this blog. So please leave a comment and your email for a chance to win.

Women played an important role in many jobs during World War II. One way women helped win that war to end all war was test piloting repaired combat planes. This was an especially dangerous job and thirty-eight WASPs died in the line of duty.

 

In 1942, the United States faced a severe pilot shortage. President Roosevelt made a life-altering decision that affected all women. He decided to train women to fly military aircraft so male pilots could be released for combat overseas. Congress named the females the Women Airforce Service Pilots – WASPs. The ladies surprised the Army Air Force Commander General Hap Arnold who wasn’t sure a ‘slip of a girl could fight the controls of a B-17 in heavy weather. Neither were many officers and enlisted men in the Air Force. The ladies had to prove themselves. And prove themselves they did. With flying colors.

More than 1,100 lady civilian volunteers flew every type of military aircraft, including the B-26 and B-29 bombers, as part of the WASP program. They tested overhauled, crippled fighter planes, they towed targets to give inexperienced ground and air gunners training to shoot with live ammunition, and they ferried untested planes from factories to military bases across the country. The WASPs expected to become a branch of the military. Congress never passed that bill.

And along the way, they fell in love.

WASPs weren’t granted military status until the 1970s. Now 65 years after their service, President Obama signed a bill awarding the WASPs the Congressional Gold Medal.

The women who flew had moxie and an adventurous gene. In that 1940-1944 timeframe, most people had never travelled aboard a plane, much less flown one. Short, tall, slim, wide, women joined the WASP program knowing how to fly. Since flying lessons were expensive, most women came from wealthy families. The military trained male pilots from scratch, but not the female civilian volunteers.

Jacqueline Cochran, the driving force and head of the WASP program, was a pioneering aviator. But disbelieving men threatened the WASP program from the start. WASPs had to fight to remain in service. Men found the program unacceptable and hard to swallow, not believing that women could release men for combat and place themselves in danger. And these male voices were loud.

Yet, along the way, women fell in love.

 

After proving themselves above and beyond the call of duty, Commander Arnold said, “Let the record stand. Women can fly as well as men, and in many cases, better.”

Still, as war drew to a close in the summer of 1944, women’s flight training programs closed. Flight instructors didn’t want to lose their jobs to women, so they lobbied Washington for the WASPs’ jobs saying, “It’s unacceptable for women to replace men.” Men said they were heads of families and sole providers and as such needed the jobs more than women.

And yet, along the way, women fell in love.

In my book, ANGEL WITH STEEL WINGS, about WASPs, you’ll discover a tumultuous romance, live through many of the adventures real American women experienced, and discover the answer to what happened to the WASPs. I hold WASPs in extremely high regard! Only a few of them remain alive today.

This month I’m giving an autographed copy of my historical romance, ANGEL WITH STEEL WINGS, to one person who leaves a comment. I pick the name from a hat. So please answer the question: In my next book of the Women of Courage series, would you rather read about a lady spy, a lady nurse, a WAC, a WAVE, a donut dolly, a victory garden grower, or a Rosie the riveter?

ANGEL WITH STEEL WINGS is a World War II romance where Steel Magnolias meet Band of Brothers. While test flying planes as a Woman Air Service Pilot, WASP, Mandy McCabe escapes her dead-end life in Hangman’s Hollow, Tennessee. Major Harvey Applegate lost his wife to the WASP program, and he’s convinced Yankee Doodle Gals have no place flying in the war effort. He determines to protect the WASPs by sending them packing back to the home front. Will their new love survive the test? One love. Two goals. Someone has to give.

ANNE GREENE delights in writing about alpha heroes who aren’t afraid to fall on their knees in prayer, and about gutsy heroines. Enjoy her Women of Courage series spotlighting heroic women of World War II, first book Angel With Steel Wings. Read her Holly Garden Private Investigating series, first book Red Is For Rookie. Look for Anne’s newest novella, The Marriage Broker and The Mortician in the anthology The California Gold Rush Romance Collection. Anne’s highest hope is that her stories transport the reader to an awesome new world and touch hearts to seek a deeper spiritual relationship with the Lord Jesus. Buy Anne’s books on http://www.Amazon.com. Visit Anne at AnneGreeneAuthor.com. and http://www.facebook.com/AnneWGreeneAuthor.

GIVE-AWAY AND LADY SPIES DURING WW11 PART TWO

Anne Greene here: As stated on the 14th of last month I discussed American women who were spies during WW11. If you missed that discussion, please check out the archives. Today, I’ll tell the true tale of other women spies.

Two main oversight organizations were responsible for intelligence activities in World War II for the Allies. These were the American OSS, or Office of Strategic Services and the British SOE, or Special Operations Executive. In addition to traditional spies, these organizations employed many ordinary men and women to covertly provide information about strategic locations and activities while leading apparently normal lives.

