9 Some things remained unchanged after moving up to basic training: the classrooms, the marching, the calisthenics, as well as cleaning the barracks, washing clothes, and answering letters. But there was one big difference. Gertrude would now take the controls of the infamous BT-13, a 440-horsepower single-engine plane made by the Vultee Aircraft Corporation. Nicknamed the “Vultee Vibrator,” it was also referred to as a bucket of bolts. It had a bad reputation. The BT-13s the women trained in were old, rattling, shaky, and, as Gertrude found out soon enough, unreliable in spins.
WASP Lorraine Zilner had a particularly bad experience in a BT-13, she recalled, when “all of a sudden the plane just went completely out of control and flipped into an inverted spin. I stayed with it, I worked with it, I did everything possible. I stayed with it as long as I could, and then I tried to get out…. My chute had just barely opened when I hit the ground…. That was the end of that airplane.”
The BT washed out a dozen less-capable women in 43-W-7, and the airplane eventually killed nine WASPs in accidents.
But Gertrude’s greatest fear in flying the BT was that she now would be required to speak using the radio. Her primary training plane had only an intercom between instructor and trainee. In the BT, radio communication with the control tower was required. She had to call before taxiing out to the runway, had to call the tower for flight instructions, and had to call the tower again for landing instructions.
Gertrude worked very hard to memorize her calls and control her stutter, speaking slowly and distinctly. She may have sung her radio procedures, said her friend and fellow WASP Mickey Axton. She did not stutter when singing. In any event her instructors gave her passing marks.
WASPs pray to the BT-13 for luck, Avenger Field, Sweetwater, Texas. They disliked flying the unpredictable and sometimes dangerous training plane. Courtesy WASP Archives, Texas Woman’s University Libraries
Once aloft, despite being wary of the BT-13, she felt thrilled at the privilege of being allowed to fly planes that were off-limits to the public.
The WASPs’ favorite off-duty pastime was watching movies. Americans were riding a wave of patriotism generated by filmmakers in response to Pearl Harbor. By 1942 war films dominated the silver screen, with Casablanca, Wake Island, Mrs. Miniver, and Eagle Squadron being big at the box office. In 1943, 13 of the top 20 box office films were about the war. A year later, Americans still watched war movies, such as Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, Since You Went Away, and Hollywood Canteen. In 1944, when fears eased and America appeared to be winning the war, many moviegoers went to see less combative fare such as Going My Way, Gaslight, National Velvet, and Meet Me in St. Louis. But the subject of war didn’t disappear entirely from popular films: in 1946, The Best Years of Our Lives, a story of homecoming veterans, won nine Academy Awards, including Best Motion Picture.
Most World War II war movies are today scorned by film critics as propagandistic, although Casablanca is considered a classic.
Planning cross-country flights on the wing of an AT-6 Texan. The women loved the swift little advanced trainer, and Gertrude made her cross-country solo flight in a Texan. Courtesy of the WASP Archive, Texas Women’s University Libraries
If Gertrude had mixed feelings about the BT-13, she soon reveled in flying the heavenly AT-6 Texan. Quick, powerful, maneuverable, and fun to fly, the AT-6 was a favorite among training pilots. Gertrude dashed through each morning’s end-of-class tests so she could be in the cockpit sooner.
In pilot’s lingo, the plane “lifted off hot,” meaning it rose quickly under her touch. It seemed to ride the skies with silken ease. The AT-6 had a covered cockpit like a greenhouse, and as the morning sun climbed higher over the Texas plains Gertrude pushed back the canopy, allowing in a little air. She felt thrilled as she pierced a cloud, and marveled as she dived at more than 200 miles an hour. She felt the hot beams of the sun on her neck before heading for home at Avenger Field. After she landed, she told her friend Mickey she felt Mike’s love up there.
While Gertrude handled real airplanes with ease, she met her match in the Link trainer. The Link was a hooded black box inside which the women handled simulated controls. It trained them for night and bad weather flying. Gertrude had developed excellent flying habits, but inside the Link she kept insisting on using her instincts when she should have relied on her instruments. After her first session in the Link she emerged fearful and drenched in sweat. The instructor failed her. She was acutely aware that almost half the class had washed out for one reason or another, and she was afraid the Link would cause her own failure.
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
