Seized by the Sun Read online

  Class 43-W-7 forming up to march. They are wearing the oversized men’s “zoot suits” provided by an army air force unprepared for women pilot trainees. Gertrude Tompkins is in the middle of the group, looking slightly down. Courtesy WASP Archives, Texas Woman’s University Libraries

  Her friend Mickey came to the rescue. Having flown since she was 11, Mickey excelled at instrument work. The pair spent hours practicing in the Link, with Mickey gently telling Gertrude to “let go of what you feel, and let the instruments think for you.” Gertrude passed her 15 hours of training in the Link. She was never comfortable with night flying, and she was grateful the WASPs were required to land their ships before sunset and remain overnight (RON) wherever they were.

  As their skills improved, class 43-W-7 concentrated on cross-country flights, frequently to Harpersville, Texas, some 200 miles from Sweetwater. To rouse herself after long, boring stretches, Gertrude might turn the plane over and fly upside down for a while, amusing herself by keeping the compass on a perfect heading directed to her destination. If she’d been caught doing this, she might have been washed out. But a hundred miles from Sweetwater, who would ever know? At night, as they lay in bed after lights out, the women shared their secrets, and when Gertrude told them about flying upside down the place erupted in laughter.

  She anticipated with excitement her longest cross-country flight in the AT-6. After she dressed, she plotted her course from Sweetwater. Her destination was Blythe, California. Setting the brakes, Gertrude revved up her engine and looked back at the billowing dust kicked up, enveloping the planes behind her. She released the brakes, and the plane practically leaped off the ground to become airborne. The flight took her across south-central Texas and into New Mexico. She crossed the Rocky Mountains, where peaks were dusted with November snow and the aspen fields stood out ghostly white while the pines looked almost black. To Gertrude’s left was the Rio Grande River and Mexico. Up high like this she could see the Rockies marching north toward Canada. She landed and returned uneventfully.

  Trainees learn about the “whiz wheel,” a calculating device used to navigate over long distances. Courtesy WASP Archives, Texas Woman’s University Libraries

  Some of the army air force men were saying women shouldn’t be flying while having their menstrual periods. For a while there had been an edict banning women from flying while they were menstruating. “None of us ever has a period, as a result,” Gertrude told Elizabeth. Since all the women lied about it, Jackie Cochran convinced Hap Arnold, general of the air force, that the rule was nonsense. Besides, the women had real dangers to worry about. As 1943 progressed and more women were flying, deaths among the WASPs were mounting.

  Cornelia Fort, a Tennessean who’d been instructing in a Piper Cub over Hawaii when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, was killed in a collision on March 21 when a showoff male pilot tried to do a slow roll around her BT-13 near Merkel, Texas.

  Margaret Oldenburg, class of 43-4, plunged into a farmer’s field near Houston in a PT-19 Cornell on March 7. At the hospital an attendant was told off by Margaret’s waiting classmates when he described her face as being “pulverized to jelly.”

  Jane Champlin was killed June 3 in a nighttime BT-13 crash near Westbrook, Texas. She had written to a friend that she didn’t trust her instructor, who was known to sleep while in flight, and he was with her at the time of the crash. The watch that was taken from her wrist had stopped on impact at 11:15.

  Kathryn Lawrence, a trainee in the class following Gertrude’s, was killed on August 3 near Sweetwater when her PT-19 spun in.

  Margaret Selph and Helen Severson collided near Big Spring, Texas, on August 30, and both were killed.

  Pilot error accounted for most accidents, with mechanical failure next, and then weather.

  On November 19, 1943, Gertrude and her class of 43-W-7 graduated to the march tunes of the Big Spring Bombardier School Band. Dressed in light tan general’s pants, a white blouse, and a cocked overseas cap, she received her silver wings, pinned on by Mrs. Barton K. Yount, wife of Lieutenant General Barton K. Yount, commanding general of the army air force flying training center. Only 59 of Gertrude’s original 103 classmates graduated.

