Chapter 4

Avenger Field

 

Director Cochran found the perfect airbase to train the WFTD pilots. Avenger Field military training base in Sweetwater, Texas was about one hundred and seventy-five miles from Houston. American and Canadian pilots had completed their training at this base and had vacated the facility. Due to the cold winters in Canada, the Royal Canadian Airforce had established many training airbases in Texas enabling them to train all year round in the warmer climate.

After Jackie Cochran consulted with General Arnold, they decided to move the women pilots to Avenger Field as their training base. Director Cochran thought the facilities were more than adequate for the female student pilots. They could bivouac in the barracks on the base instead of staying in a residence off base where they required transportation to the airfield every day. There was also a dining hall with cooking facilities and a medical room. Avenger Field would be the first all-women training base for the pilots of the WFTD.

Jackie Cochran flew Mrs. Deaton and Emily along with several of her other staff members to Avenger Field in Sweetwater to do what she did best, organize the facility.

 

Avenger Field aerial view

 

The students of the first class would complete their training at Houston, but the graduation would take place at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas. Emily arrived at the new training base with Leni Deaton; there was much work to do once again. Avenger Field was now officially the new home of the Women’s Ferrying Training Detachment, directed by Jackie Cochran.

Emily was impressed when she heard how Avenger Field acquired its present name; it was formally the Sweetwater Municipal Airport. The town held a contest to re-name the airport in honor of the many Americans who died during the Japanese ruthless attack on Pearl Harbor. A teacher in Sweetwater suggested Avenger Field for avengement of the American deaths at Pearl Harbor. Emily liked it; she thought it was an appropriate name. She hoped America would avenge the many deaths of that tragic day. It always brought tears to her eyes when she thought about it. Emily felt honored that she could use her skills as a pilot to deliver the much-needed military aircraft to the training bases and ports of embarkation in the USA to help win the war.

Mrs. Deaton walked quickly toward Emily, with a list of jobs for her to do. Emily took the list and began reading it. Her first job on the list was to contact Mrs. Whatley, a dietitian who lived in Sweetwater and to hire her to organize the meal planning for the base. Most of the civilians hired to work at Avenger Field lived in the town of Sweetwater close to the base.

Mrs. Deaton hired civilian instructors with college degrees to teach various courses covered in the ground school program as well as for the flight training. Jackie Cochran had given her a list of subjects such as Morse code, principles of aviation, mechanics, and meteorology and several other subjects that required qualified teachers; several of the instructors hired were female pilots qualified to provide flight instruction.

Twelve trainees would share a barracks divided into two bays, six pilots to a bay, separated by a latrine consisting of two toilets, two sinks, and two showers. They would sleep on army cots with a thin mattress; in addition, each student had an open closet and a footlocker to store their personal belongings.

 

WASP Barracks Avenger Field

 

As soon as Emily received a list of the students for the next class, she would assign them alphabetically to the bays. She was happy to see Madge Carter’s name on the list. Emily had not heard from Madge since they arrived in New York from England. She scanned the sheet of paper with the names written on it for Vera Murray from Akron, Ohio, but she was not on the list. Emily puzzled over what had happened to her, Vera said she would join the ferrying organization of the USA with Madge and Emily, which was the reason they had left the ATA in England. Vera was a skilled pilot, who had experience flying military aircraft; they needed women like her in the WFTD.

Emily also received a breakdown of the flight-training curriculum for the course. The basic training was similar to what she learned at the ATA in England, referred to as Phase One Primary, which included seventy hours of flying on PT-19 (Fairchild), and PT-17 (Stearman) aircraft.

Phase Two Basic, which consisted of seventy flying hours on a Vultee BT-13, nicknamed the (Vultee Vibrator). The BT-13 had a more powerful engine; it was faster as well as heavier than the primary trainer was. It required the student pilot to use two-way radio communications with the ground and to operate landing flaps and a two-position variable pitch propeller. However, it did not have retractable landing gear or a hydraulic system. They operated the large flaps by a hand crank-and-cable system.

Phase Two Basic, also involved learning to fly by relying on instruments by using the Link Trainer, a simulator that was like being in an airplane during ground school training at Avenger Field. Training in the air was done ‘under the hood’ with an instructor or another trainee as the observer. That sounded a little more interesting to Emily, as she always wanted to learn to fly by instruments. Emily thought it was a crucial skill when learning to fly. If the students were receiving instruments training, it must mean that the women pilots would probably be flying in poor weather condition as well as during the night.

The ATA pilots could have used this training, thought Emily; it would have proved useful for the pilots when caught in the thick murk over England. Emily was not happy to learn that she had to go through all the WFTD training, even though she had experience as a pilot flying military aircraft in the British ATA. She figured maybe, it would not be so bad after all, as she continued to read the course outline.

Phase Three Advanced covered seventy flying hours in the AT-6 Texan and AT-17 Bamboo Bomber used to teach night flying, cross-country and aerobatics. Now, Emily was starting to get very interested, she never flew at night in England, although sometimes it felt like she was flying in the dark, when the fog suddenly rolled in so thick that you could not see a foot in front of you. Aerobatics was something the ATA strictly forbid, although it did not stop some pilots from practicing it. Emily never attempted any aerobatics, but she looked forward to learning how to do some loops and rolls. She concluded that learning to fly the ‘army way’ sounded very challenging.

Everything was falling into place at Avenger Field; Mrs. Deaton, with the help of her assistants, could now begin to plan the graduation ceremony for the first class that would complete the training in another month.

