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Show American Women Pilots Helped . Deliver Planes Which Enabled Red Armies to Launch Offensive That May Have Been Turning Point of the War By ELMO SCOTT WATSON Released by Western Newspaper Union. THIS is a story of the great 1944 summer offensive of the Red army which historians histo-rians of the future may write down as the turning point of the war. It is the little-known story of the contribution of a small group of American women to the success of that drive, of the part they played in making it possible for the determined Russians, who had stopped the Nazi hordes ' at the gates of Moscow and Stalingrad, to push them back across the plains of White Russia and the mud of Poland to the very German border itself. It is the story of the civilian women ferrying pilots of the Air Transport Command's division, a skilled, determined and courageous little group from among the members of the Women's Air Force Service Serv-ice pilots, popularly known as WASPs. This story begins just about a year ago. The "clouds of planes" which President Roosevelt had promised at the beginning of the war (and at which our enemies had scoffed) were rolling from American production produc-tion lines. Lend-Lease was making these planes, especially the fighter planes, available to our allies, the Russians. But it's a "long, long trail" from the factories of America to the Eastern front it winds from the Bell Aircraft factory in Niagara Falls, N. Y., across the fertile Mississippi Mis-sissippi valley, the great plains of the West, the Rocky mountains, the wilds of Canada and Alaska, the steppes of Siberia and the Ural mountains to Moscow, and then the Eastern fighting front. How to get these fighter planes to the Russian front and especially to deliver them in time for the great Russian offensive that was the question. To fly them there seemed to be the logical way, but fighters, with their limited range, must avoid long overwater flights. An overland route was needed. That need had been foreseen long before and the "trail," previously mentioned, had already been established by the Air Transport command's ferrying division divi-sion and its Alaskan division. The War department accorded No. I priority to the movement of American Amer-ican planes to the Russian armies and the problem of getting them there was assigned to the ATC ferrying fer-rying division, commanded by Brig. Gen. Bob E. Nowland, to its pilots and its groups. As a matter of fact, planes of many types were moved to the fighting fronts, taken there by men pilots, both American and Russian. Rus-sian. But this story deals only with the fighter planes and the Women's Air Force Service pilots. The ferrying division's third ferrying fer-rying gToup, based at Romulus, Mich., was assigned the mission of Cerrying the deadly, fast Airacobra trom the Bell factory in Niagara Falls to Great Falls, Mont., where the Seventh Ferrying group took over for the delivery to the Russians Rus-sians at Fairbanks and at Nome. ' ' 4 I f " fa , ,1 ; ' ' V I ; ' f 1 ; ' - r ' H 4 a ,' ', ' ' ,,, j ' i " ; L Barbara Donahue, commanding officer of the WASP squadron of the Third Ferrying Group, based at Romulus field, Mich., poses beside one of the nine Kcll Airacobras which she delivered over the "long, long trail" from Niagara Falls, N. Y., to Great Falls, Mont. I " ; - , I x x 1 BRIG. GEN. BOB E. NOWLAND Then, it became a question of manpower, of availability of pilots to keep pace with the output of the production pro-duction lines. To meet this emergency, emer-gency, the ferrying division decided decid-ed to utilize the services of its qualified quali-fied and trained civilian women ferrying fer-rying pilots on the domestic section of the "long, long trail." Each male pilot released from the 1,800-mile trip from Niagara Falls to Great Falls simply meant one more male pilot for the long, dangerous hop from Great Falls to Nome. These women hadn't been flying fighter planes . . . light ships had been their assignments in the past . . . but they had long experience, hours in the air and. with a short period of transition training, they were ready for the task. It wasn't a glamorous one. The ferry pilot of the Army's Air Transport Trans-port Command is a hard-working individual in-dividual who lives out of his B-4 bag, spends long stretches of time away from his home base, flies long hours and encounters little of the glamour, the heroics and the recognition recog-nition that come to the combat pilot. These Women's Air Force Service pilots were going to share that lot with the men. So their story can't be one of glamour either. It's merely mere-ly the record of a job well done. By comparison with the number of male pilots engaged in the operation, the WASPs were a small group. But by comparison, the job they did equaled the performance of their male partners. They delivered from Niagara to Great Falls sufficient planes to completely com-pletely arm a half dozen Russian squadrons, and they did such a workmanlike job that their loss ratio ra-tio compares favorably with that of the men- In fact, only three Airacobras Aira-cobras leaving Niagara with a WASP at the controls failed to reach Great Falls. The