  Each class sang its own distinctive song as they passed in review. Gertrude sang:

  W seven is winning the war, parley voo

  W seven is winning the war, parley voo

  W seven is winning the war,

  To hell with six and five and four

  Hinky-dinky parley-voo!

  Gertrude’s class, 43-W-7, in formation preparing to march in the graduation ceremony. Gertrude, with short dark hair, is in the center of the group, looking slightly down. Courtesy of the WASP Archive, Texas Woman’s University Libraries

  10

  PECOS

  Gertrude had applied for the air force fighter pilot school conducted at Brownsville, Texas, but upon graduation from advanced training her orders sent her to the army air base in Pecos, Texas, instead.

  She was pleased to be assigned to be a test pilot in AT-6 Texans, the same plane she had flown and adored in advanced training. She loved the power and speed of the little Texan, and she wanted more. She held out hope that soon she would be assigned to fly the fastest single-engine fighter planes, then called pursuit planes. Some of them were three times more powerful than the AT-6.

  Other members of her graduating class would tow target banners far behind their planes, providing gunners on the ground with marksmanship practice. Most would be ferrying planes wherever they were needed: bombers to the east and west coasts and trainers to various air bases. Some women would fly transports and light aircraft for military officers. Gertrude embraced her flying life with enthusiasm and was pleased to learn Mickey Axton would join her at Pecos flying AT-6s.

  At about this time, Gertrude’s friend Henry Silver, who hadn’t given up on winning her over, told Gertrude that her father wanted Henry to join Smooth-On Company after the war ended. Gertrude was aware from her father’s letters how much Vreeland liked Henry. It felt like her father loved Henry like the son he and Laura had lost in childbirth. But according to Elizabeth, Gertrude may also have felt like Henry was operating behind her back.

  A WASP at the controls of an AT-6 Texan. Gertrude was a test pilot of AT-6s after being assigned to Pecos army air base. Courtesy of the WASP Archive, Texas Women’s University Libraries

  But Gertrude would have had little time to worry about Henry Silver. Pecos Army Air Base kept her in the air and very busy. Here the men of the air force were being trained to become pilots, and Gertrude’s job as part of Flight 17B was to test aircraft to be sure they were safe. Several times each day she climbed into AT-6s, either new or recently repaired, and put them through their paces. She took off, flew a tight course of turns, then stalled and dived them, testing out various maneuvers and spins.

  America’s Industrial Might

  In 1939 America’s air force had only 2,000 airplanes. By the time of Pearl Harbor’s bombing on December 7, 1941, America was already increasing military aircraft production. In 1942, 47,800 planes were built. In 1943 the number jumped to 86,000. By war’s end in 1945, America had built 296,429 warplanes.

  As America assembled a 12 million-man army, the country turned to its corporations. More than 2,700 large cargo ships, called Liberty ships, were built. The record time to construct one, the SS Robert E. Peary, was just four days, 15 hours, and 29 minutes. Chrysler made tanks instead of cars. Ford’s huge Willow Run plant turned out one B-24 Liberator bomber every hour. General Motors built everything from airplanes to machine guns.

  For millions of Americans the war was a financial bonanza, providing jobs and money and bringing down the curtain on the Great Depression. It gave rise to women in the workplace, and Rosie the Riveter, the symbol of working factory women during the war, became an American icon.

  “If the wings stay on and the engine still runs,” then she would certify it, she told Elizabeth, who was now living in South
ern Pines, North Carolina. She had returned to America from Egypt, leaving her husband in his job in the war-torn Middle East.

  She was joking with her sister. In truth, Gertrude was diligent in her work. She frequently refused to certify planes that she felt were dangerous. She had flown in too many substandard planes at Sweetwater, and she made a nuisance of herself agitating for new planes for the male student pilots at Pecos.

  The dust in Pecos was worse than in Sweetwater, and the base was alive with nearly 5,000 officers, enlisted men, and trainees who took lessons in the planes she tested. About 200 Women’s Army Corps (WAC) administrators and secretaries and another 23 WASPs were the only women on the base.