The Establishment Officer, Mrs. Deaton and her staff were in the middle of a meeting discussing the plans for the graduation ceremony, when one of her assistants interrupted with a knock on the door. The assistant apologized, handed a telegram to Mrs. Deaton, saying that it was urgent from Jackie Cochran. Mrs. Deaton read the telegram right away. It was terrible news from the Howard Hughes Municipal Airport flight-training base in Houston. One of the students and her instructor were practicing spins when something went wrong. The aircraft dove into the ground killing both of them. Two students witnessed the tragic accident; they watched in horror as the aircraft burst into flames on impact.

Jackie requested that Mrs. Deaton accompany the body of the WFTD student back home to California. The civilian women pilots had no death benefits because they were not in the military, even though they did everything the ‘army way’. There would be no military funeral with an American flag draped over the coffin. Jackie Cochran covered all expenses for the funeral.

Mrs. Deaton explained to everyone what had happened and what Director Cochran had required her to do. She issued instructions to everyone, ended the meeting, and then left immediately for Howard Hughes Municipal Airport at Houston. She had handed a long list of jobs to Emily and her other assistants, telling them that she would be back as soon as possible.

It was a very difficult time for all the women pilots as well as the instructors at the Houston training base. Jackie wanted to keep the accident quiet from the press, the USAAF, as well as the private sector as the newly formed WFTD was under scrutiny from everyone. She did not want to give them any reason to cancel the experimental program.

Every pilot understood that flying was a dangerous occupation, but it was still a shock when a pilot that was part of the training group died in a crash. Death became a reality; every pilot examined her own mortality, but she could not dwell on it. An accident could happen to anyone at any time when it was least expected. Everyone had to deal with it as best that they could or leave the organization.

Emily remembered the ATA pilots that lost their lives in accidents in England. One pilot died when the propeller fell off her aircraft sending it careening to the ground resulting in the instant death of the pilot.

A famous British aviator, Amy Johnson, blinded by the thick fog, crashed into the Firth of Forth Estuary in Northern England while flying for the ATA. Her aircraft had run out of fuel as she tried to find her a way out of the dense clouds on January 5 1941. An attempted rescue by a captain of a nearby ship failed, resulting in the drowning of Amy Johnson as well as the rescuer.

Amy Johnson was the first British female pilot to fly solo from Britain to Australia in 1930. The possibility of death was always present, no matter how careful or how experienced a pilot was at flying. A pilot might have a Guardian Angel sitting on her wing and live to fly another day or perhaps she might have the Grim Reaper waiting for her at the end of her final flight.

Emily read the reports of several accidents that occurred during training of the first class at Houston. One pilot climbed into a PT-19 to practice rolls; she flipped the plane over and immediately fell out, luckily she was high enough that allowed her parachute to open. She made sure her parachute was strapped on properly, but forgot to fasten the safety harness on the pilot’s seat. She would never forget that again, thought Emily. Another pilot bailed out of her aircraft, but the aircraft’s altitude was too low, so her parachute failed to open. She survived the jump, but suffered a broken leg. Every time an accident occurred, an in-depth investigation took place to analyze the cause to prevent it from happening again. Director Cochran immediately tacked an additional ten hours of parachute training onto the course.

Emily’s next task was to type out copies of the curriculum for the training course including times, training area and instructor’s names. Each bay of trainees would receive a copy. Emily was not a fast typist, so she asked two other assistants that she knew who had better typing skills to help her. It took almost a day to type the curriculum, then she had to start typing the new ‘demerit system’ which was a list how the trainees could lose demerit points. If a trainee lost seventy-five demerit points, she was ‘washed out’, which meant she was sent home.

Jackie Cochran’s list of rules was long. A student could lose demerits for, lack of formation, loose hair not contained, bed not made properly, or latrines not perfectly clean. At the top of the list was no dating of instructors and no alcohol allowed on base. A trainee could lose weekend privileges for certain infractions. The strict rules that Jackie wanted implemented were to eliminate any controversy that might put an end to the program. All eyes were on Avenger Field!

The nickname for Avengers Field, ‘Cochran’s Convent’ was not too far off the mark with all the strict rules laid out for the trainees. Once the word was out that Avenger Field was all women’s training base, there were over one hundred ‘forced’ landings by male pilots from nearby training schools during the first two weeks. Director Cochran made it known that Avenger Field was closed to all outside air traffic except in extreme emergencies. The ‘forced’ landings came to an abrupt end.

Emily had the rules memorized after typing about five copies of them. She was tired of typing and wanted to do some flying. Three weeks from now, Emily would start the training course. She was familiar with most of the subjects on the curriculum. She had taken the mathematics as well as physics in college. She learned general aviation, meteorology, as well as how to fly airplanes in the Civilian Pilot Training program at college not to mention six months experience of flying military aircraft in the ATA. Mechanics was something she had learned on the farm from her daddy when she was very young. She really looked forward to learning aerobatics as well as instrument training, which were very important skills to know in Emily’s opinion.

When Mrs. Deaton returned to Avenger Field, everyone concentrated on the graduation ceremonies of the first class of WFTD from Houston. Mrs. Deaton had a list of guests and guest speakers. The dignitaries listed included General Hap Arnold, Nancy Love, and the base commander Colonel Urban and of course, Director Jackie Cochran would attend this special event.

The graduates who had endured the grueling twenty-four week course would receive a diploma and a pin made of silver wings with the shape of a diamond in the center, supplied by Jackie Cochran. General Arnold would have the honor of placing the pin on the successful graduates.

As soon as graduation ended, the WFTD pilots transferred to the WAFS under Commander Nancy Love for further training on the types of aircraft they would ferry to the required destinations.

Emily looked forward to receiving her silver wings, so she could start to fly again, she would be one of the students of the first class at Avenger Field.