OSS receiving spy transmissions

READ THE CAPTIONS FOR THE NAMES OF FEMALE SPIES

Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell – 1921-1942 Violette was sent to France as an operative. Caught giving cover to a Maquis leader, she killed several German soldiers before being captured. Despite torture she refused to give the Gestapo any classified information and was sent to Ravensbruck. There she was executed.

 

Josephine Baker

Amy Elizabeth Thorpe 1910-1963 Amy, whose code name was Cynthia and who later used the name Betty Pack, worked for the OSS in Vichy France. OSS sometimes used her as a swallow, a female agent used to seduce people to get secret information. She also participated in break-ins. One daring raid involved taking secret naval codes from a locked and guarded room. She also infiltrated the Vichy French Embassy in Washington DC and took important code books. 

Maria Gulovich fled Czechoslovakia when Hitler invaded her country and went to Hungary. She worked with OSS teams to assist downed pilots, refugees and resistance members. KGB arrested her. She maintained her OSS cover under fierce interrogation.

Brenda Marshall

Claire Maybelle Snyder 1907-1960, Claire, also known as Clara Fuentes, Claire Philips, Dorathy Fuentes as well as High Pockets, spy, entertainer, club owner, and author. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom. She joined the resistance in the Philippines, arranged forged papers, created a new identity, and established a gentleman’s club popular with Japanese officers in Manila. Phillips built an extensive spy ring which harvested information from the Japanese officers who patronized the club. She transmitted information she collected to American forces in the Pacific to counter Japanese force movements. She worked with the guerrilla movement to smuggle food, medicines, supplies and information to prisoners of war where she became known as High Pockets. She acquired the name because of her method of smuggling messages hidden in her brassiere.
On May 23, 1944, Japanese military police captured Claire. Inside a Japanese prison, they tortured her for information. Despite the torture, Claire refused to talk. Held in solitary confinement for six months, she was to be executed for espionage. In January 1945, liberated from the prison by American forces, she was close to starving to death.

Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich became an American citizen in 1939. She volunteered for the OSS and served by entertaining troops on the front lines and by broadcasting nostalgic songs as propaganda to battle weary German troops. She received the Medal of Freedom for her work.

Hedy Lamarr Actress Hedy Lamarr contributed to the OSS by co-producing an anti-jamming device for torpedoes. She also devised a clever way of frequency hopping that prevented the enemy from intercepting American military messages. Famous for the Road movies with Bob Hope, everyone knew she was an actress but few knew she was a spy.

Barbara Lauwers-Cpl. Barbara Lauwers, Women's Army Corps, received a Bronze Star for her OSS work. She cobbled fake passports and papers for other spies. Instrumental in Operation Sauerkraut, she used German prisoners to spread black propaganda about Adolf Hitler behind enemy lines. She created the League of Lonely War Women, or VEK in German. She used this mythical organization to demoralize German troops by spreading the belief that any soldier on leave could display a VEK symbol and get a girlfriend. One of her operations was so successful that 600 Czechoslovak troops defected behind Italian lines.

Spy Mavis Baity with Enigma Machine

Rochelle Hudson 1916 – 1972)Rochelle was an American actress from the 1930s through the 1960s. She married Harold Thompson, head of the Storyline Department at Disney Studios. She and her husband posed as a vacationing couple in Mexico to detect if there was any German activity in the different areas. One vacation they uncovered a supply of high test aviation gas hidden by German agents in Baja, California.

Some of the other women who served America during WW11: Mary Louise Prather, Juliana Mickwitz, Elizabeth P. McIntosh, Genevieve Feinstein, Mary Louise Prather, and many, many other women.

Spy FiFi- One of the most decorated

The OSS was active in every country in Europe, aiding the resistance groups and monitoring enemy activity, and also had spies in enemy countries as well as in the Pacific theater. Eventually the OSS became the CIA, Central Intelligence Agency.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the world of women spies and look for my book, SPIES LIKE HER, when it releases in 2016.

 

LEAVE A COMMENT FOR A CHANCE TO WIN ANGEL WITH STEEL WINGS.

 

Do you prefer historical romance or suspense/mystery romance?

ANGEL WITH STEEL WINGS is a World War II romance where Steel Magnolias meet Band of Brothers. While doing her part test flying planes, Mandy McCabe escapes her dead-end life in Hangman’s Hollow, Tennessee as a Woman Air Service Pilot, WASP. Can she escape from her past? Major Harvey Applegate lost his wife to the WASP program, and he’s convinced Yankee Doodle Gals have no place flying in the war effort. He determines to protect the remaining ladies by sending them packing back to the home front. Both Mandy and Harvey experience immediate attraction, which increases Harvey’s desire to send Mandy home to safety. Can a man burdened with memories of death undertake added danger? Will their new love survive the test? One love. Two goals. Someone has to give.