Fly Girls by P. O'Connell Pearson

Author:P. O'Connell Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

A Wasp points to the sky on the wing of B-17 Miss Patricia J in Bryan, Texas.

CHAPTER 8

Greater Heights

Overall, 1943 brought more good news for the Allies than bad, and Americans grew optimistic about winning the war. But 1943 was a devastating year for B-17s and their crews. Ten percent of the planes that took off on bombing missions were lost, never to be seen again. Most of the ten crewmen aboard each of those planes were either killed or captured. Another 30 percent of the bombers were seriously damaged before returning to the Allies’ bases. And in one horrific mission sixty B-17 Flying Fortresses were lost, along with the six hundred men in them.118

Plants in the United States built B-17s as fast as they could to meet the Army Air Forces’ desperate need for the Flying Fortress bombers. Military commanders had to find more and more pilots, too. But men just coming out of flight training were a long way from being able to handle a Fortress.

In the meantime, the military still resisted having Wasps pilot bombers and other big planes, even as they continued to ferry smaller planes, tow targets and gliders, and teach men to fly. They couldn’t be strong enough for the big planes, the generals said. Or big enough. Cochran kept pushing. And so did a few AAF instructors and commanders who had seen how skilled the Wasps were.

General William Tunner—who ran the Ferrying Division of the Army Air Forces and supported the idea of women pilots from the very beginning—thought Nancy Love and Betty Gillies would be the perfect pilots to demonstrate that women could, in fact, fly heavy bombers over long distances. If they succeeded, some of the men now ferrying the bombers in the United States could be moved to combat flights and the new B-17s could be put into action more quickly. Were Love and Gillies willing to train on the bomber? Absolutely.

The B-17 was a well-engineered plane known for flying smoothly and easily in a clear sky, but bad weather could make it clumsy in the air. And weighing thirty-five thousand pounds empty, and over sixty-five thousand with full fuel tanks and a load of bombs, it lumbered on the runway. Pilots had to fight the controls to keep the plane level in high winds. Strong men climbed out of the bomber’s cockpit soaked with sweat and shaking with fatigue after those flights. Could even the most skilled women pilots handle the B-17?

For hours at a time Gillies and Love practiced controlling the powerful plane in the air, sometimes with one or two of its four engines intentionally shut down. They often landed with their arms and legs vibrating and their clothes dark with perspiration. But even the men who were certain no woman could fly a B-17 were impressed. Without wood blocks for the pedals and cushions under and behind her, five-feet-two-inch Betty Gillies couldn’t operate the rudders or see over the control panel. She didn’t weigh much more

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