7 On September 10, 1942, a New York Herald Tribune headline read: WOMEN PILOTS TO FLY FOR ARMY. It was Jacqueline Cochran’s announcement of the formation of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots. Gertrude must have seen the article. Like many American women, she had been waiting for this moment.
There were many reasons women chose to apply to the WASPs. Patriotism was at the core, but flying, thanks to the movies, was also considered glamorous. Said WASP Jean Hascall Cole, “For each of us, flying was a passion, and some combination of daring, rebellion, and determination took us into the air.”
Like Gertrude, WASP Nadine Nagle’s desire to fly for the service was personal. Nagle wrote: “In the summer of 1942 my husband (a B-24 pilot) was killed on a mission in England. I read an article on the women pilots the next month. I got this patriotic feeling that I was to fly in his place.”
There was no formal recruitment. Word of mouth and news articles quickly generated 25,000 applications for the WASPs. It happened so quickly that there were few written or regulated standards for admission. Applicants were interviewed by Cochran or one of her assistants. As Molly Merryman writes in her book, “The guidelines were a matter of choosing clean-cut, stable appearing young girls, women who best fit the image of the WASPs as Cochran saw it…. We do know that this subjective screening process had a detrimental impact on black women, who Cochran removed from consideration.”
Cochran wrote that she feared that admitting African American women to the WASPs would jeopardize the program, saying she had enough difficulty establishing the WASPs and that “it might be the straw that broke the camel’s back.” Racial discrimination was institutionalized as part of the American military until President Harry S. Truman took the first step to integrate the army in 1947.
However, two Chinese American women were accepted in the program, one of whom, Hazel Ying Lee, later died in a plane crash at Great Falls, Montana. One Native American woman flew for the WASPs, Ola Mildred Rexroat, an Oglala Sioux from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Gertrude was probably interviewed by Cochran herself in New York City. She met the standards: Caucasian, educated, respectable, and well mannered. Cochran was acutely conscious of the image of her WASPs, and she feared that a misstep by even one of them might be blown up by the press and reflect badly on the program and on her own reputation.
The standards for application in the beginning included a pilot’s license and 75 hours of flight time. (In contrast, male applicants for pilot training did not need a pilot’s license or any flight experience.) The women’s flight time was soon lowered to 35 hours.
Wrote WASP Jean Hascall Cole, “Many of them … squeezed in [to the WASP program] by various methods, not all of which were aboveboard. World War II was a very popular war. The country was totally involved and everyone wanted to be ‘in it’ or helping in one way or another. No holds were barred when it came to ‘getting in.’”
WASPs Madeline Sullivan and Jo Wallace were on the way to their entry interview. Neither had the full 35 hours of flying time needed to qualify, but each tried to keep the fact from one another. Madeline asked Jo, “How many hours of signed time do you have [in your pilot’s logbook]?” Jo replied she had about 31. Madeline said, “I have news for you. Unless you have 35 hours of signed time, she [Cochran] is not going to put you into the next class in September.”
“Oh my God,” said Jo. “Have you got a pen?” Both women went into the restroom and finished padding their logbooks. Upstairs, they were both passed for entry into the September class.
One woman with bad vision cheated on her eye exam by squinting. Still another got her doctor to attest that she was taller than the five-foot-two-and-a-half-inch minimum required by the WASPs.
About 1,800 women made the cut and were staged for training. Gertrude Tompkins was one of them.