  During their time in Pecos, Gertrude and Mickey took up wearing Ray-Bans, the dark glasses made famous by aviators. They were lucky to get them. The Christmas of 1943 was meager all over America. A rationing system had been put in place by the government. There were no outdoor decorative lights, and tinsel for Christmas tree decorations was unavailable. There were no turkeys or cranberries, and sliced bread was almost impossible to find (the metal used in slicing machines was going to war production). Butter and whipping cream were impossible to buy. Beef and gasoline were sold on the black market. Silk stockings were unavailable. You couldn’t buy elastic anywhere, and Gertrude was glad she still had silk underwear from before the war. Bobby pins were gone. Radios had virtually disappeared from the shelves. Metal, rubber, chemicals, and food were all going overseas to help fight the war.

  Although she was busy, and good at her work, Gertrude’s stay at Pecos seemed interminable because she anticipated being reassigned. Each morning in the mess hall there was war talk. Big news came on June 6, 1944, when the invasion of France by Allied troops—D-day—was announced. Many thought the war would be over by Christmas. Gertrude must have wondered what that meant for her future.

  The Paperback Book Goes to War

  During the Depression, 19 out of 20 books cost $2 or more and were too expensive for most Americans. In 1939 Pocket Books and Penguin Books introduced paperback titles at 25 cents a book.

  In the middle of World War II, in 1943, publishers decided to practically give away 122 million paperback books to American military men and women with the idea of enlarging the reading market. The proposal by the Council of Books in Wartime to sell paperbacks to the military for six cents each initially worried some publishers. The military then gave them free to fighting units all over the world.

  America embraced the paperback, and today it provides the single most popular form of book reading.

  11

  ON SILVER WINGS

  After about one month in Pecos, orders arrived assigning Gertrude to pursuit school. There she would learn to fly pursuit, or fighter, planes. She did an impromptu dance with fellow WASP Mickey Axton. No more dusty Pecos. She was assigned officially to Fifth Ferry Group, headquartered at Love Field in Dallas, but was ordered to detach to Brownsville and the army’s “top gun” training school, where only the best male pilots were sent prior to combat. There were only four other women in her class. She reported on August 15, 1944, and the lineup of powerful fighter planes she saw took her breath away: Thunderbolts, Lightnings, Mustangs. Even the names were thrilling.

  Her first day in class she noticed a freckled young pilot smiling at her. His name was Duncan Miller. He was 10 years younger than Gertrude and had a charming, wisecracking sense of humor. One of the first nights Gertrude was in Brownsville, Duncan knocked on the door of her barracks and introduced himself. Brash and full of his ability to fly airplanes, he came right out and said she was pretty and had an “ooh-la-la figure,” and that he wanted to take her out on a date.

  Duncan said of Gertrude, “She had a great personality. Really a sharp girl. Any time off we probably spent together. I went to Matamoros [in Mexico, just across the border from Brownsville] with her a few times. We walked around, sometimes with two or three other guys and a couple of gals. I sat on her barracks steps with her in the evening, just talking. At night we listened to the radio and danced sometimes. We were in separate quarters. Just four WASPS and the rest were men, so there was pretty heavy competition.”

  Duncan said Gertrude “was considered a good pilot. If you weren’t good you didn’t make it. One out of four died in our class,” he said, referring to the many pursuit pilots who went on to combat or who died in domestic accidents.

  The pair enjoyed spending time together. They went to an on-base movie and shared a Coke. Perhaps this young flier made Gertrude realize that she had options besides Henry.

  But Gertrude’s main enchantment at the time was aeronautic, not romantic. Her assigned plane in Brownsville thrilled her. It was a P-51D Mustang, its shiny aluminum finish shimmering in the Texas sun. It was rated at speeds over 400 miles an hour. The model was the latest in this line of remarkable fighter planes.

