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    "localId": "12000291",
    "label": "American Women Pilots",
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    "id": "12000291",
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    "contentType": "document",
    "title": "American Women Pilots",
    "citationUrl": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/12000291",
    "collections": [
        "Jacqueline Cochran Papers",
        "Women's Airforce Service Pilots' Files"
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        {
            "day": 3,
            "logicalDate": "1943-09-03",
            "month": 9,
            "year": 1943
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    "type": "document",
    "url": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/presidential-libraries/eisenhower/dde-1027/580930/580930_017.pdf",
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    "ocrText": "NO OBJECTION TO PUBLICATION\nBureau of Public Relations,\nLibrary\nOHL\nWar Department, Washington\nAMERICAN WOMEN PILOTS\nVS,\nA large and rapidly growing group of American women pilots are flying with the\nAmerican Army Air Forces in non-combat duties. They are officially known as \"WASPs\"\nwhich means Women's Airforce Service Pilots. Their function is to release men pilots\nfor more advanced or combat duties, and they are accomplishing this with cumulative\neffect.\nThe organised use of American women pilots in the war effort had its beginning\nin the spring of 1942, when I took 25 women to England to fly with the British Air\nTransport Auxiliary. Most of them are still there and doing good work. Others of\nthe nearly 4,000 licensed American women pilots had found individual opportunity de-\nlivering or testing planes for aircraft factories, or instructing or working with\nthe Civilian Air Patrol. In the fall of 1942, about 25 of the more experienced\nwoman pilots who were not in England went to work for the Air Transport Command,\nferrying planes under the leadership of Mrs. Robert (Nancy) Love. At the same time,\nI returned from England to organize and supervise, under the direction of the Army\nAir Forces Training Command, a broad, advanced training program for women pilots.\nThese women pilots are given a six months' course paralleling that given to the air\ncadets, except for gunnery and other phases of combat training. They then receive\ntheir wings and are assigned to various using agencies within the Army Air Forces.\nWith several hundred graduated lest aid-year and several hundred more constantly\nbeing moved through training, the time seemed to have arrived for centralized CO-\nordination of the program as a whole. The War Department appointed me Director of\nWomen Pilots to work with the General Staff of the Army Air Forces.\nThe women pilots will be in uniform very shortly. Although to date, they have\nCivil Service status, they live in barracks at the training field or in officers\nquarters at the use bases and are subject to strict discipline.\n- 2 -\nTo date, most of the women pilots have been used in ferry work, but other\nuses are rapidly opening up for them. The accident rate among the women pilots has\nbeen low. Not all licensed women pilots are in the WASPs yet, but most of them have\napplied for admission, and many more each month are receiving their licenses through\ntheir own efforts at civilian schools and are adding their names to the long list of\napplicants.\nMany of these women pilots have hundreds of hours of experience in the air. No\none goes to a using agency with less than 200 hours' air time, which includes two-\nmotor experience, night flying, and instrument flying, supplemented by many hours of\nground schooling.\nI have heard much about the good work being done by the women of Australia in\nthe war effort and an sorry I have never been in your country. I started there once\nby air, but never arrived. That was in 1934 in the MacRobertson air race from London\nto Melbourne.\nJACQUELINE COCHRAN\nDirector of Women Pilots\n3 September 1943\nFor release to: Australian Women's Weekly - Sidney, Australia\nLIDISTR The DWISHI"
}