In the late 1950s Purdue Aeronautics in West Lafayette, Indiana, trained commercial pilots. Their instructors, for the most part, were retired military. The planes, DC-3s or the military version, C-47s, were dependable two-engine aircraft perfect for training. Those of you who know these planes can recall how tough it is to make one of those babies die. It is my favorite plane.
I loved to fly, but didn’t have the money for lessons, so I did the next best thing – I was a flight attendant for Purdue. One day as I boarded the aircraft, I glanced at the guy on the wing who fueled the aircraft. I did a double take because it wasn’t Sam, but a woman. I mulled this over, but couldn’t find a reason for a woman to be doing a man’s job. (Yes, this was in the days before women’s lib.) I dashed up the aisle and asked the captain why a woman was perched on the wing.
“She’s our link trainer,” he said.
“She’s on the wing.”
He sighed, put down his clipboard, and turned to stare at me. “She’s hired part-time to gas planes and part-time to link train.”
“Link train?”
“She flew bombers and whatever in World War II,” he said. “She’s a ferry pilot.”
Women flew in World War II? I rolled this around in my mind. Why didn’t I know this? After all I remembered that war. My mom was a Rosie the Riveter at Alcoa Aluminum. I went to nursery school and learned to hide, when the teacher blew a whistle, during air raids. So if I knew all that, why didn’t I know about women pilots?
Since then I’ve read about women pilots in Marianne Verges’ book On Silver Wings. I learned that Cornelia Fort from Nashville, Tennessee, who, although not in the military on December 7, 1941, was in the air above Pearl Harbor when the Zeros came in. A twenty-three year old flight instructor, she had a student in the air one sunny day doing touch-and-go practice when she saw the hoard of planes marked by the Japanese Rising Sun. Horrified, she watched as wave after wave of planes dropped bombs on Pearl Harbor. She did what any sensible woman would do – she jerked the controls from her student, put the Piper Cub into a dive, and got the hell out of the sky.
Recently, I’ve begun to wonder about that woman on the wing at Purdue, who, although she was a heroine in the eyes of my captain, was reduced to gassing planes to be near what she loved. I don’t know the name of the lady link trainer for Purdue Aeronautics who was a ferry pilot in WWII. I’ve tried to find out who she was but kept hitting a wall. If anyone knows who worked for Purdue Aeronautics as a trainer in the late 50s and early 60s, let me know. I want to thank her.
Haley Elizabeth Garwood has penned four historical novels on women warriors. Learn more at her Web site.
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