  The instructors at Brownsville were emphatic about three-point landings in the Mustang. This meant that as Gertrude approached the landing strip, the instructors wanted the nose of the plane up slightly, so that three points—both front wheels and the tail wheel—kissed the earth at the same time. If the powerful fighter landed on its front wheels first, it had a tendency to do a dangerous, uncontrolled rotation, called a ground loop. “Once you could do a three-point [landing], they opened the candy store,” Gertrude wrote to her sister.

  Music and World War II

  With the boys away, the girls at home turned their radios to sentimental songs such as “I’ll Walk Alone” and “Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me).” The songs from the 1943 Broadway musical Oklahoma! were everywhere: “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” and “People Will Say We’re in Love.”

  But it was a skinny kid from Hoboken, New Jersey, who changed the music of the war years. On the night of December 30, 1942, Frank Sinatra began singing at New York’s Paramount Theatre and a girl swooned. Another stood up and screamed. In seconds every girl in the theater was on her feet screaming. The legend of the crooner was born. The military men overseas resented him. Sinatra seemed to have won over all their sweethearts.

  Her first walk-around of the new Mustang D model took Gertrude’s breath away. Its long, air-cooled engine enabled designers to carve sleek lines from its pointed nose to its square tail. The plane’s deep belly scoop seemed to lend it a muscular toughness. A new-model four-bladed propeller hub was streamlined into its nose. Aviation historians agree that the Mustang D is one of the most beautiful airplanes ever built, and it is considered a major factor in winning World War II.

  The Mustang saw combat in both the European and the Pacific theaters of war. It was very fast and maneuverable, and its 1,500-mile range enabled the pilot to escort bombers on their missions deep into the heart of enemy territory. Mustang pilots engaged enemy fighters attacking the bombers. Early in the war in Europe, bomber losses were high. But with the Mustang and other fighters escorting and protecting the bombers, losses dropped significantly. Of course Gertrude would be transporting the fantastic plane, not fighting in it, but she was just as thrilled to get behind the wheel.

  Gertrude settled into the cockpit and touched the levers and toggles of the D model. She loved the clear bubble canopy, with its unimpeded 360-degree view. She ticked off the cautions of her instructors: Look out for torque—the twist caused by the power and direction of the propeller. Directional stability could be a problem due to a gas tank installed behind the pilot. Never forget to taxi in an S formation, because the high nose blocked the pilot’s vision of the runway ahead. Expect blackouts when pulling out of dives. Blackouts occur when gravity forces pull blood from the brain. The pilot becomes momentarily unconscious until the plane comes out of its dive and the blood returns. When taking off, be sure to put the throttle to full power; there had been some engine failures reported at lower power.

  A P-51 D, about 1,500 horsepower and considered one of the finest combat airplanes of all time. Courtesy of the National Museum of the US Air
Force

  The Mustang Today

  Although replaced by jet planes, the P-51 Mustang continued in service in the United States until well after World War II. It saw combat again during the Korean War, from 1950 to 1953. The Mustang was in service in other countries until 1984.

  There are a quite a few Mustangs still in operation. They are frequent winners at air races, two of the most popular racers being planes called “Voodoo” and “Strega.” There are many Mustangs in museums, and air shows frequently feature them.

  Some 15,100 Mustangs came off the production lines during World War II. The cost to build each plane was $51,000. After the war some of them were sold to friendly nations under a reciprocal treaty for one dollar each. Working Mustangs sell today for $2 million to $4 million, depending on condition.

  Thundering into the sky, she lifted the wheels using a hand crank in the cockpit. She swiftly climbed above the Texas landscape. Gertrude first practiced flying straight and level to get a feel for the Mustang’s handling. Once away from Brownsville, she executed various rolls. After that she stalled the plane, surprised at how it wanted to climb, then dropped in high-speed spins that left her thrilled and laughing.

  Throttled-up, she blazed across Boca Chica Beach a hundred feet off the ground, scattering gulls and pelicans. She thundered across the Gulf of Mexico and sliced into the towering clouds. Reluctantly, after an hour, she returned to touch down on the airstrip at Brownsville. She found that landing was easier than in the AT-6. There was less likelihood of “swapping ends,” or doing a ground loop.