normal flying time from Niagara Ni-agara to Great Falls is approximately approximate-ly nine hours, but the lapsed time on the average delivery probably is three times that great, considering that the ferrying division demands almost perfect weather conditions for the operation of fighter aircraft, and that winter through Minnesota, the Dakotas and Montana and in the Great Lakes region of the Middle Mid-dle West often is far below the minimum mini-mum required. And when a delivery is completed complet-ed from Niagara Falls to Great Falls, the pilot must return to the Third Ferrying Group, a 14-hour ride on the special crewliners provided pro-vided by the military air transport section of the ferrying division for just that purpose. Yet, despite the ruggedncss of the trip, WASPs of the Third Ferrying group delivered Russia-bound fighters fight-ers from Niagara to Great Falls in a single day, delivered three planes in ten days, which is a feat to equal the best performances of their male coworkers. Barbara Donahue, commanding officer of the Third Ferrying group, WASP detachment at Romulus, paced the delivery of Russia-bound fighters for her detachment, with nine to her credit, while WASP Mary C. Johnson of the Third group ranked second In the list of individual individu-al achievement with seven as her score. WASP Ellen Grey is one of the few pilots who can boast of a one-day one-day delivery from Niagara to Great Falls, a flight accomplished in eight hours and 18 minutes of actual time in the air, and an elapsed time of approximately 11 hours. Consider that five hours in the air Is considered consid-ered a day's work by the overage fighter pilot and that the usual de livery from Niagara to Great Falls is considered a two or three-day job, and you'll realize that Miss Grey ... to say the least . . . was working "overtime." Three of the seven deliveries de-liveries credited to WASP Mary C. Johnson were made over a 12-day period a record of which any pilot, pi-lot, man or woman, may well be proud when one considers the sheer physical exertion involved. But while WASP Grey's feat of making a one-day delivery and WASP Johnson's feat of three deliveries de-liveries in 12 days are outstanding examples of WASP performance, they are not really unusual. The records of the Third Ferrying group WASP detachment show that all of these women pilots are hard-working and conscientious. There's Betty Bet-ty Archibald and Pat Dickerson with records of two deliveries in eight days. There are Grace Burge and Virginia Claire with two deliveries each in 10 days. And the chances are that it was weather which kept some of these girls from equaling j the record of WASP Johnson. ' When the movement started, these women ferry pilots were not trusted ' as fly-alones on the "long, long trail." They were assigned as wing-men wing-men to experienced male pilots familiar fa-miliar with the route. But as they gained experience through hard work they were graduated to the . fly alone class, and now they take their turns flying alone, still rushing planes to the Russians. i But the "long, long trail" is not the only place in which the civilian women pilots of the Air Transport Command's ferrying division have proved their worth in the two years since Mrs. Nancy Harkness Love formed the first women's ferrying I ':' ' I- U ' - I ;. . '- ? I : ;V " , C -t :: , J . j I ' I Mrs. Lcnore Louise McKlroy, operations op-erations officer of the WASP squadron squad-ron of the Third Ferrying Group at Romulus field, Mieh. WASP McLl-roy McLl-roy recently made aviation history when she delivered a big Consolidated Consolidat-ed "Catalina" Dying boat (designated (desig-nated by the Navy as FBYs and by the Army as OA-lOs) at one of the aviation fields in this country. It was the first time one of these big ships has ever been flown by a woman wom-an pilot. Since then she has flown more than 80 hours in this type of ship, adding the time to her already impressive total of more than 3,00" pilot hours. squadron at the 2nd Ferrying Group base, Wilmington, Del., on September Septem-ber 10, 1942. Since that date women pllois assigned as-signed to the Ferrying Division have flown more than 7,500.000 miles ferrying fer-rying planes from factories to destinations des-tinations within the United States. Originally assigned only to light liaison liai-son and training type planes, they now arc qualified to fly C8 different types of ships, ranging from heavy four-engine bombers down. Of their number, 10 per cent are qualified to fly class four planes such as the Billy Mitchell and Maragrlrr medium bombers, and 08 per cent have made deliveries in class three planes such as twin-engine transports. trans-ports. But, In the ferrying division, emphasis is placed on the ferrying of lighter type planes and fighter planes, and it is significant to note that 08 per cent of the women pilots in this division are now qualified fighter pilots, making regular deliveries deliv-eries of Airacobras, Mustangs, Thunderbolts and Waihawlts. Of even greater significance Is the fact that 100 per cent of these pilots hold army instrument ratings and ore qualified to make cross country flight under weather conditions which require the use of instruments. |
